Apparently a small bug slipped into the software at the last minute which is causing errors. The software has been redacted and an update will come shortly. Please wait to install until I have posted that it has been fixed. Thanks for your patience and Merry Christmas!
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, ‘cept a guy and his mouse;
The guides were outdated and could use some care,
And installs we done so that changes would be there;
I sprang to the site to like a heat-seeking missile,
And my fingers flew like the down of a thistle.
And ere I exclaimed, when the update was in sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
Semi-lame hack of a poem? Maybe. But the main guide (NBI 1) has been updated for Mac OS X 10.6.2 and NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 Final RC5 (potentially Final) (it’s gone Final! A Christmas miracle! Actually, I was expecting this…) so I get to post silly poems variants. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!
Jim McNamara (jimmymac_4 from MyDellMini) has put together an awesome resource for anyone who is installing Mac on a Dell Mini 10v. While it includes the Gizmodo guide in PDF format, the best parts are all the cool tricks and mods you can do to make your Mini 10v work in tip-top shape. It’s even helpful for other netbooks, since most of the tricks are not hardware-specific.
You can find the ZIP file on Jim’s new section on this site (normally accessible from the Guides page) and he will be maintaining it as new information arises.
If you also have material that you would like hosted, we can make arrangements via the Contact form.
Ever since I upgraded from 10.5.8 to 10.6.2 nearly a month ago, I have noticed a few “issues” that just don’t add up. (Please people, I don’t think these are widespread problems, so only comment if you experienced the same thing.)
First was Cyberduck, my favorite FTP client and what I use to modify the site on a regular basis. Strangely it always asks for a donation when I try to close it, even though I keep checking the box not to display it until the next version. It behaved normally until the upgrade.
I’ve also had issues with Disk Utility. Oh, it will do all the usual stuff fine, like copying a disk to an image, burning DVDs, etc. Since I reimage my flash drives for reinstall purposes on a regular basis (how else do you think I update those guides?) I keep disc images for both Leopard and Snow Leopard DVDs on an external hard drive; they’re faster to read from a hard drive since my Leopard disc is slightly scuffed and I don’t always have the DVDs with me during testing.
So here’s the issue: I haven’t had a need to reimage since I upgraded because NetbookInstaller hadn’t been updated. That changed a few days ago, and I tried to wipe the flash drives and copy the DVD images to them. No luck, they have to be scan for restore it tells me. When I try to scan them, it pops up an error. I even copied the DVDs again and no luck. Turns out my system isn’t playing very friendly with restoring read/write images, it only likes the compressed kind right now, and only after a scan. Not sure what happened there, but I’m on my way to reinstalling finally so I can update the guides.
If you’ve had any other little quirks, please comment about them and any fixes you may have found. (This is not a troubleshooting post, so if I see “halp me!1!” comments they will be deleted.)
Good news, folks! meklort has put together the 0.8.3 release candidate 5 for NetbookInstaller and NetbookBootMaker. Among the important changes in RC5 (compared to RC4) are a faster booting time, fixed dsdt.aml generator, temporary fixes for the Dell Mini 9 audio and 10v BIOS A06 issues, and rudimentary GMA 500 support for the Dell Mini 10 and similar netbooks. Remember, this is a release candidate, and not every bug has been squashed yet. But it is recommended that this be used in place of any reference to NetbookInstaller or NetbookBootMaker in any of the guides.
Learn more over at Meklort’s Blog
Since this will most likely be made into the final release for 0.8.3, I will be updating the guides this next week to reflect this change. I’m hoping to have them done by Christmas, but I can’t guarantee it so please be patient. Update: Please, please, please DO NOT contact me about bugs, feature requests or adding models to the software. I don’t do the programming!!!
Update: It’s over, we have a winner! Thanks to everyone who bid on this Mini. I may be posting a Mini 10v soon, so be on the lookout!
This is it, folks: after a long, soap opera-esque journey, my Dell Mini 9 is finally back up for auction! I’ve resolved everything as far as I can tell with eBay and Apple (I hate how both treated me like an idiot during the process) so this time it should go end with an actual sale.
Just to recap: this is a normal Dell Mini 9 with the standard Windows XP Home preinstalled, a 16 GB solid state drive (SSD) and 1 GB of RAM. It served me well for many months, I just don’t need it anymore.
Since some do not know about meklort’s site yet, I’m relaying some information he posted yesterday about the development of NetbookInstaller and NetbookBootMaker. From his blog:
I’ll be releasing NebookInstaller 0.8.3 RC5 no later than the 20th (or 21st) of december. If all goes well, NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 final will be released on Christmas day (after all, it’s Christmas, and it’ll be 6 months from the initial NetbookInstaller release).
I find this exciting, personally. Since the final will probably be the same as RC5 and might be released on Christmas day (“If all goes well”) then I will probably update the guides (all four of them!) hopefully in time for Christmas but no later than the new year. There’s a bunch of fixes waiting for us in the next release so the process should go more smoothly no matter which guide you use.
While I was unable to participate due to work, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) held a “hackintosh clinic” (a live massive web chat) with a specific interest in the Dell Mini 10v. It’s a good read for anyone who is starting out, with a bunch of somewhat random tips and info that is quite useful. Most surprising to me was the fact that MyDellMini and my own site were referenced repeatedly throughout the clinic, which I guess is a good sign. Heck, Erica Sadun, one of TUAW’s foremost bloggers and the one leading the chat, pointed to these sites first for installation information. That’s a good sign!
I welcome anyone who came to this site from the TUAW clinic and we (the MyDellMini forum members and myself) are always ready to help out.
A few questions were raised concerning NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC4 in my post about NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 RC4, so here’s some explaination. (And now I’ve updated the guide to resolve a bunch of incorrect steps.)
This is only concerning NetbookCD. If you want to know more about NBI, check out the old post.
NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC4 has the capability to boot into (i.e. recover) a bad 10.6.2 install thanks to it’s kernel-modifying bootloader. This is great for those that need a rescue disc. However, lost from the RC3 version is the auto-installing NetbookInstaller script at the end of the Mac OS X Snow Leopard installation process. (10.5 Leopard has never had this feature in NetbookCD, so nothing has changed for Leopard users.) This is more of a convenience loss than a functional loss. Essentially, you can still use the disc to install, you’ll just need to use it again to boot into your hard drive after the install is complete. You will need to run NetbookInstaller after the first boot so that the CD is no longer required. The short version of this paragraph: Use NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC4. Don’t worry about the technical stuff.
Now, once you have used NetbookCD to boot into the Mac OS and setup your account, you need to take a few more steps. (You would have to do this no matter what version of NetbookCD you had used.) There is one huge problem that has come to my attention lately (and the guide HAS NOT been updated to reflect this information) (the guide has now been updated with the proper steps) and that problem is that NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 RC4 does *not* generate a dsdt.aml file like it is supposed to; it doesn’t actually generate a working file if there isn’t one already there. So when you use the NetbookCD guide, you should do the following: Use NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 RC3 first to create a dsdt.aml file. Once that is done, load 0.8.3 RC4 to install the bootloader, extensions, and to generate the dsdt.aml file. (You are checking it again because once the file is there, RC4 is able to update without any problem.) You must install the RC4′s bootloader in order to install the 10.6.2 update correctly. Once you are done with NetbookInstaller, install the combo update either using Software Update or the downloadable version, restart, and reinstall the extensions using RC4. (Sometimes the hardware extensions, such as sound, are affect by the 10.6.2 update so you should reinstall them, even if no problems appear at first.) After another restart, you should be fine.
While this post may be helpful to other guides for educational purposes, it is meant to only apply to the NetbookInstaller 3 guide, which uses NetbookCD. It is in this context that it can only be truly understood.
So it appears that I can’t relist an item until Apple condones it, for whatever reason. This is more of a technicality than anything. So for now all eBay-related sales are off the table, but it’s still for sale. Contact me to make an offer.
Update: Sorry for all the confusion folks. I’ve been musing over the whole situation more and I’ve decided to postpone any sales at all until the situation is resolved with Apple and eBay. I feel it is in the best interest and security of all parties to proceed with eBay since it has protection for both buyer and seller that I cannot provide for myself.
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