10 May 2010

Bricked


I am but a mere noob. Actually a stupid, impulsive noob. Bummer...
And it's only been 4 1/2 months since I bought my Mini 311. Bummer...
I still have 8 months from the monthly installment pay plan. Bummer...

If you're running OS X Snow Leopard on your Mini 311 with Atom N280, 2 GB DDR RAM and you've successfully overclocked it to 2.0 GHz, but you're stuck during boot up at NVEthernet : Ethernet address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx blah blah, though it's not written in gold-gilded letters in your Mini 311's screen, you should know it means STOP right there. Don't attempt 2.3 GHz in attempts to workaround that hang up just because it's listed in some forum post.

Now what to do with my poor Mini 311?

Err, make that what to do with poor me who doesn't know where to go now that she's without her beloved Mini MacBook Pro??

09 May 2010

Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on the HP Mini 1000

UPDATE (09/03/2010): There were still issues with 10.6.3 and I never go to sort them out. Now, I no longer have my HP Mini 1000 with me. My recommendation is to stick with 10.6.2 at the highest version with this guide for best results.

I admit that I've been neglecting the HP Mini 1000, my very first MacBook Mini. It was borked out for a period of time and was just recently resurrected from the land of the dead. But I still haven't played with it for quite a while - never had the patience to figure why it wouldn't sleep in 10.6.3.

Good thing a forumer named lollipop from the myhpmini.com Mac OS X forums has been keeping the "project" alive (I'm now used to calling Mac OS X efforts on specific netbook builds as "projects" because of the HP Mni 311 Darwin Project). It'a very good guide for updating to 10.6.3 but we can take it another route; EFI Boot.

To understand why the obsession with EFI boot method, click here; also aside from being EFI, with this guide, we won't be using any modified/hacked mach_kernel as we're gonna use a version of Chameleon bootloader that auto-patches the kernel for us on the fly during boot up.

This means we can get our Mini 1000's Atom processor pass of as valid Mac Intel procies for use with Mac OS X and avoid the dreaded "boot loop" while using original mach_kernel - one less thing to worry about in future updates.

So without further ado, here's Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on the HP Mini 1000 à la LeMaurien19 :D

What You Need:
1. USB flashdrive or external hard drive - at least 8GB
2, .Snow Leopard Retail DVD (dmg or .iso or .cdr)
3. A working Mac or hackintosh
4. NetbookBootMaker 0.8.3 (we're still using v0.8.3 because 0.8.4 is still in Release Candidate version)
5. MacOSX10.6.2ComboUpdt.dmg (we're NOT using the v1.1 update as that version may cause WiFi probs more this only refers to connection quality issues, if your Mini does not have a Snow Leo compatible card, this unrelated to that) *Apparently, 10.6.3 Combo Update which is not v1.1 is no longer available, please update to 10.6.2 first and then update again to 10.6.3 again later if you insist on getting the non v1.1 10.6.3 update
6. HP Mini 1000 EFI Auto Setup for 10.6.3 (HP Mini 1000 EFI Auto Setup for 10.6.3 is compatible with 10.6.2)

What To Do:
A. Create your bootable USB installer:
  1. With your USB drive plugged in and a copy of an image of Snow Leo Retail DVD handy, launch Disk Utility which can be found in Applications > Utilities.
  2. Click on USB drive from the list at the left panel and format it as "Mac OS Extended Journaled". You can name it anything you want but for this guide, we're gonna name it "SnowDVD"
  3. Click on the "Restore" tab. You should see 2 fields on that tab's panel: "Source" and "Destination". Drag the "SnowDVD" volume you just formatted and drop it to "Destination" box. Drag the "Snow Leopard Retail DVD" to "Source" box.  (If the Snow Leopard Retail DVD image is not listed at the left panel of Disk Utility, simply drag it to that panel)
  4. Uncheck option "Erase destination" (so as not to overwrite name "SnowDVD" for the USB) and then click on Restore button. If Disk Utility gives an error message, it's most likely that the Snow Leopard Retail DVD image has not been scanned for restore.  You scan the image by high-lighting the image from the left panel list, then on Disk Utility's menubar, click on Images > Scan Image for Restore... 
  5. Once Snow Leo Retail DVD has been restored onto the USB drive, launch NetbookBootMaker and apply it to "SnowDVD" volume.                                                                     We're almost done but we have to do one thing more to make the installation process smooth.
  6. Press Command+Shift+G and go to location "/Volumes/SnowDVD/System/Installation/Packages". Delete "OSInstall.pkg" and rename "OSInstall.pkg.orig" into "OSInstall.pkg" - just delete the ".orig" portion of the filename. You now have a bootable USB installer.
B. Install Snow Leopard on the HP Mini 1000
  1. With the bootable USB Installer plugged into one of the USB ports, turn on the HP Mini 1000 and press on F9 to get to the boot menu.
  2. Choose your USB device from the list and press Enter.
  3. You will get to the Mac OS X Installer program; after choosing your language, go to the menubar and click on Utilities > Disk Utility
  4. Look at the left panel and click once on your Mini 1000's internal hard disk to highlight it. And then, at the right panel, click on Partition. You should click once on the main topmost drive icon for this to work, and not on any sub volume/partition.                 
  5. For "Volume Scheme" choose "1 partition". For "Volume Information", name it "Macintosh HD" (like in real Macs :D). For "Format" choose "Mac OS Extended Journaled".
  6. Click on "Options..." button below Volume Scheme block and in the dialog sheet that will appear, choose "GUID partition table". Click on OK.
  7. Back at the main Disk Utility window, click on "Apply" button at the bottom to format your hard drive, ready for Snow Leopard. 
  8. Once done, quit Disk Utility.app and proceed to Snow Leopard installation. Choose your newly formatted "Macintosh HD" as installation drive. You can also customize which packages get to be installed by clicking on the "Customize" button. At this point, you know what to do. :D
  9. The entire installation will take quite a while - take a walk, watch TV, get some coffee - you can leave your machine while it installs OS X but remember to have it plugged to electric source to avoid battery draining out before the install finishes. Also at the end of installation, you'll get an "Installation Failed" error message. This is normal, it just means the hard drive is not bootable - yet well get to that later. But Snow Leopard is indeed installed on your hard drive, don't worry, so just ignore the error message and restart your machine.
C. Initial Boot, Updating to 10.6.3 and EFI Setup
  1. With your bootable USB installer still plugged in, turn the HP Mini 1000 and press F9 choose the USB from the boot devices list and press Enter to boot from it.
  2. Press any key before "SnowDVD" gets automatically booted up. You'll notice that a "Macintosh HD" has been added as bootable volumes. Use arrow key to highlight "Macintosh HD" and press Enter to boot it up.
  3. You'll get into the Mac OS X setup assistant page. Create your User Account as you would on any Mac. At some point, you maybe asked to setup your network, just click on "My computer uses different setting/connects differently" and choose "My computer does not connect to the internet" in the meanwhile. You can configure your network later.
  4. Once logged in at the desktop, run the MacOSX10.6.3ComboUpdate installer. You will prompted to restart but DO NOT RESTART YET.
  5. Run the HP Mini 1000 EFI Auto Setup for 10.6.3. After that's done, you may now restart your machine.
Congratulations on your new Mini MacBook Air (I had the smbios.plist make your Mini 1000 disguise as a MacBook Air 2,1).

If you get a kernel panic after restarting from C.5, just shutdown your machine and restart again.

What you may notice that the machine may not be able to restart after C.5 when you click on shutdown or restart option. Don't worry, this is fixable. 

Download UpdateEFI v1.3 and click on "Basic Changes". Open a Finder window and click on the "EFI" disk at the sidebar, digg through the folders until you reach /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions. The kexts responsible for shutdown/restart/reboot functionality are:
  1. OSXRestart.kext
  2. EvoReboot.kext
  3. OpenHaltRestart.kext
You can experiment with a combination of these kexts or just replace OSXRestart and EvoReboot with OpenHaltRestart. Click on Finish button on UpdateEFI to update the contents of the EFI partition.

Actually, shutdown/restart is something that is known to be an issue for the HP Mini 1000 since before 10.6.3. What's most important is that there's now finally a resolution to sleep and speedstep after sleep issues.


Will update this post once I figure out the shutdown/restart.


Shutdown/Restart is working fine.

04 May 2010

Not Quite There Yet

iconspedia,com
Staying up to date has always been part of this game we call technology. Somebody releases something new and we just find ourselves itching to be able to see that ".x" displayed when we look at detailed information on an a piece of software.

It's a perpetual chase that proves to be problematic already in normal circumstances.

Same holds true and even more complex in out of the normal circumstances like ours - hackintoshes.

Ok, so much for waxing poetic and straight on to the point: 10.6.3 on the HP Mini 311 is not quite there yet. True, it can be installed and non of the main functionalities are broken - we still have Quartz Extreme, audio, ethernet, bluetooth, etc. It's quite a perfect Mini MacBook Pro 5,1 (that's what I prefer to disguise my HP Mini 311-1002TU as nowadays).

Until you put the machine to sleep.

On my current setup with Snow Leo 10.6.3 and with this config (Vanilla AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement):
EFI:
- AppleACPIBatteryManager
- AppleACPIPS2Nub
- ApplePS2Controller
- CPUIDOverride
- CPUIDSymbols
- CPUInjector
- fakesmc

/System/Library/Extensions:
- VoodooHDA

No matter whether it's verbose or non verbose boot mode; or hibernatemode 0 or 3, I've kernel panics creeping up on me once I wake the system up. The KP's are cause by PS2 controllers which I could easily dismiss as "just as expected" since the Mini 311's ApplePS2 kexts are buggy causing kernel_task bloats. However, there's something else that renders the situation a little too disturbing to be chalked up to "hey, it's a hackintosh, what did you expect?" argument.

The webcam does NOT work in non verbose after wake from sleep. 

Does it work in verbose mode? Yes, webcam works after wake from sleep if one boots verbose mode.

But then, looking at console messages to observe wake from sleep patterns (for both verbose and non-verbose boot) under 10.6.3 and comparing them to those of under 10.6.2 have revealed an ugly side to 10.6.3:

USB management is crippled.


Observe "USB (OHCI)" from 10.6.2 that does not appear in 10.6.3 and HP webcam-50 being disconnected in 0.6.3 which does not happen in 10.6.2.