My 10.5.4 Install Progress

Hello everyone. In a nutshell it is working well for me execpt for USB and sleep. Below are what I did to get it running. I am looking for tips on getting the last USB and sleep bugs worked out. The card readers should work if a driver gets released by jmicron.

I picked up a Blue Aspire One with 120GB hard disk from MicroCenter today. The Marietta GA store had 40+ of them in stock when I got mine, so they are showing up in retail in force.

First off I fired it up in Windows to make sure it all worked out of the box. After that I ripped the system open and added a 1gb DIMM and swapped out the wifi card for a Dell 1390. In theory the factory installed Atheros wifi card SHOUD be supported by 10.5, but as noted in other posts the Acer bios is doing weird things to it. If you want wifi you need to swap the card out. See if you have a friend with a recent model Dell with a 1390 (b/g) or 1490 (a/b/g) card that will swap with you. The Atheros b/g card will work fine in the Dell. Booted back into Windows and loaded the Dell driver for the WIFI manually. Tested it all again and then backed up the entire factory disk install with Ghost. The system is now ready to be wiped out.

I am not covering any dual boot stuff. I just wanted this to be a super portable mac. Once I have it all setup the way I want it and cloned off to another disk, I am going to use another portable USB disk to install with WinXP or Vista on to load my network admin tools on to have handy when I travel. I don't need them 90% of them time.

Boot Disk Setup:

To start the Mac 10.5 install I did the following. I did not want to mess with getting a USB DVD drive for this as I have several usb disks and an existing Mac system that I could restore the install image to the USB disk from. If you want to stick one of the OS 10.5 installers onto a USB hard disk or flash disk to install from you MUST have an existing Mac system running to have the tools to do so (Real mac or another hackintosh system). You can skip this section if you have a USB DVD drive.


I downloaded the MSIWindosx86.iso installer image that was custom build for the MSI Wind as it has most Atom drivers and the 10.5.4 update all in one.

I partitioned an external USB disk as HFS+ Extended Journaled with the option flag set to be an MBR disk with Disk Utility on the MBP. I then mounted the image and used Disk Utility to restore the image to the USB disk. I then used OSX86Tools to make the usb disk bootable with the Chameleon EFI boot loader.

To do the same, load up OSX86Tools and select Install EFI/Run Fdisk and follow the prompts. Select 4 for Chameleon. Next select the USB disk by number (ie: /dev/disk1 is 1). Finally select the partition number on the USB disk (again likely 1). Let it run and ignore any errors. Once done the usb disk should be ready to boot the Aspire One from.

Installer Boot:

Once I booted the the Aspire One from the usb disk, I opened Disk Utility from the installer and the repartitioned the internal hard with a single MBR partition formated HFs+ Extended Journaled . Then I quit Disk Utility and ran the installer. Under customize for the install, I left all options selected. After about an hour, the installer was done and rebooted the system. I disconnected the usb drive and let the system boot from the internal disk.

System came right up without issues and ran the startup wizard. Once done, everything just worked with the exception of the following:

Flash Card Readers (These are PCI bus based and need a custom mac driver from JMicron if they will every work. Don't count on seeing a driver like this unless some oem sticks that chipset on a PCI-e card for the mac market which is highly unlikely.)
Flash readers on other systems that work on the Mac are USB based and the OS has generic drivers for those.

Sound (There is a driver that works, details below)

System Sleep (crashes on sleep/wake, need help making this work)

USB devices plugged in post boot (system profiler can see them, but you can't use them. If plugged in during boot, they work just fine. Need help fixing this as well.)

I then loaded the following drivers:

Latest ethernet driver from Realtek for the onboard ethernet nic (the custom os installer has one on it but I wanted to make sure I have the latest vendor supported one). Just go to http://www.realtek.com.tw and get the mac driver for the RTL8102E-GR.

This sound package and shutdown fix from (Read the directions in the post to install):
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=96434&pid=821946&mode=threaded&start=

The file for download has BOTH the ALC268 sound drivers and the fix needed to keep the system from crashing on shutdown.

I just installed the ALC268_Installer1 to load the driver, it worked on my system and I did not need to load the ALC268_Installer2. Just follow the directions in that post I linked to.

After the final reboot, sound works but you need to go to the sound system preferences and then the output tab to turn the menu bar volume back on. You can also switch from the internal speaker to the headphone jack there. The system can't auto-switch when you plug in headphones. I have not tested the mic or the line-in input.

Conclusion:

At this point I have a very usable system except that I need to reboot to use a new usb device and I can't put the unit to sleep.

Does anyone have suggestions for getting sleep and the USB system working right? I have read many posts looking for fixes but have gotten lost with the info given. A lot of the posts do not make sense and other bits seem to be missing key steps to actually work. I am trying to take a many notes as possible to post here.

I think the speedstep/acpi things are working, but I am not sure yet. Once I get sleep and usb working I will look in to them to make sure the fans and power management is working at it's best.

Miles

 

What an excellent guide. Very in depth. When the forum gets bigger/more cluttered, Ill stick it.
I've got it already, installed kslywau from usb DVD drive, but for all those thinking about doing the mid, thank you.
Rory

 

Your are probably having USB problems if you are not using vanilla kernel. uncheck sleep kernel option on the MSIWind install to pick up the stock 9.4.0 kernel included in the install.
for Wifi, we don't have any proof it's the BIOS, and I find that very hard to believe since replacing the card will fix WiFi issues. By what you're saying, BIOS interacting with the card means it was custom built for the card, and could potentialy have further problems with cards it wasn't built for.
As for sleep, I suspect it's the BIOS since it never seems to make it back to OS X on resume, as nothing is logged after sleep. In other words, the system logs end after sleep. Then upon resume, the startup messages are logged. I've been told that the BIOS is actually an EFI, and not legacy BIOS, and that editing it for a fix will be quite difficult.
It's probably better if we can have this stickied on the original forum. having to track two forums for the same topic is a real pain. But thanks for this recap! Very helpful.

 

I'm currently running 10.5.4 on my Aspire One. I've tried a few different versions of it -- Kalyway, iAtkos, Leo4All, the MSI Wind version.. And I've found that iAtkos v4 is the easiest to get working.

I selected the SpeedStep kernel in the installer, and that seems to be working, although sometimes getting the SpeedStep menu bar app running can be a pain. It seems that most of the time, if I boot up off the battery, it works. But if I'm plugged into AC power, most of the time it doesn't. When it's working, though, it shows the CPU speed in the menu bar, and even lets you underclock manually if you need to squeeze every last drop of battery life out of your system.

Graphics are working at the proper resolution, everything hardware accelerated, using the kexts from Paul's MSI Wind driver pack, and sound is working using the same drivers mentioned in the original post here.

I'm having the same problems everyone else is, though. Card readers don't work, although when you insert a card the system knows that *something* has happened, and opens up the PC Card menu in the menu bar. At this point, clicking the menu drops down four items that read "Unknown Vendor - Base System Peripheral" with the only selectable option being to power off the card. Same as seeing them show up in the System Profiler, I guess.

Sleep crashes on wake, as well.. In fact, the system doesn't really seem to go to sleep at all. The display shuts off but the fan keeps going.. and the system stays warm. I'm wondering if this sleep issue is related to the graphics driver at all. Before I installed any drivers, I tried putting the One to sleep -- the hard drive spun down, the mouse pointer disappeared, and everything pretty much stopped as though it was sleeping but the display stayed on. Moving the mouse or hitting a key caused it to roar back to life again. It wasn't until I installed the GMA950 drivers that it started crashing on sleep/wake.

Good thing about the iAtkos 10.5.4, though, is that it doesn't seem to have the same USB problems that Kalyway and the version for the Wind do. I can plug in drives at any time and they come right up.

All in all, though, quite a useable machine. Even with the sleep problem, I'd rather spend the extra minute to shut down and cold boot than be stuck using Windows.

 

Thanks for sharing you experience! Currently tracking this version of OSX86 to give it a try.

 

ust downloaded iatkos v4
burning now, mainly because of the usb problems with Kalyway. The strange thing is, on my external HDD, fine, internal has problems. Exact same iso.
Rory

 

I found this a very useful tip after using Kalyway 10.5.2 and the Apple Setup agent hangs, then restarts the Setup, after clicking 'do not transfer':

"9.) As the computer is rebooting and you get to the Darwin bootloader, hit F8 (or any key)
10.) Type the following code: (the stuff you actually type is in quotes)

- type "-s" and then press enter. Wait for the text to stop.
- type "/sbin/fsck -fy" and then press enter
- type "/sbin/mount -uw /" and then press enter
- type "passwd root ##" and press enter
- you will know be prompted to put in your password twice. Do so and press enter.
- type "touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press enter
- type "exit" and press enter. you will now be booted into Leopard (as root user, set up normal users through system preferences)"

 

I'm trying to install with the iAtkos distro, but the installer stops at the beginning with the following message:

"Install Failed
Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer
[big "!" sign here]
The installer could not extract files from the package for 10.5.4.Intel.
Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.
Click Restart to restart your computer and try installing again."

What's wrong?

 

I had problems with iatkos too.
Search google thats where I solved my problems.
Insanely Mac is your best bet. or osx86scene

My problems were with booting after install rather than install, but many people have had problems with install from what i have been reading.

Just so you know, Leopard installs aren't like windows, they don't format drives automatically. So you have to go to utilities then disk utility and format it manually before you can install.

Doesn't sound like you have a problem with space though, more disk image.

reburn the disk maybe?

Rory

 

I'm aware of that, and I did erase the partition with Disk Utility before installing... Weird...

Yep. Actually I restored the iAtkos installer .iso to a partition on my drive and am trying to install to another partition on the same drive. Maybe that's where the problem lies. Will try to get another drive to install to.

 

Hey! Installing to another drive did the trick, and lo and behold the battery indicator works perfectly with this iAtkos release! Great! (Couldn't get it to work with the MSIWindOSX86 release...)

 

Opened a new discussion specifically focused on the iATKOS install : viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1505

 

I was hoping to post a positive update today for several iATKOS V4 install options I tried out last night, but in all cases they failed to boot after install. To add insult to that after my last install attempt last night, the unit stopped posting. It is dead as a post. I just returned it for refund today.

I'm going to wait and get a Wind when I can find one in stock. At least then I will have a netbook that can sleep in OSX. That was killing me anyway.

Miles

 

Installing all of Paul's kexts except ACPIBattery.kext seems to work... Checking on this right now, stay tuned!

How come?

 

at the boot screen type -v cpus=1
should boot then
I had the same prob, einstalled a few times with different kernels, but then thought i may as well try the kernel flags to boot it.
Rory

 

How do make it boot with "cpus=1" all the time? Which file should I edit?

Sorry, I am new to OS X...

Hong.

 

Yeah, I pretty much came to the same conclusion. I need this netbook to work with SpeedStep and sleep correctly. and the fact that it burnt out on me just didn't give me any sense of confidence on this type of setup. but it seems like the XP and Linux forums are really buzzing. the A1 is still a hit with XP and Linux, but I'm not a big fan of either tho.

Just got my Wind today, so going with that now. never realized how much I like Black until now

 

sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

add it to the KernelFlags key

 

Can you explain in more detail why "cpus=1" is necessary? 'Cause I'm running my iATKOS install without it and it works just fine...

 

I'd like to know as well. BTW, I am using the vanilla kernel.

Can you check if "cpus=1" is in com.apple.Boot.plist or not in your setup?

Hong.