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Dell Inspiron Mini 9 ?

jns_mt

By jns_mt,
in OSx86 10.5 (Leopard)

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Type11
Type11
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My DVD reader gives that error as well a couple times and then boots. Any chances you have another drive to try?

 

Just a note for dual boot once you get the chameleon (efe) laoder on if you want to change boot disks from the default loader screen (which only shows main disks partitons) hit ESC and you can choose another disk like 81. I boot linux this way

 

Nice work darkten. Now we have EFI partiton and non-efi partition Boot123 working with retail disc, awesome! Now sleep and that card reader ;-)

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Equaliser
Equaliser
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Right, I have it nearly all working by following Darkten's instructions. No sound though. I tried installing the sound package twice to no avail. The only other issue/quirk is when I reboot I have to hit enter to load up OS X through the bootloader, is this normal?

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Type11
Type11
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You can change this in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist if you use the efi partition you put it on /Volumes/EFI/com.apple.Boot.plist so it will not get deleted.

 

add

<key>Quiet Boot</key>

<string>Yes</string>

 

To set Darwin to boot from a particular partition:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>rd=diskXsY</string>

 

for the internal drive this is

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>rd=disk0s2</string>

 

to get the darwin menu back you can hit ctrl when the machine boots

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Equaliser
Equaliser
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Got sound working after installing 10.5.5 combo updater. When rebooting it stuck a few times but by putting -f in the boot prompt all seems well again. Thanks once again guys, you have really pulled out all the stops on this one, it really is a quality release.

 

To anyone who is thinking about this - just do it! The speed of the Mini is amazing, it's much faster than my iBook G4 1.2GHz and really snappy. I ran Monolingual after updating all the apps to remove unwanted languages and the PowerPC binaries. I now have used 8.22GB with 5.81GB free. I also used the non-journalling file system when formatting the SSD. Every little helps!

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aerolith
aerolith
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My hope, is that when the Linux version of the Mini9 finally ships, it comes with an open source driver for the JMicron SD slot. If that's the case, it's possible someone will be able to port that driver to OSX.. That, or I hope the Linux version comes with a completely different SD slot.. ;) One that DOES work in OSX.. :) But I find that even less likely.. :)

 

i'm pretty sure it works on stock ubuntu from my cursory googling so theoretically its out there.

 

i realize suspend is the larger issue here, but i figured i'd try to chip in what little i can.

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darkten
darkten
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Can some that has ALREADY used this method successfully note which things work, and which do not, for instance sleep, All usb ports, SD card reader, Video out, wifi, ichat, sound, headphone port, etc...

 

 

Heh.

 

We seem to keep going over this, so...

 

Here is what DOES NOT work, with a bit of detail:

 

1. Card Reader: Just isn't there; doesn't work. Not seen by OS X in any way, no driver.

Apple hardware doesn't have built in card readers. Never even missed it.

 

2. Wake from sleep from SSD: Upon waking from sleep, the SSD doesn't seem to turn back on, causing the system to hang.

 

As far as I know and have tested, these are the things that do not work. I don't know about video out as I have no external display.

 

Everything else you mentioned up there works. As far as the audio out, on the Mini 9 the speakers and the headphone jack are discreet outputs; both work.

 

-D10

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darkten
darkten
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I also used the non-journalling file system when formatting the SSD. Every little helps!

 

I do NOT recommend this! The journaling on Mac OS X HFS+ does not work like it does on other OSs/filesystems; it isn't a wasteful mess like say, Reiser is. It is very lightweight and tuned to specific aspects of HFS Btrees and file recovery. You do NOT want your machine to KP w/o the journal; it takes *forever* to fix the old way and you *will* lose files.

 

 

 

 

I found this package; it is very useful to us. I checked it out; it is safe. I believe it comes from a "build your own distro" kit.

 

It strips the PPC code from your system in places most UI apps don't; the *nix directories are full of ppc code we won't be using ;)

 

On my system, with 10.5.5 installed and some other {censored}, I have ~ 7GB of drive space free on my 16GB SSD.

 

Highly recommend this.

 

StripPPC.pkg.zip

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Equaliser
Equaliser
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I do NOT recommend this! The journaling on Mac OS X HFS+ does not work like it does on other OSs/filesystems; it isn't a wasteful mess like say, Reiser is. It is very lightweight and tuned to specific aspects of HFS Btrees and file recovery. You do NOT want your machine to KP w/o the journal; it takes *forever* to fix the old way and you *will* lose files.

 

Thanks Darkten, I'm getting kernel panics everytime I shutdown now, seems to have started since I repaired disk permissions. Also, in About this Mac my processor is now shown as 'unknown'. Can I run the installer package again to try and repair whatever is broken?

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swarmster
swarmster
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Hi all,

 

I just wanted to thank everyone for all their time and effort getting this working and explaining to the rest of us how to get it working. I'm amazed at the speed and organization shown in this thread. I'm currently waiting for my new external DVD drive to arrive so I can try it myself! Hopefully the Ubuntu release provides some driver-related help for sleep mode.

 

I have one concern, however, and I was wondering if anyone else can address it:

 

When installing Leopard on a Mac, the install process asks you to choose a destination drive. For a clean install, it claims you need 11.4GB free space. After selecting a HDD you can customize the install, easily reducing this footprint to under 6GB just by deselecting stuff you never use (I know because I've done it before).

 

But what if you have a small HDD, for example the 8GB Mini 9? That's plenty of space to run Leopard after you customize the install, but will the install allow you to pass that first page without 11.4GB free? Will it seriously refuse to install just because you don't have enough room for printer drivers you're about to deselect? Or does it say 'not enough room, you'll have to customize your install on the next page' like it should?

 

I've read about ways to cut down the retail image, making the install disc smaller, but I'd rather not have to do that. Tiger might be another option, because I'm pretty sure it was much smaller "by default". If the installer is as dumb as I fear, will the hack developed in this thread also work with Tiger discs?

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dirty6
dirty6
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Greetings all, and thanks for this wealth of work for others to tap into.

 

I also have been lurking the last couple days hoping this might *get there,* all the while trying to figure out how to sell some stuff to afford a mini9.

 

Sleep and SD are not game-breakers for me, I'd be alright at this point if those didn't work. I'm hearing that the OSX desktop boots in 20-30 seconds, and I can handle simply shutting down and rebooting this thing whenever I need to with a boot time like that...so much better than my Vaio on XP (2min14seconds).

 

What IS a deal-breaker for me...

 

I would truly appreciate feedback from someone who has this up and running on the video-out performance. I work on my laptop in an office all day, hooked up to a monitor and a USB KVM. If I used the 9 inch screen on the mini all day instead of the 22 inch monitor on my desk, I just might go crazy (and blind). Is this OSX install working on an external monitor? And what kind of resolution can I anticipate from it? It has a GMA950, which is the same as my VAIO, so I'm making the assumption that this little guy can drive my 22 inch monitor at 1440x900...But before I drop the dough on this (and sell my VAIO), I want to be sure I'm not condeming myself to working on a 9 inch screen all day long every day....

 

Thanks for your feedback.

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darkten
darkten
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Hi all,

 

I just wanted to thank everyone for all their time and effort getting this working and explaining to the rest of us how to get it working. I'm amazed at the speed and organization shown in this thread. I'm currently waiting for my new external DVD drive to arrive so I can try it myself! Hopefully the Ubuntu release provides some driver-related help for sleep mode.

 

I have one concern, however, and I was wondering if anyone else can address it:

 

When installing Leopard on a Mac, the install process asks you to choose a destination drive. For a clean install, it claims you need 11.4GB free space. After selecting a HDD you can customize the install, easily reducing this footprint to under 6GB just by deselecting stuff you never use (I know because I've done it before).

 

 

It is a simple matter of clicking on Customize before you install.

 

Turn off everything but the Essential System package...which you can't turn off, anyway.

 

After you install, you can use the StripPPC.pkg to lighten the system quite a bit. If you have $12, I suggest XSlimmer to complete the job. There is "free" stuff out there of course, but XSlimmer has not only a nice UI, but nice features for control if you want them, and a continually updated "blacklist" of apps that shouldn't be slimmed.

 

-D10

 

What IS a deal-breaker for me...

 

I would truly appreciate feedback from someone who has this up and running on the video-out performance. I work on my laptop in an office all day, hooked up to a monitor and a USB KVM. If I used the 9 inch screen on the mini all day instead of the 22 inch monitor on my desk, I just might go crazy (and blind). Is this OSX install working on an external monitor? And what kind of resolution can I anticipate from it? It has a GMA950, which is the same as my VAIO, so I'm making the assumption that this little guy can drive my 22 inch monitor at 1440x900...But before I drop the dough on this (and sell my VAIO), I want to be sure I'm not condeming myself to working on a 9 inch screen all day long every day....

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

You might not believe this, but the display on the thing is really not that bad. I believe it is due t the way OS X renders. I know on a lot of small screens things look "squished" but on the mini 9 w/OS X this isn't the case...which is a blessing and a curse.

 

Not-so-well written OS X apps (I'm looking at YOU OSX86Tools and System Prefs) have a somewhat fixed vertical height; Apple doesn't make displays with less than 768 pixels of vertical, so it is a pain in the ass when stuff cuts off.

 

I wish there were a version of the old pre-Mac OS X system extension Stepping Out for OS X.

 

Perhaps some enterprising hacker will write a virtual resolution driver for os x for the 950 :unsure:

 

I really don't know about the video out, however...sorry :P We only have laptops and AIO's here where I am :D

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Type11
Type11
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I am a big xslimmer fan and the stripppc and it give a nice 1-2 punch

 

A note on journalling, it is no worry if you installed with it off it is easy to enable and disable on the fly do

 

sudo diskutil enableJournal /

disableJournal does what you think it does

 

On external monitor I can extend my desktop no problem to a 1680x1050 Dell "20. mirroring works fine at 1024 x 600 as well.

 

I am tinkering with a clamshell.kext which I think will let you shut the laptop and have it run of an external display like a macbook pro, stay tuned

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dirty6
dirty6
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Darkten: Thanks for the reply. I trust that the screen is great, but I used my 13.3 in VAIO (very nice screen) as primary monitor at my desk for a year and a half before I got fed up with it and added the external, so to go down to 8.9 inches would really cramp me up. But even my 13.3 in laptop is just a bit too big for a good 'couch' laptop on the weekends and carrying it around when I travel is a touch on the heavy side, so its that nice 8.9 in (usable) screen that I'm digging for more infrequent and shorter uses, like on the couch or in the airport.

 

Type11: That's just the news I needed to hear! My monitor doesn't have the rez that your Dell does, so I imagine I won't be having any problems. I will be interested to follow your progress on the clamshell kext b/c I usually have my laptop closed and on the external display in the office.

 

I shouldn't anticipate a problem with my KVM switch, should I? It is a USB driven switch designed to work cross-platform, so I'm anticipating that it will 'just work.'

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Type11
Type11
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mine is on a kvm if it makes you feel better ;-) right now if you close the lide the res goes haywire but I think I have a bead on it.

 

As far as kp on shutdown I still get it to but only on battery from looking at logs looks like it might have to do with audio which is strange

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Equaliser
Equaliser
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A note on journalling, it is no worry if you installed with it off it is easy to enable and disable on the fly

 

That is great Type11, I have now enabled journalling. As for the shutdown KPs, when I just shutdown a few mins ago the battery was at 10% and beeping - no kp?!?!?

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bfwdlah
bfwdlah
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This is a great forum and an even better thread. Great work.

 

I am wondering if someone could give me a high level outline of what I would need to do to properly install and boot into Windows XP off a USB drive (since I read you can't install both OS's on the SSD very easily) assuming I have OS X installed on the SSD.

 

Conversely, would any of the methods here work in reverse--i.e. install OS X to a USB stick and boot into that w/ XP on the SSD?

 

Thank you.

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darkten
darkten
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This is a great forum and an even better thread. Great work.

 

I am wondering if someone could give me a high level outline of what I would need to do to properly install and boot into Windows XP off a USB drive (since I read you can't install both OS's on the SSD very easily) assuming I have OS X installed on the SSD.

 

Conversely, would any of the methods here work in reverse--i.e. install OS X to a USB stick and boot into that w/ XP on the SSD?

 

Thank you.

 

 

I wouldn't be that guy.

 

I literally never booted the thing even once into xp.

 

:)

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darkten
darkten
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can anyone list the pros/cons of this thing vs the msi wind?

 

I wanted to get another one of these for my boy, but dell is um...slow, which has caused the ebay market to go beserk.

 

I live in a backwater (ok, relative, but) hole so the craigslist is lookin' kinda dry here too.

 

I can get an msi wind from amazon easy enough, but my understanding is that there is no wifi OOTB, and the audio io on the jacks don't work?

 

TIA :lol:

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