Blog | OSX | mechdrew

I bit the bullet today: 10.6.0 is currently running on my Mini 10v, with 10.6.2 downloading as I type. One major reason for my hesitancy is the fact that I am running a rather touchy triple boot setup. I could get either Windows XP or Windows 7 installed with Mac OS X, but not both. I need XP for some legacy software (okay, it’s just Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, LAN multiplayer requires IPX) and of course I’m going to have the latest Windows OS if I’m going to multi-boot. Since they don’t play friendly together with the usual hybrid GUID/MBR partition scheme that NetbookInstaller helps set up, I needed a MBR-only solution to fix it.

Granted, this was two months ago. It’s been working fine, but it took a lot of trial and error to get there. You can see why I would hesitate to mess around with it anymore. When I got Snow Leopard, I fully intended to install it, but I needed it to install on MBR, and Apple had changed the OSInstall.mpkg structure so that the Leopard MBR mode wouldn’t work.

Well, after two months I am still no closer to actually figuring out what is needed for the mod. I had to download two different pre-hacked files before it would actually work. Before I started the install process, I made a bit-for-bit backup of my harddrive using the dd command line tool just in case it screwed up everything.

I was actually very surprised that I didn’t run into more problems. The only real gripes were a very inaccurate progress bar during the install and slow performance on the first boot after that. A little help from NetbookInstaller and all is well again.

Like most others, I’m not impressed immediately by any of the upgrades, but perhaps over the next few days things will become more apparent.

Update: I just finished the 10.6.2 update. I’m impressed again by how easy it was. Instead of the normal Combo Update route, I was able to just run NetbookInstaller and then use the Software Update app. Of course, now it says the CPU is a Core Solo, and I did have a minor hiccup with sound (I had also installed some additional kexts that were conflicting with it) but overal it was really easy.

Thanks to a lot of prodding and reminding from some viewers (thanks Stephen!) I finally finished my major overhaul of the Advanced 2 guide. And when I say major, I mean MAJOR! It drained me to think of all the complexities involved in the process. A lot of the work that has been accomplished in the process is thanks to the NetbookInstaller/BootMaker 0.8.3 RC2 release, which incorporates some multi-boot tools. But man, I am so tired from it. The old version has been preserved in the older methods section of the Guides page.

Also, there have been some updates to the site layout. There is a new FAQ page, which is basically just some of the technical documents that were formerly on the guides page.

And NetbookCD 1.0 Final should be out by Wednesday this week. I’ll fix a few of the known bugs and include any updates that are released before then.