Farewell, My 1st Mini MacBook

No, that's not my HP Mini 1001TU in the picture above, neither is the girl holding the 1001TU moi. I wouldn't be a geek if I looked anything like that.

But enough of murdering my own self-esteem in terms of physical appearance and get on with the main point of this post: Today is the day I said goodbye to my very first "Mini MacBook" or "MacBook Mini". 

Well, in the course of months, I've come to prefer the the term "Mini MacBook" over "MacBook Mini". There's been a confusion with MyMacBookMini.com with MyMacBookMini.blogspot.com - they're not one and the same - for a time they were related, but not anymore now, here is where "My MacBook Mini" started, just to make things clear. :D

So anyway, I decided to sell my HP Mini 1001TU shortly after I'd gotten my new Atheros AR9280 b/g/n WiFi card and restored the BCM94312HMG card where it really belonged. The whole package, accessories and all went and was gone for around $ 200 or maybe even less.

I know that this is hardly worth posting about but I felt I just had to mark this event in my experience as a hackintosher.

Things I learned with the HP Mini 1001TU:

• How to do a Retail Install
• How to do a Vanilla Install
• How to replace a netbook keyboard after accidentally destroying it with a hairdryer
• How to destroy an SDHC card slot with a Sony Memory Stick from my nephew's PSP
• And other absurdities. XD

About half of the posts here in "MyMacBookMini" is about the HP Mini 1001TU - from March to December 2009 plus some more even after I've got an HP Mini 311.

So to my dear little 1001TU, mommy loves you still. I hope your new family loves you more than I did. No, they may not crack your shell open as often as I did, exposing your innards, with the final goal of extricating that precious Snow Leo compatible WiFi card of yours to feed to your newer, meaner, brother. 

But bear in mind that love can be expressed in many ways; the screw driver is just one. Please try to appreciate the other ways.

Multithread or Multicore?

In order to install iDeneb on the HP Mini 1000, you have to enable the "CPUs=1" fix option or else the install will fail to boot up, leaving you scratching your head and perhaps enunciating not so pleasant words directed to the how-to-guide authors; they said it would work in the first place.

So this option specifically tells OS X that your HP Mini has only one core. Now what I'm actually perplexed about are people hacking the com.apple.Boot.plist to take out that key and string that the "CPUs=1" fix has put in there so that the HP Mini's "2 cores" will be recognized again.

1) Go to /System/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration and open com.apple.Boot.plist with your preferred plist editor or even just TextEdit.

2) Take out these lines:

<>Kernel Flags< /key>

<>cpus=1 -f< /string>

Beatrix said...

hi instead of removing those two lines? replace it with =2 on cpus like this
<>cpus=2 -f< /string>
this will prevent it from having the startup problems. :D

so your Boot plist file should look something like this:

Battery, Battery

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="188" caption="from Slim Battery site"][/caption]

You've just successfully installed Mac OS X Leopard on your precious Mini, gotten out alive from a proliferation of how-to-guides all a-jumble that you'd scourged high and low from the world wide web so you're updated to 10.5.7 or 10.5.8.

And in the pursuit of that ever ellusive happiness, you tweak your MacBook Mini to your tastes and one of the nuisances you take care of aside from the pesky resolution that would almost always break at every update (save those video kexts under "Break In Case of Update" glass), is that equally pesky warning message that tells you that:

"You are now running on reserve power."

blah blah blah

You've just unhooked your MacBook Mini from the mains just a few minutes ago and that 80% charge remaining can in no means be insufficient to run your spanking hackintosh-netbook. No way.

For the longest time, I've always opted to disable battery warning messages (System Preferences > Energy Saver - you just dig around there ;) ) and then take out the default battery icon from the Menubar. So off it has always gone to oblivion with a disgruntled poof of cartoonish smoke, never again to be summoned to grace my hackintosh computing view. I've always replaced it with Slim Battery.

But because of reasons unfathomable even to myself, I wanna be able to use the default battery menulet (yes, according to Mac OS X Leopard, The Missing Manual, that's what you call those icons sitting on your Menubar). I find that the iDeneb patches found in /.../system/Installation/Packages/Patches of the iDeneb installer disc extremely interesting.

If you're on kernel 9.7.0, that is kernel from 10.5.7 (cause you may be on 10.5.8 but using this kernel to get sleep/resume), you can install the iDeneb PowerManagement.pkg patch and forget about Slim Battery altogether.

We may or may not have the same results but it seems to have eliminated that warning message pest. Just apply the package after installing the usual kexts (VoodooPower and VoodooBattery).

And the Never Ending Saga Continues. . .

Edit: Sleep/Resume has been resolved. Read it here.

First off, you can call me Hermione Granger-ish all you want, before taking the 10.5.8 plunge, I did some research, or to be more honest, some googling around ;) and found this interesting website.

NOTE: This is assuming you've already a working iDeneb install updated upto 10.5.7 - dsdt patched, OSx86_Essentials kexts applied, and Chameleon RC02. (I haven't checked how things would go on PCI_EFI Chameleon 1.0.12).

And like any bookworm out there who easily believes what she reads, (1) I obediently backed up my Extensions via Terminal:

$ sudo -rf /System/Library/Extensions /System/Library/Extensions_1057

Afterward, (2) I installed Disabler and dsmos kexts referenced by the aforementioned website via good ol' Kext Helper b7 but color-coded them first cause I was too lazy to check whether I had these kexts already or not in my current setup, there's no way I'd miss those red kexts now if ever I'd need to check later :D

(3) That done, I didn't reboot yet but ran the Mac OS X Delta 10.5.8 Updater (Delta because I was running 10.5.7 already, 10.5.6 and lower should get the Combo Updater) I'd downloaded just minutes before from the Apple website which, quite surprisingly, took fairly little time to install at around just 5 minutes or less.

I originally intended to reinstall VoodooPS2Controller just in case but decided at the last minute not to and (4) just hit Restart as Installer completed the update. As expected the first reboot didn't complete and the Mini restarted and once again I was face to face with Chameleon RC02 (I've updated my bootloader to the latest Chameleon, by the way, and am enjoying my OS X Boot Theme which I got from here). Then Darwin said "hi" again. The screen flickered, giving me goosebumps as I thought I'd never get into my beloved Leopard desktop. And the spinning wheel finally sprung into action and after what seemed to be a substantially longer boot time than usual, I first saw nothing but a blue screen. . .and my cursor - whew! Another 5 seconds or so, I was back into my desktop!



But everything was humongous; resolution got bricked as expected.
Perhaps this screenshot could better illustrate what happened after the update:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="461" caption="No Bluetooth, WiFi, Resolution 640x480, Color not 32-bit | Has audio, default battery monitor working (right click and open in new tab/window for screenshot's actual size)"][/caption]

It was a comfort to know that screen brightness controls weren't bricked. As it was nearing midnight already I dimmed the screen to the lowest possible before (5.1) I trudged on, reinstalling my usual kexts via OSx86 Tools and not Kext Helper since unlike the latter (Kext Helper b7 it turns out, also backs up your kexts), OSx86 Tools would create a backup folder of the 10.5.8 kexts it replaced which I wanted to look at after. I started with the system kexts which seems to have restored WiFi and Bluetooth. I had no problems with sound as VoodooHDA still worked after the update.

(5.2) Now for the video kexts. You can opt to reinstall all of the kexts in one go; I just decided to separately install them because (a) they're already sorted into two different folders in my drive and OSx86 only allows installing 1 folder of kexts at a time and (b) I'm just weird that way. Restarted and bingo!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Bluetooth, WiFi (Airport), Audio, Battery, 1024 x 600 32-bit (right click and open in new tab/window screenshot in actual size)"][/caption]

There was that nasty "You are running on reserve power" battery warning again and in wanting to screenshot it, I tried to make it pop again by putting MacBook Mini to sleep so I closed the lid and it was late when it dawned upon me that the usual flickering of the white power led and switching off of the fan didn't happen. I reopened the lid and there were the tell-tale signs of a broken Sleep/Resume that were all too familiar to me by then. I knew I had no choice but to force shutdown the Mini and turn it back on so I plugged in my broadband cable to check if ethernet worked. It did. It does.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="482" caption="No need for Yukon2.kext, just be sure to plug in cable before booting up"][/caption]

Now for a summary. At first I thought I was gonna end up listing down the few stuff that still worked but, as it turned out, I'm now writing what doesn't work which means the general outcome of this experiment isn't so bad after all:

1) Sleep/Resume - once you put the Mini to sleep either by closing the lid or pressing fn+f1 combo keys, the screen does switch off but so do the trackpad and, I assume, the keyboard as well, never to be woken up again but by forcing the machine to shutdown and just turn it back on again.

2) Fan - it's gotten hyperactive I guess as it now whirls away with fervent gusto at maximum right from the start and it's noisy.

I would've also listed the battery warning nuissance pop-up alert but that's easily ignored or resolved by turning off battery warning in System Preferences, taking out the default OS X battery meter from the Menubar (enjoy seeing it vanish in a poof of smoke) and using Slim Battery Monitor instead.

What happened to my 10.5.7's Extension folder's back up now? I'm keeping it safe for the meantime as I try to figure out how to resolve the issues mentioned above; the kexts can come quite handy, who knows.

For issue # 1, I'll have to try the old SleepEnabler kext and/or review VoodooUSBEHCI again for some hints. For issue #2, I'm gonna see how posta74's fan solution works out on this one.

All of this is actually reminiscent of struggles with previous updates 10.5.6 and 10.5.7, still fresh in my mind - 10.5.8 is déjà vu. Creepy, I know.

And now I've turned another fork in the road - Harry Potter's lightning scar no longer burns; the King has returned to rule the whole of Middle Earth and even Gollum has found his peace and so has Frodo (though I still doubt he's come out of the closet yet ;) ) and Luke Skywalker has swung his last light saber - sagas have come to their own grand close yet this hackintoshing journey of mine seems to never end. T_T

August 5, 2009

While the whole Philippine nation will remember yesterday as one of the most touching events in their history (me included in the "their" there) as they bade farewell to a great woman whose unfailing faith in freedom had fueled minds, fed souls of today who are now enjoying the democracy she helped bring forth, the rest of Apple-dom and Apple fanboys and girls alike will perhaps remember August 5, 2009 as the day that 10.5.8, what may be the last OS X Leopard update before Snow Leopard will be official, was released.

Delta Updater | Combo Updater

While I and my family remained glued to the TV set in the living to pay our respect to this great leader in the only way we could then, my fellow hackintoshers had already downloaded 10.5.8 from Apple's website and were trying it on their own iterations of MacBook Mini's each. Thus, when I visited myhpmini.com this morning fresh from grieving my country's loss of its valuable pillar of society, this was the conversation thread that welcomed me:

> Intel9295
Now, to any HP mini Hackintosh users: DO NOT UPGRADE! This update could break your install. Wait until someone more qualified does it (LeMaurien, we are looking at you) and see's what it does. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Don't be stupid.

> MrFairladyz » Wed Aug 05, 2009 11:40 pm
My wifi wasnt working so i just updated to see what changes. So far, the display resolution issue is back (it only shows 640x480 instead of 1024x576... i think this is only a problem on the 110's, though.)

I'm re-installing all the kexts now.

edit: okay, i've re-installed the kexts. wifi is still not working (i don't know if it will mess up your wifi, but mine wasn't working to begin with.) Display and everything else is back to normal. No noticable changes, what was this update for?

> ravic » Thu Aug 06, 2009 12:56 am
I was having lot of trouble with Bluetooth PAN, I wonder if this would fix it?
I will wait for some time before attempting to upgrade.

> ConfuzedOne » Thu Aug 06, 2009 1:29 am

Don't be a chicken.. upgrade you fools! :P what's the worse thing that can happen? :P

> lukehale » Thu Aug 06, 2009 1:32 am

Only post-upgrade issue I have is my sleep fails to function, and I have to restart if I shut the lid :(. That also means bluetooth doesn't work because to get it working you have to close and reopen the lid. . . which causes it to sleep. . . which fails. Other than that it is working wonderfully. I will get back to you all if I find a solution to the sleep issue :)

Based from these results, it's basically the same conundrum of issues with hardware rendered non-functional by the update; not unlike what's happened with the other previous updates, 10.5.6 and 10.5.7. Among the issues, it's Sleep/Resume that's bothering me the most but I'm not losing hope - if people found solutions for this and a lot more others in 10.5.6 and 10.5.7, why not in 10.5.8? I haven't tried for myself the update yet so I find no reason to just dismiss this hurdle as unsurvivable ;)

I can't wait to get acquainted with 10.5.8. Now if only I hadn't a regular day job. . .

LABAN!

DVDPlayer

So I've already posted this over at the other blog, macbookwind, but I thought I'd put it as well here.

For those uncomfortable with editing the DVDPlayback file with a hex editor, just download this file , unzip it and then navigate to

/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A

to copy paste the file in that folder. Authenticate as you are prompted.

Note: as always, as safety precaution, you may want to first make a back up copy of your original DVDPlayback file before doing this. Also, DVDPlayer won't work when an external DVD drive is not plugged in via USB.

SMBIOS Dilemma

I guess I'm OC; that's just the way I am. That's why I tend to nitpick through every single detail with MacBook Mini. As I'd just finished with dabbling with Snow Leopard - for which experiment MacBook Mini has fallen docilely as prey - I said I'd restart anew. Yep, new install. That's what people with absolutely no life do.

As you see, I've always been wondering why MacBook Wind happily assumes MacBook Air's identity, embracing it as its own while MacBook Mini is a bit confused - ok, make that totally confused. In the past, whenever I checked Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info . . . and System Profiler launches, it gave me a nonchalant "There was an error while gathering this information" as it highlighted by default the Contents > Hardware main header.

So when I reinstalled iDeneb 1.3 (10.5.5), I made sure I checked the SMBIOS option for a MacBook and true enough, when I checked just before updating to 10.5.7 as per my usual routine, here's what I discovered:

10.5.5 as it is, delivered by iDeneb v1.3 actually can recognize MacBook Mini for what it really is. Even details pertaining to the Processer and Memory are correct. Although when I checked just the "About This Mac", I still got this:

Upon further investigation; I found other tiny details that attest to my MacBook Mini being recognized as a MacBook by OS X:

That's clearly a lappie depicted by the icon there. Now compare it to this (udpated to 10.5.7):

A Mac Pro, so it seems.

Actually, this shouldn't be a problem. But for OC'ness sake, if ever such a word was, I find myself irritated with this. I tried extracting the MacBook SMBIOS from the iDeneb installer and apply it to MacBook Mini again but nothing happens.

I don't know until when I can endure this and continue to just ignore stuff. Honestly, I'm reconsidering editing the DMI/BIOS again; I just have to figure out how to make the Mini be a MacBook without borking out the original HP logo in the boot splash nor getting a painfully slow boot up time.

Decisions, decisions...

Bad Kitty!

That's why I always prefer dogs. Haha.

I was able to download Snow Leopard Beta (the one distributed at the WWDC 2009) and tried my luck on the Mini. Followed this thread and this website - though not to a tee exactly as there were differences in hardware and I was practically stumbling to find my way in the dark.

Win XP was obliterated again from the second partition - 12 GB all in all -  in no time and replaced with Snow Leopard. I ran the OSInstall.mpkg from the .cdr image from within Leopard 10.5.7. It installed fine. But that was that.

Turns out Snowy is one unruly kitty. No, make that one choosy and unruly kitty as it purportedly works ok on the MSI Wind but gives me nothing but KP's (Kernel Panics) from the very start.

Frustration...Frustration...Frustration...

I was even happy to click OK on the license agreement for the seed (see below)

Welcome!

I guess the Obsessive Compulsive in me still hasn't been eradicated - not entirely...yet. So I reset my MacBook Mini via OSx86 Tools

And I finally got a glimpse of the OS X Welcome vid!


I didn't expect to see any effects of this performance-wise on my MacBook Mini but I was well surprised that my previous not so bad anymore 44 second boot time was even reduced to 35.

But I think that'll eventually change as I continually use MacBook Mini on a daily basis, accumulating gunk as I go. However, I really like the feeling of this new start - it's like I've a brand new MacBook Mini! :D

It's the Effing Effort That Counts

Right now, I'm installing Windows XP on the HP Mini 1000. I've partitioned the measley 60 GB 1.8" PATA hard drive of the netbook, giving 4 GB to Bill Gates' most ubiquitous OS as of the moment -- ok, the most ubiquitous OS ever in the world. My external DVD drive has been wheering away for almost an hour now -- oh, it's stopped and I'm being asked to click on Next and then enter my product key whose all 25 characters I've practically memorized by heart -- and gone over 1 reboot already.

Why am I doing this anyway? Didn't I vow to love and cherish MacBook Mini forever? And that means with only Leopard as our main OS? Well, I'd been dumb enough to screw up the HP Mini's bios with DMI edit - it's now a Compaq and not an HP. I'm thinking reflashing the bios will restore the HP logo; I'd still have to find out once I get into Win XP and run the WinFlash utility from HP.

HP = Compaq ??

You know you've caught on the real hackintoshing fever when you already have a working OS X installation in your previously just a mere lowly PC; tweaked and modified the system until you've got all the hardware components running - sleep/resume, battery, power management - and, yes, you've even purged your innocent Extensions folder of unnecessary kexts, breaking your system a couple or more times as consequence, just to improve your boot time which you're keeping an eye on (now you need to scroll down when viewing your iPod's stopwatch log list; it's that long already).

Yet you still want more.

And then, one lazy, boring afternoon at the office (because of the recession, clients don't buy your company's product, thereby reducing the projects assigned to employees like you), as you read stuff about - yep, you got it right - hackintoshing, you come across a post in a forum or a webpage containing information on further custom tailor fitting your hackintosh. What happens is, you wind up doing what that post was saying.

Cut the chase and let's just say I got my MacBook Mini as an HP Mini 1000, but because I followed what a certain post on the net said; it now thinks it was a Compaq Mini 700 in its past life before it was reborn to become a MacBook Mini. How come you say? Look at the pic below:

iLife 09

Enjoy iLife 09 without shelling out precious bucks. Fix iPhoto first though. If you find iWeb useful (I don't but I still have it installed anyway), it's also yours.

And to get everything all spiffy, get and install the following updates from Apple:

iLife 09

iPhoto 8.0.2

iMovie 8.0.2

iDVD 7.0.3

iWeb 3.0.1

GarageBand

Lessons Learned

MacBook Wind.

MacBook Mini.

That makes two netbooks that I've successfully hackintoshed. After countless rounds of installation, reinstallation, tweaking, applying kexts, updating and then some more tweaking, have I truly understood the game?

Perhaps I'd just try to summarize what wisdom I've gained from this story and journey into these few guiding rules:

Initial OS X installation:

What's Happened to the MacBook Wind?

These past few weeks, I find myself more and more enamored with the HP Mini 1000 - or my MacBook Mini, spending less and less time with the MacBook Wind (see, I even dropped the possessive adjective "my" there) to devote it instead to my MacBook Mini. Heck I even endure sacrificing my own cells' well-being by not sleeping during the cell regeneration hours - 10pm - 1am - just to tinker with my (yes, "my") MacBook Mini.

If there's anything to prove how hooked I am and committed to my MacBook Mini, the screenshot below suffices:

Bleeding Edge (Love)

Warning: long post ahead

Before people accuse me of spouting sonnets - if they can even be considered sonnets, which I doubt very much that they are - from Leona Lewis' old hit song "Bleeding Love", this one's got nothing to do with that subject matter but is definitely similar in terms of the emotional state involved; I could've probably bled to death this past weekend after all the frustration from updating my MacBook Mini to 10.5.7.

And to what ends, might you ask? To stay on the bleeding edge of what's techie hot. Since Apple made both the delta and combo updaters for 10.5.7 available for download from their website, the hackintoshing community the world over (maybe even across the galaxy, or universe, since some guys are really geniuses they just gotta be aliens no less) became hyped with this latest update.

Trouble is, I'd just started celebrating my successful OS X install and 10.5.6 update + new 2 GB RAM on my HP Mini 1001TU, slapped an Apple sticker I custom made with tender lovin' care on the glossy-swirl-patterned lid when found myself face to face with yet another challenge. I'm a geek so instead of just sitting around in my cozy corner and preserve the current Nirvana state of my MacBook Mini (I just had sleep/resume resolved with the 2 GB RAM upgrade), armed with kexts I got from the OSX-how-to-guide over at myhpmini.com, I took a quick look at my files to check that my precious personals were somewhere else safe, I took the plunge, prepared for head on collision or even worse.

1st try:

HP Mini 1000 - Hackintosh Resource

Update: I've posted a better, concise installation how-to with updating up to 10.5.7. 

Today, I find myself with nothing to do - again. Short of succumbing to playlist fanstasyland with iTunes on my work pc or getting absorbed in reading others' blogs till it's suddenly time again to trudge back home, I thought I'd go update this blog with a new post.

So what's up that's worth the time flexing my fingers for this post to be typed and read?

Well, the HP Mini 1001TU is getting more familiar, thereby making it easier to hackintosh - and by hackintoshing, I meant installing OS X and fine tuning stuff. So I feel the right time has come for me to create my own how-to guide which will serve as my own personal reference that everyone's welcome to use if they feel like it.

HP Mini 1000 - Hackintosh Resource

Compromises and Making Time

Although this could have been easily made part of my 10.5.6 update post, I feel the need to dedicate one post entirely devoted to this matter.

My MacBook Mini lost the ability to sleep, or rather, its ability to wake up from sleep after I updated to 10.5.6.

Initially, on 10.5.5, the HP Mini would obediently sleep and be summoned from sleep but I couldn't adjust the brightness of the screen - it was perpetually set to max, thus causing my batt to drain quicker than I would've wanted it to. The "Fn" combo keys would work only for volume but not for screen brightness. Weird.

My original motive for updating was to finally be able to adjust brightness to save battery life. But now that my machine interprets sleeping as going comatose - it won't wake up and would require me to force power it off - I've been having doubts on whether doing the update and going through all those trouble only defeated my main purpose or were they worth it?