Rodney Campbell’s Blog

I’ve been researching what would be involved in putting some form of Mac OS X on my new MSI Wind netbook and there appear to be two major mechanisms one could use.

First some background on the OSx86 scene…

Hackintosh (or PC running OSx86), is the idea of putting the Mac OS X operating system on regular (non Apple) PC hardware using a variety of patches. Provided you use compatible hardware, you can create a pretty stable Mac clone – however there is likely always something which doesn’t 100% work correctly.

Some good background links and sites for this include:

• The Newbies FAQ to Mac OSx86
• OSx86 Project

Installing OS X on a NetBook has been gaining popularity with the rising popularity of NetBooks in general and if you are interested in general in this space then BoingBoing has an excellent OS X netbook compatability table indicating which netbooks are most compatable with OS X installs and what features work with each.

There are basically two main methods for installing OS X onto a PC…

The older original method to install OS X on non apple hardware was to use a premodified OS X (with patched kernels and patched extensions) installation disc to load OS X onto the machine. To this end a number of distributions have been released with various names like Kalyway, ToH, iATKOS, Leo4All and iPC. In the case of the MSI Wind this culminated in a release specifically for it so the best release for this type of mechanism was to obtain the MSIWindOSx86 ISO distribution (this is actually a slipstreamed boot-132+EFI method install – see below) which allows you to just boot the DVD and install (10.5.4).

Some good links for this method on the Wind include:

• Paul’s complete guide to installing OSX Leopard on your MSI Wind
• UnOfficial Guide: Mac OS X 1 Partition, Everything You Need
• The Creation of a Hackintosh and How To: Dual Booting the MSI Wind
• MSi Wind OSX86 Install [Driver Pack]

Disclaimer: This first method more than likely violates various laws given that you need to download a hacked pirated version of Apple’s OS X operating system to do it.

The primary reason these hacked builds were required was because “real” Intel Mac’s have EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) and not the BIOS used in (Windows) PC’s. This is what allows the Mac to work like a Mac and be recognized like a Mac. However netkas developed a PC EFI system where the EFI code is injected into the bootloader, making OS X think that you are using a real Mac. This allows for the installation of default Apple extensions and kernels (VANILLA kernels) from the standard retail Leopard DVD. It also means that you can update your software directly from Apple software update without damaging it.

The second major recent innovation was when David Eliott (DFE) developed his modified boot-132 bootloader. It acts like a linux kernel (patched syslinux was used) bootloader which load kexts (Kernel Extensions) from an .img file (the ramdisk or initrd, as it’s known by the linux users) which contains kexts (or even an mkext) and boots OS X (the standard retail Leopard) and all the special custom files needed to boot live in the bootloader.

Short digression – What is the Kernel? – this is basically the core of the operating system and on OS X it is /mach_kernel. What are Kernel Extensions? – these live in /System/Library/Extensions on a standard Leopard install (and they are really folders of files disguised as files on OS X) – and you can think of them as drivers which allow for hardware support in the kernel and are dynamically loaded. In the case of OSx86 they may replace Apple’s original or add new support for hardware in the non Apple PCs.

So the new install method is called “boot-132″ and some good links for this method on the Wind include:

• Retail DVD Install (with driver pack)
• Macbook Nano
• Clear & Easy Retail DVD Installation for everyone
• Leopard Retail DVD Install
• Retail Leopard Install with Boot-132-Chameleon w/ EFI-strings Loader

Disclaimer: This second process potentially violates Apple’s End User License Agreement for Mac OS X. Please ensure you own a copy of Mac OS X Leopard if you wish to follow the procedure.

The following are some other excellent Hackintosh and MSI Wind related resources:

• MSI Wind Forums – Mac OS X
• Insanely Mac
• iHackintosh
• PCWiz Computer
• Everything you need – An index to important links

OK I’ve got this brand spanking new MSI Wind U100 and before I do anything I want to upgrade the BIOS

…why…

well I’m running 1.05 at the moment and whilst it supports the energy saving Fn+F10 mode (where it underclocks the CPU by 50% to 800MHz (to save on battery)) if you upgrade to at least 1.09 you’ll get a great new feature where it also allows (only when plugged into power) various levels of Overclocking (8, 15 and 24%) which will take your 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU up to 2GHz – woohoo!!!

I’m going to upgrade to at least 1.0A (although 1.0B is out now but I’m not yet 100% sure of it’s compatability with OSX).

The thing is the downloadable BIOS update from MSI allows you to install from DOS.

These guys however have a Guide to Flashing the 1.09 Bios for the MSI Wind in Windows XP and Vista which I simply adapted (by editing the batch file for the BIOS file I wanted to use).

NB: If you’re really stuck there’s also the Wind rescue mode – when BIOS update failed (no USB etc).

I finally succumbed to the NetBook craze yesterday and picked up an MSI Wind U100.

For a mere $600 Australian the specs on this thing are pretty remarkable:

• Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz Processor (with keyboard overclocking to 2GHz)
• 1GB RAM – included in the price I paid I had it upgraded to 2GB
• 120GB Hard Drive
• 10” 1024×600 LCD Panel
• 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth
• 4-in-1 Card Reader, SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro
• 3 USB2 Ports
• 1.3MP Webcam and built in mic

I also got the 6-cell battery version for long life.

Before I give it to my school age children however – I’m thinking of doing a bit of research with it and I’ll try installing various operating systems onto it. I’ll probably give (Open)Solaris a whirl and I’m going to give a boot-132 retail OS X Leopard install a try.

In January of this year a number of work colleagues were looking at network media players which supported high definition material and specifically ones which supported material in MKV (Matroska) containers.

I did a little reasearch at that time and…

• it appears there are a number of players based on the Sigma 862X series chips – most of which don’t support mkv but some apparently do.
• there is a new Sigma 863X series chips which do support HD up to 1080p with mkv support.

DVICO TViX currently has the PVR M-4130SH and PVR M-5130SH (both available in Aus) which use the EM8623 but they state they have mkv support. It’s a PVR as it also has a HD tuner in it. They are also bringing out their new M6500-A with the SMP8635 which definitely supports mkv’s and other good stuff.

Popcorn Hour have their Networked Media Tank A-100 (only available in limited qty online) also based on SMP8635 which on paper looked absolutely awesome featurewise (esp for price). A good review is available here.

Tomacro limHD200i HD media player indicates support for MKV’s and perhaps uses the SMP8634? The huge AVS thread though indicated that some people are having general issues with this player.

Mvix currently only have players based on the older chipset but rumours are it will have a newer player soon.

Same for Ziova.

The Popcorn Hour Networked Media Tank A-100

Back in January I signed up on the Popcorn Hour “waiting list” and about a month ago my number came up and I ordered one of these online – it cost me just over $240 Australian delivered.

Apparently this wasn’t some elaborate online scam and a week or two later my shiny new NMT A-100 arrived.

In my next post I’ll talk about my experience with the unit and my view of it’s positives and negatives.

In my last post I had installed SXCE Build 84 on my Sun Ultra 24 workstation in the hopes that I could get xVM working – however build 84 still contained the 3.0.4 Xen codebase.

Last night I installed SXCE Build 85 and behold it includes the 3.1.2 Xen codebase and better still I could now boot the xVM kernel – looks like it is now time to play with virt-manager.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing however as I had some issues doing the initial install. When using my normal settings in the GUI/wizard install of OpenSolaris the installation would fail early on. The error logs weren’t exactly helpful, however it did mention the inability to create my user account. I restarted the install a few times and changed various answers during the wizard process and eventually the install completed successfully. I’m not exactly which change fixed the installer however I believe that in the last attempt in the screen where you select the properties of your user account I made sure that my Username (not loginname) contained no spaces and for my Locale I didn’t choose my normal selection (of English(Australian)) but rather used the default of English(US).

Something I did notice was that when running the xVM kernel I could not properly install the 64bit version of VirtualBox as usual – it would install but it couldn’t load the kernel module and whilst the VirtualBox client software would start up you couldn’t run the VM (no kernel module running). I’d be interested if anyone knows if and how you can run the xVM kernel AND VirtualBox at the same time.

As a starting point for those of you interested in taking a look at xVM I found the following links to be handy introductions:

The Sun System Administration Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System – especially part IV which has the chapters on xVM (the PDF version is also available).

A Comprehensive Overview of Sun xVM outlines Sun VM, including products, installation instructions, and using Windows XP on Sun xVM. The article defines Sun xVM as a family of technologies that addresses both desktop and server virtualization, leveraging work from open source communities like Xen that is being built on proven Sun technology.

The blogger explains his choice of Sun xVM over VMware and Linux+Xen and he also discusses the two types of virtual machine: Hardware Virtual Machine and Para Virtual Machine. He also outlines the starting of domainU configuration and its cloning, noting that one can clone domU in as little as one minute. He shows as well how to set up cifs server if one is running Windows domU and the use of virt-manager as a GUI interface to manage Sun xVM.