wiredworld, on Mar 15 2010, 03:24 AM, said:
thanks. I do have a mac and would be interested in the USB method you have used.
thanks again.
Ok let's do that then:
What you'll need: The files I attached here, Digital Dreamers install script, a 2 gig USB drive or smaller, an 8 gig USB drive or larger, your retail Snow Leopard disk, a Mac mach_kernel 10.6.2 (I'm not sure where to download this but your current Mac will have one in the root directory when you use the "show/hide" files tool), the Show/Hide files tool, and kext utility.
Part I: Boot drive prep - External USB
Step 1: Download Digital Dreamers script here:
http://www.insanelym...howtopic=185097
Step 2: Get a USB that can be formatted as a GUID. Some will only allow you to format them as FAT32 but they can still be used in Macs to transfer files.
Step 3: Format your USB drive and call it something easy like "Boot" or "George" or whatever is easiest
Don't call it EFI since you might overwrite Mac EFI since it has a hidden EFI partition and the script will mount the hidden partition if you declare your target drive as "EFI". I learned this the hard way...twice.
Step 4: Go into the pack that I included here and swap out the bootloaders folder inside of Digital Dreamers ~Extras folder with the one I included since it has 1156 support
Step 5: Swap out the SMbios.plist and boot.plist in his plists folder with the ones I included.
Step 6: Now click the run patch installer script to run the script and it will ask you which type of install to run. Select the EFI option or Option 2 and you'll choose your GUID formatted USB as your target drive.
EDIT 3/22/2010: The prepared USB may not always show up as available to install! Should this be the case, choose 17 in the menu to "change install target" and select OPTION 1 or "Extra" to install to the prepared drive. After this has completed there will be a "stored kexts" folder inside the "Extra" folder. It's not critically important to delete it, but it's a good idea to do so as it might be confusing later.
Step 7: You then be asked which bootloader to install and you'll select the Chameleon RC4 option. This will write the necessary bootloader files to your drive just like if it was to be done manually but for me this is a much better method since it's airhead-proof (like I tend to be
)
Step 8: Select the option to make your USB the "active" or target drive.
Step 9: Exit the install script by using the "Exit" (I think it's #20 on the list).
Step 10: Open the USB drive and go into the Extra folder. Copy my Extensions folder,
the two plist files, the DSDT, and the Extensions.mkext. For good measure, drag and drop the Extensions folder over kext utility. So you should see your two plists, the Extensions folder, your DSDT, and the extensions.mkext. When you enter the USB drive you probably won't see the boot file since it should be hidden. You'll likely only see the Extra file.
Step 11: Eject your boot USB and put it aside for later.
Part II: Retail disk restored to 8 gig USB with 10.6.2 kernel.
1) Get your retail disk and insert it in your Superdrive. You'll be restoring (not installing) your Snow Leopard disk to a separate USB. You'll need at least 8 gigs of space for this. Be sure to restore it at the slowest speed of 1X write. You can also do this with Toast Titanium.
2) Now you'll need to "Show Hidden Files" using either the Show/Hide tool or any other methods you might know of with the SL USB drive (not the boot drive that you created earlier) still attached and active on your desktop. You'll now delete the 10.6.0 mach_kernel in the USB and replace it with the 10.6.2 kernel.
3) Hide your files again using the Show/Hide tool and you are done with preparation.
Part III: Installation to your main hard drive
1) Boot into your bios with only your boot USB connected.
2) Configure your bios to see only the USB as your sole boot drive and also the first hard drive on your list of active drives. My memory is blanking but you should be able to disable your installation drive and show only your USB drive active in the boot drives subdirectory. You should see your other hard drive in the AHCI configuration portion. Since we aren't using it, unplug the DVD burner from both the power supply and the SATA or IDE port. Be sure your target installation drive is plugged into the first SATA port. It's either Port 0 or Port 1. No other drives should be plugged in for now.
3) Plug in your 8 gig USB and then Save and Exit.
4) The system will reboot and you should now see your USB and the Snow Leopard Install disk in the menu. Scroll down to Verbose and then begin the boot process. Keep a note of any error messages that you may encounter along the way.
If all goes well you should be able to install with zero installation errors. Keep an eye on the installation log while installing.
You should now be in Snow Leopard. Once you inspect your system initially, eject your 8 gig drive, reboot, go into bios and enable your newly installed drive as the #2 hard drive behind the USB that remains first.. But the USB should be listed as the only boot drive. This is important since the installation drive doesn't (or shouldn't) have any boot files and you wouldn't want to boot from it anyway. Now you can enable your LAN and Audio. If LAN works natively cool but if not the kext for that is available. Audio will be the next task and I'll help you with that once you get the system up and running.
EDIT: The smbios and boot plists are installed where they are supposed to be by the script - see above that you don't need to manually move those two files. Also once you've booted to desktop, immediately install a 10.6.2 combo update and reboot normally as outlined earlier. Now you can proceed to enabling everything.
EDIT 2: I revised step 6 should there be problems identifying the external USB.
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