Initially I ordered a Dell Inspiron 910/Mini 9, after reading about how easy it was to get Leopard running on these machines. However, after initially quoting 15 days delivery then then, on the 15th day, extended this to 30 days – at which point I cancelled the order.
Instead, due to its looks and frankly astonishing battery life, I ordered a Samsung NC10.
As it turns out, although all Atom netbooks are created equal, some are more equal than others – especially where OS X compatibility is concerned…
Note that I’m doing an install straight of my Leopard retail DVD – more success may be had with one of the various hacked install DVDs which can be downloaded from the usual places. Arr.
The Good (or, What Works)
- Keyboard & Volume controls (but not brightness controls, the Euro key, or the pipe key which usually lives to the left of “Z”);
- Trackpad;
- All three USB ports (
although I’ve not yet tried booting without any devices plugged in); - Integrated USB webcam;
- Integrated Bluetooth;
- Sleep – which unlike some other netbooks, just works perfectly. You do have to hit the power button to resume, though. Safe Sleep/Hibernate doesn’t seem to work right now, but one of the hacked drivers may have disabled it. The machine was in use for several hours yesterday and asleep overnight, but it still showing over 4 hours battery life
This post suggests that this is now a solved problem
I now notice that sleep only seems to work if the machine is running from batteries… if you tell it to sleep on mains power then it will do so, but then wake again a couple of seconds later. Odd.
The Bad (or, What Doesn’t Work out-of-the-box)
- Intel HDA Audio (but it does with the AppleAzaliaAudio.kext, link below!);
- Atheros AR424/5007EG 802.11a/b/g MiniPCIe wireless card;
- Marvell 88e8040 on-board PCIe network interface;
- Any resolution other than 800×600 on the GMA950 graphics adapter (but it does with the replacement AppleIntelGMA950 kexts);
- Any way to alter screen brightness;
- Leopard itself – after installing, the Welcome/Migration Assistant proceeds to where it tries to setup networking, finds no network interfaces, quits and reloads itself (but only if it cannot find any network interfaces – which is the case on a stock NC10 if no USB ethernet adapter is plugged in).
The Ugly (or, What Can Be Made To Work Possibly Involving The Use Of A Large Stick…)
- I have a Dell 1490 MiniPCIe card arriving from eBay, as these are supported under OS X, which should hopefully largely solve the ethernet and post-install problems (although the on-board ethernet looks to be a bust);
- The Intel Graphics can be convinced to work through the use of a hacked driver – although this is apparently also possible by changing a PCI Device ID string in the existing driver, which is a solution I’d be happier with. Once the replacement Wifi card arrives, I’ll reinstall and try this method.
Another string edit, or if I hook up a CD drive to run a Linux LiveCD and get a dump of the audio codec data, should make it possible to coax sound into working– although it appears that switching between headphones and speakers will still be (at best) a manual process…
So, not completely infeasible but there’s still quite a bit which needs fixing…
More as I run into it.
November 15th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
November 17th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The standard module is a (unsurprisingly) Samsung-branded 1Gb DDR2 PC-5300 SODIMM running at 333/667MHz with 5-5-5-12 timings. Without overclocking the Atom processor (which only has a front-side bus of 533MHz, it’s worth noting), 667MHz is the maximum speed of the memory bus, so PC-6400 (400/800MHz) memory (as recommended by Crucial - although all speeds are now the same price) doesn’t offer any great advantage. I don’t know whether the Atom’s power-hungry 945GSE chipset can support 4Gb SODIMMs, but at almost £300 the question is most likely largely academic
Update:- According to Intel’s 945GSE specs. page 2Gb is the limit.
November 17th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
The base itself has what appears to be an aluminium substructure, and the bottom of the keyboard is a steel plate. In all, a solid and well-build netbook!
Although on second inspection, it might just be silver paint. I can’t imagine why you’d paint the inside of the chassis though, so I’m sticking with the thought that there’s some strengthening in there…
November 19th, 2008 at 1:23 am
Has anyone else noticed that the boot messages of the NC10 02CA BIOS read as follows:
Hmm…
November 20th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I’ve now upgraded the NC10 with a 2Gb 667MHz SODIMM from crucial.com, a 30Gb OCZ Core v2 SSD, and a Dell 1395 MiniPCIe WiFi card (which is an 802.11b/g card, rather than the 1490 which is 802.11a/b/g. I’ve never even seen a 802.11a network, and I’m hoping that the b/g-only part will also be more power-efficient).
I checked the stock hard disc speed with CPUID (of CPU-Z fame)’s PC Wizard before I nuked the default Windows install, and the speeds results were just a fraction lower than the stated performance of the SSD. Whether it’s faster or not, it’s certainly shock-proof, silent, and were on-sale at http://www.overclockers.co.uk at the time.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
… so it turns out that the hacked AppleIntelGMA950 kext is identical to the Leopard 10.5.5 AppleIntelGMA950 kext with the device IDs changed. Whilst it’s reassuring that this is the case, it doesn’t explain the tearing and corruption… unless there are instances where 0x8680AE27 occur in the compiled code which aren’t part of a device look-up table.
(And indeed, there are 27 instances of the above sequence in the kext binary, and it seems somewhat unlikely that the device ID is referred to directly that many times in a single piece of code… I’d have expected a lookup-table which sets flags and features, and for these values to be used instead everywhere else.)
The other alternative would be that the Apple-specific hardware has a different (non-VGA?) firmware with Apple-specific modifications. If there’s (Open)Darwin source available, this would probably resolve the problem.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Hmm – looking at the Darwin source it appears that the boot-132 AppleIntelPIIXATA kext is outdated (it being from Darwin 9.0, the latest being from Darwin 9.2).
There also appears to be an updated AppleSMBIOS – but I don’t know whether the boot-132 version is modified or stock… it is listed as version 1.0.14, whist the Apple version is simply 32.
Unfortunately the Intel drivers aren’t here.
November 29th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Hi Stuart,
great work so far you’ve done here by describing your setup process and writing down the solutions for any obstacles found! I’ve received my NC10 a couple of days ago and I am very impressed so far – although it’s still running Windows XP!
I’m planning on replacing the OS with Mac OS X – as soon as I get my hands on a original install DVD. I’ve already gathered some experience with OSX86 on my old laptop and I’m very keen on installing OSX the “vanilla” way like you did.
In preparation for the upcoming install I’ve already replaced my wifi card with a Dell 1490 and I’ve installed 2GB of RAM.
As for the boot132 method, were there any special kexts which you used to make the retail DVD boot? AFAIK there is no way yet to control the brightness, is that a major downside in terms of battery life. I’d really appreciate if you’d share anything that you’ve found annoying so far. I’d like to have my NC10 fully operational, aside from minor things like the MIC not working which can be fixed by an external USB adapter.
Best regards,
Timo
November 30th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
To be honest, the battery life is already amazing under OS X, even with the fairly limited power-management capabilities it offers due to unsupported hardware. As an example, I’ve now been running for almost 4 hours now with the CPU pegged at 100% for the entire period whilst compiling software, and the battery app still estimates there to be 55 minutes of run-time remaining. This little machine really is amazing!
(Although not all netbooks are created equal – there’s a Linux-running Acer Aspire One in the household which only gets about 90 minutes of life from a full charge, but which also discharges its battery even when entirely turned off. The only way to keep charge in the battery is to physically remove it from the machine… most inconvenient)
It’s worth noting that my battery life figures may not be representative – I’ve changed the Atheros WiFi card for a 802.11b/g-only model, and I’ve replaced the internal drive with an OCZ SSD. Either of these may skew the battery life figures on one direction or the other.
It seems strange to say, but the greatest annoyances I currently have (other than an inability to play sound through the headphone socket – although I’m confident that this will soon be fixed) is with the keyboard: whilst it’s physically excellent, Samsung have really made a crazy choice with its implementation.
I’m currently using the default Apple British layout, because even though some keys are swapped and typing an octothorpe (‘#‘) is an absolute pain, it gives me the largest number of working keys. The standard Logitech International English layout still doesn’t recognise the broken-bar/backslash key, but since it moves the functions on the key below the escape key back to the right place, it makes the typing of tilde and other characters impossible.
The Lenovo Ideapad S10 uses the same GMA950 chipset and driver, and yet its brightness-control keys work. This leads me to suspect that the fault is with Samsung for doing something non-standard.
Enhancing my view that Samsung dropped the ball here is the insanely crazy case of the Euro symbol. This should be produced by pressing Fn-F3 – which works under Windows. However, pressing this combination under any other OS shows exactly the madness that Samsung have invoked – pressing Fn-F3 actually generates the distinct keypresses AltGr+Keypad_0, AltGr+Keypad_1, AltGr+Keypad_2, AltGr+Keypad_8 – e.g. the Microsoft-specific method of typing an extended character. Unsurprisingly under any sane OS, this merely generates ‘0128‘ on screen. The frustrating thing about this is that the USB HID specifications define unique sequences for every character – including the Euro symbol. Why Samsung felt the need to write an OS-specific keyboard controller firmware rather than just using the standards is anyones guess
November 30th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
‘xev’ shows the actual actions taken as a result of pressing Fn+F3 as follows:
KeyPress event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486300, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x0, keycode 66 (keysym 0xff7e, Mode_switch), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False KeyPress event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486306, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 90 (keysym 0xffb0, KP_0), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (30) "0" XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (30) "0" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486310, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 90 (keysym 0xffb0, KP_0), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (30) "0" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyPress event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486316, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 91 (keysym 0xffb1, KP_1), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (31) "1" XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (31) "1" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486321, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 91 (keysym 0xffb1, KP_1), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (31) "1" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyPress event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486326, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 92 (keysym 0xffb2, KP_2), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (32) "2" XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (32) "2" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486331, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 92 (keysym 0xffb2, KP_2), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (32) "2" XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (32) "2" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyPress event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486336, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 99 (keysym 0xffb8, KP_8), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (38) "8" XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (38) "8" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486341, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 99 (keysym 0xffb8, KP_8), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (38) "8" XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x200001, root 0x53, subw 0x0, time 4003486347, (28,341), root:(710,538), state 0x2000, keycode 66 (keysym 0xff7e, Mode_switch), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: FalseNovember 30th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Regarding boot-132, the standard distribution when I installed only allowed the screen to operate at a resolution of 800×600 (stretched to 1024×600), but did allow third-party WiFi cards (such as the Dell TrueMobile range) to operate.
I knocked-up a quick script to run against the EFI partition (which should live in /Volumes/EFI/Extensions/):
The output of which is:
The ‘Default‘ kexts are dependancies copied directly from /System/Library/Extenions and are required for other overlay kexts to load. The other kexts are either supplied with boot-132 or found elsewhere (as with the Azalia driver).
November 30th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Hi Stuart,
your report concerning the battery life sounds really encouraging! I’ve now started my first attempt at installing from a retail DVD and failed. The touchpad and the internal keyboard don’t work after booting from the boot-132 “generic” CD.
Did keyboard & touchpad work for you? I guess I have to borrow a USB keyboard from work tomorrow and get back on the install process. The retail DVD seemed to boot fine except for the keyboard/mouse issue. Obviously I couldn’t continue installing without the keyboard.
If xev actually recognises the function keys to be pressed could we map other functions to them? It would be useful in general to have these work. I remember from my previous attempts at installing OSX86 that you could use a software called “Ukulele” to create your own keyboard layouts. As long as we actually get back a keycode for the non-working keys we could map them in a new layout.
As for the display brightness, it is a pity that Samsung decided that they would have to have their own non-standard solution. Do you know anything about the brightness control how it works in other notebooks? I’m thinking about looking into writing a driver. I’ve never done any coding on the Apple platform but as long as it is a chip on the I2C bus or something similar it should be theoretically possible to talk to it… I guess Samsung won’t supply us with schematics for the mainboard and a parts list
I’ll see what I can do tomorrow with the USB keyboard.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Curious… I have to say that I installed from a USB-connected hard disc with my Leopard retail DVD imaged on to it plugged into a left-hand port, and with the boot-132 loader installed onto a USB key plugged into the right-hand USB port.
Prior to this, I had gone through the BIOS settings to check that everything looked right (and that the USB key was the primary boot device) – but I didn’t record exactly what I changed. I definitely enabled NX/XD support, and there may or may not have been an option for HPET support.
Contrary to other reports, I have HyperThreading enabled without using the ‘cpus=1‘ boot-flag, and OSX appears to be happy with this (in that it works, and during software builds two processor cores are reported to be available).
I assume that the keyboard works when the boot-132 boot-loader prompts for the volume to boot from, as I believe that this doesn’t time-out. The bootloader should then deal with pre-loading the overlay kexts into the mach kernel in order that the system is sufficiently usable to perform an installation (right up until the end where the installer tries to change the default boot volume, which is presumably an EFI callback).
I’m not sure that remapping keys will help – the Euro key actually generates six key events rather than just one (which I can’t imagine can be remapped without rewriting the input driver), and xev generates no events for the dead-keys. I had a brief play with Ukelele, but it seems to assume a US keyboard layout, and so didn’t look to be helpful for a UK layout. Having said that, it did come with some XML keymaps, so it’s entirely possible that a quick XML edit could greatly improve the keyboard. It is my strong suspicion that the Euro (and possibly brightness) issue could only be fixed with a keyboard-controller firmware update or a customised input driver. I’m not sure no relevant it is due to the multiple levels of filtering, but ‘xev‘ only reports events for Fn-F1 (“Help”) and Fn-F12 (Numlock). Fn-F6 (Mute) and the cursor-key volume controls work without generating an event… perhaps a native application is needed to see what OSX actually sees.
December 1st, 2008 at 8:20 am
In fact, I’ve probably misrepresented how I was able to install my system:
boot-132 is an older project to allow overlay kexts to be pre-loaded on boot;
Built upon this was a project to allow this overlay to exist on the 200Mb EFI partition rather than a distinct Disk Image.
My system is built on version 5.1, the latest is 6.1. The installation instructions are here:
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=127330
December 1st, 2008 at 10:25 am
Just to clarify, the keyboard did work after the boot-132 CD booted since I could press a key after inserting the retail DVD to get to the boot prompt.
Are you saying that the built-in keyboard/touchpad did work for you? This would be very strange indeed. I’ve checked my BIOS settings but there doesn’t seem to be any setting which could cure this. I remember I had “USB legacy devices” enabled but I guess that wouldn’t do anything to the PS/2 peripherals.
Did you have your laptop connected to the mains when installing? I’m just asking because on my old laptop the installation wouldn’t even boot up without the laptop connected to mains. I guess ASUS screwed up the DSDT – they’re another company lacking a bit of common sense when it comes to conforming to a standard.
I have to boot again with “-v” to see what actually goes wrong with the PS/2 keyboard/touchpad. Yesterday evening I just assumed it was a common problem which you encountered too.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Yes – I had no problems whatsoever with the integrated keyboard/trackpad. What keyboard layout does your machine have? Mine, as mentioned, is UK. I can’t imagine that enabling USB Legacy devices would have any effect – but I’d also assume that I have that set too.
I’ve also heard it said that the white units are a slightly earlier revision than the black and blue units – so there may be an issue there (although I’d be surprised).
I’m pretty sure that my laptop was unplugged when I installed – although I may be misremembering. I did read that the 6.1 bootloader (which I’m now using – the upgrade was very smooth) includes a DSDT fix (although I’m not sure how this can be generic rather than manufacturer- (and BIOS-) specific.
It’s well worth booting with “-v” and seeing what is output – I do remember that during my first attempt at setup I did have a problem which went away when I rebooted with “-f -v”… although I’ve reinstalled since then and I didn’t encounter the problem a second time.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Well, here I am – not one bit further. The external DVD drive used for the installation attempt on Sunday had to be given back to work and I had to borrow a different one. With my luck it won’t read double layer DVDs even though it claims to do that.
Anyways, I’ve noticed a couple of strange things:
a. My very first attempt at booting the retail DVD was stopped by the non-working keyboard. I used the plain boot-132 ISO from the insanelymac forum thread. It does not have dsmos.kext in the initrd.img as I found out today but still the installation DVD booted at least into the first screen after connecting a USB mouse. Maybe dsmos.kext is only needed later on. I thought it was some sort of holy grail of the OSX86 scene that made the whole PC-to-MAC conversion possible in the first place. I remember it being called a on-the-fly decrypter for the mach kernel but I can hardly imagine that since the kernel booted on my NC10 without dsmos.kext being on the boot-132 CD.
b. I came to the conclusion that I’d have to boot using the “-f” flag since the PS2Controller and PS2Nub kext which seem to be doing the job for all other keyboards were inside the initrd.img. It just seems they were not loaded correctly.
Since I had bad luck with my choice of external DVD drive today I will try to borrow the original one tomorrow and I’m quite hopeful that booting the retail DVD with the force flag should overcome any issues I’ve been having so far…
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 am
Did you try the boot-loader from this comment?
That worked for me – I’ve never actually tried the original boot-132 directly, and this may be older and so not as compatible.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I’m confused now. If I’m not mistaken you used the boot-132 loader to boot from a USB key to boot into your retail DVD which you had imaged to a USB hard disk – right?
The boot loader that your linked to earlier in a comment is to make the installed OS X actually boot from the harddrive if I don’t get that wrong.
Well, I’ll find out later if I’m lucky today. Booting with “-f” should hopefully solve any problems.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I think I’m confusing myself too…
The link is to an alternate approach to booting a system which is based on boot-132.
I then used a USB key based on this new approach – the instructions for which are here and here.
This boot method may contain different/updated drivers, and so you may have more luck with them.
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Stuart, thanks for posting those links to the Dell installation instructions! The ISO posted that thread did the job! Working keyboard, touchpad, full resolution + QE! Sound works with your the link you posted, although I haven’t copied the kext to the EFI partition yet.
Could I ask you for a really big favor? If possible could you upload the contents of your /Volumes/EFI/Extensions directory to mediafire or a similar site? I’m sure your current setup is a lot more refined and it would take me ages to get around all those tweaks.
I’d also like to update to 10.5.5 via the Software Updater. Have you done that yet? According to the general idea of booting from the EFI partition it should be possible.
Again my deepest gratitude for your great work!
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:14 am
As I mentioned at the start of the topic, I was actually planning to do all of this on a Dell in the first place!
I did update to 10.5.5, but did so by downloading the Combo Updater from Apple’s Downloads site. Having said that, I do this for my real Macs too, because if you use the Delta updater then some files are left not matching their receipts, and so Disk Utility complains about them if you ‘Repair Permissions’.
Bear in mind that you should have all your kexts on the EFI partition prior to upgrading, though, as the update is liable to change them in unhelpful ways…
Interestingly, I didn’t get full resolution until I updated the supplied GMA950 kexts, so there may be a new version included, or your setup might be slightly different to mine… Do you see occasional corruption when using iTunes? I get things like blocks rendered out of place, or the mouse cursor appearing to stick on the window.
I’m just sanitising my kext collection over the next few days – I want to swap dsmos.kext for AppleDecrypt.kext (which is apparently 20% faster), try to get HDA Audio working (for headphone output) with a Linux codec dump, and see whether the native GMA950 driver can be convinced to work by adding EFI strings to com.apple.Boot.plist.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Yeah I see, what a good thing though that you decided to use that Dell Mini boot ISO!
I’ve just done the update to 10.5.5 and it went flawless! What a great experience to install the update directly from Apple without anything breaking. I managed to get bluetooth to work fully (I couldn’t connect to a bluetooth PAN under 10.5.1) but the speeds for internet access using the PAN are painfully slow. Luckily I have other backup plans how to access the internet when I’m on the road. Since I own a WM phone I used WMWifiRouter for the moment which works great.
I do get the artifacts in iTunes as well but as I said the graphics chip worked OOB with the Dell Mini ISO. I also managed to get the AppleAzalia kext working while it is loaded from the EFI partition.
I’m very happy so far with the state of OS X on my NC10. It’s very usable. Minor annoyances are not being able to change the display brightness and the missing internal MIC + switch to headphone port.
Once you finish sanitizing your kext collection I’d be delighted to test your setup. Do you plan on writing a HOWTO on insanelymac? If you’re not I could be tempted as I think this is so cool that it definitely needs to be shared with the community. I’d obviously credit you with the success since you’ve been doing all the work.
I know it’s not going to be a HOWTO for everyone since installing from retail DVD requires at least a working network interface (e.g. USB-WLAN or exchanging the internal WLAN NIC – what we did) but I think there will be a lot of people who’d be very very grateful if there was a HOWTO.
BTW, obviously I’m writing this from OS X running on my NC10. Best value for money ever spent on PC hardware in my opinion.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I’ve just dumped the ALC262 codec data from an Ubuntu LiveUSB stick, so I’m going to try plugging this into HDA Enabler in order to try to get improved audio, and I’ve found the AppleDecrypt.kext I was looking for. I’m still planning to try adding some EFI strings too.
(I also re-wrote the AppleScript installer program from the Dell utility to be more fault-resilient and to remove a couple of mistakes – so I might repackage the installer to be NC10-specific with the latest bootloader, a working set of kexts, and any other updates I find).
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting the MacBook Air USB ethernet adapter from my local Apple Store, just to check that it works… and I’m sure it’ll come in handy at some point
December 4th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
That’s good news! I hope you’ll get somewhere with the codec dump. Although I have not missed the headphone ports yet.
Well that sounds really good what you’re saying. It was already a fairly straightforward experience once I had it booting with the Dell Mini ISO but I’m sure if you could wrap it all up in a installer/script that would help out those without command line experience
.
Have you had any problems with bluetooth? Mine seems to be working sometimes. Before updating to 10.5.5 it used to be off after boot-up. Sending the NC10 to sleep and waking it up would enable bluetooth again. Now after the update to 10.5.5 it worked once fairly well (I even managed to establish a bluetooth PAN but with mediocre speed & latency) and now it shows “off” again…
Have you installed any tweak to make scrolling easier? I also noticed that tapping to click doesn’t work – which is probably a mac thing – I’ve never owned one before but I’m a convert now!
December 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I’ve not had any problems with Bluetooth at all – other than that it’s not possible to disable it!
(Out of interest, does your NC10 have a 3G SIM slot in the battery bay?)
Scrolling is a pain because the hardware seems to have edge-acceleration turned on by default, and the Mac has no way to configure this. Tapping, however, is in the Keyboard and Mouse System Configuration applet, although it’s turned off by default.
Some bad news: I tried dropping the ALSA dump into HDA Enabler 1.20, and it just said “Unrecognised codec”
December 5th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
I’ve found a solution to my bluetooth problem (which was that bluetooth would show “off” after booting up when I paired my NC10 with any device). I downloaded a small command line utility called “blueutil” which allows to switch bluetooth on/off. Even though blueutil shows the bluetooth status as “on” when asked it enables the previously greyed out bluetooth icon when issued “blueutil on”.
My NC10 does not have the SIM card slot. When I opened it to replace the WLAN NIC i noticed the empty space on the mainboard for the mini PCI-E hsdpa card. It shouldn’t be too difficult to add one of these with a steady hand during soldering and the right molex connector for the card.
That’s indeed bad news about the codec. I’m afraid I don’t have anything to offer as an idea since I’ve not even looked at the sound issue. Meanwhile my USB sound stick should arrive sometime so I can at least use skype with a headset when necessary.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Hi. Nice topic.
I tried the NC10 DVD created by Mysticus C.
He describes his solution @ http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=137314
He got just as far as you did except he almost has the audio working!
For the brightness problem i’m currently using ‘shades’ which doesn’t control the LED backlight but does help somewhat. http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades
I really hope someone will write a driver for it…
Are you experiencing any artifacts with the GMA950 driver? My screen occasionally gets somewhat jumbled, e.g. a cursor image where none should exist.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Great post AND comment discussion!
I’ve also got the NC10 loaded with OSX and my main annoyance is the lack of brightness controls. I can live with the audio bit but would really like the option of brightness controls.
I’m also actually booting with options into Win7, XP and Ubuntu – just to play around.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Hi Stuart,
I came across your blog after searching Google on how to install a retail copy of OS X on the NC10 as I dont particuarly like installing hacked version of software, espcially Operating Systems. Anyway, I was wondering if you could perhaps provide a quick how-to along with any files you used to get your retail copy installed? I realise this is a big ask but you seem to be the only person Ive come across installing OS X on the NC10 in the correct manner. I have OS X 10.5.4 on DVD and am a newbie to the whole hackintosh scene. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. I hope your mac is working out for you. Look forward to your reply.
Thanks!
January 28th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I’ve actually been thinking of doing just that, since I’m now pretty happy now that OS X works well enough for general use on the NC10. I was going to start writing a guide earlier this week, but my initial forays into iPhone development got in the way
I’ll try to get something done this week though, as the beauty of the efi_boot approach is that it really is very simple to get up and running!
January 30th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Stephen, how’s this?
January 31st, 2009 at 4:25 am
Stuart, you chap are a 100% absolute legend! Thank you so much. Im currently running Mysticus version but am now going to opt with your method. Thanks again, much appreciated.
Keep up the good work!
February 1st, 2009 at 11:49 am
A working graphical sound-switching application for the NC10:
http://blog.stuart.shelton.me/downloads#Audieee-NC10.dmg
February 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Hi Stuart, ill probably get flamed by others for asking this question but is it possible to run bootcamp under this install method of OSX? I realise i could do a dualt boot which is no problem but it would be nice to be able to pull up XP under bootcamp within OSX. Thanks for the sound update too!
February 1st, 2009 at 8:52 pm
sorry stuart, i think i might have meant parallels to run osx in windows. sorry havent researched properly, clearly!
didnt realise boot camp was just for booting different OS’s.
February 1st, 2009 at 11:53 pm
In terms of virtualisation, you can use Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion (both of which are commercial) or Sun’s free VirtualBox to run other guest OS concurrently with OS X. I’ve heard that there are issues running at least Parallels on Atom processors, but I’ve not tried myself and so don’t know how significant these problems are.
If you’re wanting to run OS X on top of Windows or Linux, then I don’t think that this is currently (easily) possible… as with the different boot-loaders and drivers required to emulate various parts of the system to boot Leopard on a netbook, the virtualisation software would have to provide the same features. So far as I’m aware Apple to allow for Virtualisation on OS X Server’s license, which suggests that it it possible in some form – but I believe this is to account for running multiple copies of Server on Mac Pros or Xserves.
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 am
I’ve had my new beautiful NC10 now for about a week. I am loving it! I have to say this is a big step up from most of the other netbooks I’ve seen out there. I originally purchased an Aspire one, but just couldn’t get over the screen and keyboard…
Any progress on the stock Wifi Atheros AR5007eg? To be honest I don’t want to remove this card, (bt3) supports it nicely. I actually have a quad booting system functioning very well w/a backup partition for all my hd-images. The only 1 BIG problem that lingers is this non-working wifi card. I’ve read about the method w/running kismac, although I did not share in the success.
I’m running 10.5.6 via the mysticus dvd. I noticed i still had to install kexts for video and sound…
Stuart, you mentioned sleep works well? The smibios kext I have sleeps my machine however I am not able to bring it out of sleep. Do you know what version you have?
March 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Can anyone tell me how to get the full 1280 resolution working on NC10 with Leopard? I’ve tried some kexts but they don’t change anything.
March 13th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
You’ll have a job… the NC10 screen is only 1024×600
Take a look at this article for a full install guide for OS X/Leopard!