Sunday, July 1, 2012

Mac OS X on my Asus 1000HE Netbook

I've been thinking of buying a Mac notebook for awhile since I only have a Mac mini desktop. However, I could never justify the purchase since I have too many computers (PC desktop, PC notebook, PC netbook) already. Since I don't use my netbook anymore, I Googled "Mac OS X + netbook" and saw lots of success stories with my exact model, Asus 1000HE. I had already upgraded to 2GB of RAM so it should work.

I have the entire week off from work so this is my vacation project. Wish me luck!


Current status

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Dang it. First problem already... there's a big scratch on my Snow Leopard install DVD. I was having problems mounting the disc too. I guess I'll try again; otherwise I'll have to borrow/find another DVD.

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Part 1 success!



I was unable to use my expensive and legit Snow Leopard install disc so I had to download the dmg file (from a torrent found on Pirate Bay!) and restore it to a 16GB USB flash drive (sticking out on the right). Lots of other steps left to go. :(

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It seems like I'm three years late to the party. All the guides on how to install Snow Leopard on an 1000HE are from 2009, and links to KEXTs (drivers) are invalid. Now I'm debating whether I should make a boot only USB/SD, or actually install Mac OS on the notebook HDD.

I was mainly worried about wiping out the F9 recovery partition on the netbook HDD. All the SL install instructions end up re-partitioning the HDD which wipes out the recovery partition. I did find the original recovery DVD and verified that I can boot from it using an external DVD drive so I think I'm going to wipe the netbook and do a real OS install.

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@Anonymous - Thanks for the tip. I went to osx86.net but could not find a full install image for the 1000HE but there are a lot of files. I keep looking later.

Back to the install... I did get SL 10.6 to install but wifi only works when I boot from the USB drive. I think I did something wrong with the boot loader install. I also let the OS update automatically (to SL 10.6.8 I think) which caused a kernel panic error. I'm reinstalling 10.6 again and will stop (for now) if I can get wifi and sound to work for iTunes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

download an image from OSx86, the installation is easy.