Stuart's Weblog

Having bought a Unibody MacBook Pro and running Mac OS 10.6, I decided to upgrade my Samsung NC10 from running Mac OS 10.5.8 to running the latest Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) from Canonical.

Canonical have completely revolutionised the concept of Linux on the desktop by packaging a distribution that is lightweight, fast, attractive, functional, and is – above all – actually usable as a day-to-day computing environment by your average computer user: as with OS X, the powerful underpinnings aren’t exposed and so don’t scare away the casual user.

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I must admit that I forsook my vow never to build a PC again, and as a result am now more than convinced of its validity than ever…

Read on for a final look at the Foxconn’s flagship A79A-S AM2+ motherboard, and how it is eclipsed in almost every way by the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P board with which I have now replaced it.

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… or, indeed, on a system with modern 64bit-capable processor(s) is it better to run the 32bit or 64bit version of any given OS?

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Foxconn recently announced a firmware update to BIOS 782F1P06 for the A79A-S.

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At work we have several Sony laptops and have recently upgraded to the latest Vodafone-branded Huawei 3G/HSDPA modems… and on all laptops we’ve experienced intermittent connectivity and constant errors.

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There is currently a great demand for laptops which provide the user-friendliness of a Mac without the cost and weight of a MacBook or MacBook Pro, or without the cost of size of a MacBook Air.

Given that the ever-increasing varieties of Intel Atom-based netbooks are low-cost and roughly equivalent in hardware terms to the original MacBook Air, they make a tempting target to conversions to “MacBook Mini”s.

Indeed, there are a large (and also increasing) number of guides which will tell you how to get OS X running using a variety of ISO images downloaded via BitTorrent and hacked kernels which then require extensive changes to the installed system and come with copious warnings not to upgrade the OS when Software Updater prompts you to… and even then it’s common for basic functions such as sleep or USB not to work (although it has to be said that no method is entirely free from caveats).

This guide doesn’t work like that. This guide will describe how to install OS X from an original Leopard installation DVD and how to end up with an entirely unmodified system (*) which will not break when Apple issues updates.

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A Windows Vista-running PC decided to implode the other day, crashing with random noise on the screen (or a really strange frosting-type effect, where slightly off-white static quickly encroaches from the edges of the screen) after Windows has been running for a while, for a few minutes after starting a DirectX game, etc.

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Well, good news and bad here…

The good news is that, with the DSDT fix (although in all honesty I’ve not tried without) the 10.5.6 upgrade does the right thing and reboots correctly. Even better, a modified SystemConfiguration is no longer needed in /System/Library. May be due to this, the screen is also no longer stuck at full brightness… although due to the following issue, I don’t know whether it can be modified.

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If running Mac OS on a non-Apple laptop, then there’s a sting in the tail of the forthcoming 10.5.6 update: it appears that the new kernel only wants to run with ACPI HPETs, and will fail on boot if legacy i8254/RTC timers have interrupts assigned to them.

To fix this, a replacement ACPI Differentiated System Description Table is required. efi_boot, version 6.1 or above, has the ability to replace the DSDT supplied to the kernel from the system firmware with a customised one: Simply place the alternative DSDT.aml in the root of the EFI volume – generally /Volumes/EFI/.

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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…

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