Leo or Snow Leo?

I've been living with Snow Leopard for almost 2 months now and coming from 4 months of Leopard 10.5 (ah, those were good times), how do I find its "fairer" brother?


Aside from the GUI stuff - Dock Exposé, QuickTime X, revamped Icon View with support upto to 512 pixels (you can play a video, flip through a document without opening an app), there are some things that make a hackintosher's life easier in Snow Leo. So far, I've found 2 which have obviously delighted me; I'm blogging them.

Snow Leo EFI Boot Guide Revamped : Part 4

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Customizations / Maintenance

1. Fix your ApplePS2Controller - to resolve "trackpad preferences won't save after reboot" issue.
- Go to /SnowLeoHPMini_101709/Trackpad and copy "com.meklort.ps2.helper.plist" to /Library/LaunchAgents/. Authenticate as prompted.
- Back in /SnowLeoHPMini_101709/Trackpad, double click on the "Synaptics Trackpad.prefPane" to install it.

Snow Leo EFI Boot Guide Revamped: Part 2

UPDATE: This guide is no longer relevant to the HP Mini 1000. Kindly please see this new guide instead. Thank you.

Next >> Snow Leo EFI Boot Guide Revamped : Part 3

<< Back Mac OS X Installer USB HDD

Install Snow Leopard onto the HP Mini

1. With the USB installer plugged in, switch on the Mini and press F9 as it starts. You’ll see the boot menu screen. 

2. Use the up/down arrow keys to choose your usb hard drive from the list and press the Enter key. Wait until Darwin finish its countdown which, by default, will boot “SnowDVD” volume and get you into the Installer Program.

Snow Leo EFI Boot Guide Revamped : Part 3

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Configure EFI


The previous guide was admittedly a total chaos, specifically on this part of the entire EFI Boot Guide. So in this new guide, the steps are still pretty much the same ones which I got from the original thread at msiwind.net (the site's still not up yet as of post's writing so I'm not linking but credits still go to 18seven), in order to simplify things down for a noob like me, I've repackaged the files needed, reordered the steps.

What you need: "SnowLeoHPMini_101709.zip" file (Alternate download link here). Nothing really special about the suffix number - it isn't exactly a version number; just the date when the package was finalized for posting/release.

A Yellow Situation No More

I changed my hard drive icon manually in Snow Leopard to rid my Desktop, Finder Sidebar and what not of too much yellow stuff. But that was only supercial and I knew it was never gonna be anything permanent; either I'd google for a resolution until I ran of breath or I'd brick my install by manually editing kexts to load onto the EFI partition.

I changed my hard drive icon manually in Snow Leopard to rid my Desktop, Finder Sidebar and what not of too much yellow stuff. But that was only superficial and I knew it was never gonna be anything permanent; either I'd google for a resolution until I ran out of breath or I'd brick my install by manually editing kexts to load onto the EFI partition.


Turned out I didn't have to go through either of those.


So taking a hint from insanelymac.com, I edited my IOACHIFamily.kext differences from the instructions. Snow Leo recognizes the Mini's 60 gig Toshiba hard drive as ATA, not SATA. So that means there should an entry in the info.plist for that kext's IOATABlockStorage plugin kext that specifies that that ATA device is internal.

Cat in the Bag: Install Snow Leopard on the HP Mini

This installation method uses NetbookBootMaker. With Chameleon 2.0-RC2 already available, you might be asking why NetbookBootMaker? True, NetbookBootMaker is primarily made for the Dell Mini hackintosh but it works fine in my setup and offers noob-friendly tools as well such as ExtraUpdate - more on that later.

Update: Please see Snow Leopard Guide

This installation method uses NetbookBootMaker. With Chameleon 2.0-RC2 already available, you might be asking why NetbookBootMaker? True, NetbookBootMaker is primarily made for the Dell Mini hackintosh but it works fine in my setup and offers noob-friendly tools as well such as ExtraUpdate - more on that later.

So, let's get this rollin'! :D