Hi Guys, N00bie has a couple of questions.

[bobg2008]

Hi All,

 

Firstly I want to say. Great Forum!... A wealth of information in here.

 

I've been looking to purchase a macbook pro, but unfortunately its out of my financial reach at this moment. However I have a laptop a mate sold me a few months back cheap. I was talking to him about buying a mac and he mentioned how he had had osx installed on the laptop he sold me... I've since installed windows 7. Now I wish to install Snow Leopard and dual boot it with Windows 7.

 

I have the Snow Leopard retail DVD and my laptop is the following spec. Note I'm going to buy a 500gig harddrive for this project.

 

core 2 duo 2ghz 7300 ( SEE2 and SEE3) supported I believe

4 gig or ram

currently a 160 gig drive ( running windows 7).

 

My mate said everything worked except the wireless card which is an Intel 4965AGN.

But I'm thinking I can replace that for cheap?

 

Now I have had a look at the osx86 wiki and there is a good article on triple booting win/osx/ubuntu and using grub as the bootloader. But I was hoping to just dualboot with osx and win7.

 

I've done a little reading but I'm kind of lost and was hoping someone could be kind enough to help me?

 

I'm thinking I can

 

1)install windows first and allocated a certain amount of space for windows 7

2) run EasyBCD and create a macosx boot partition called snow leopard

3) Now this is where I get lost.... should I then boot off something like [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] or nawcoms bootcd? and then it will see the unallocated space on the HD? and allow me to install snow leopard as well?

 

I know I'm probably wrong... any help is very much appreciated.

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Bobg.

[3.14r2]

A friend of yours could possibly consult you on the subject as he has had an OS X installed...

 

1) It is recommended to install Windows to the first partition on the disk

2) a) You may call it whatever you want b ) EBCD is not the only one solution (Gparted LIve CD is another one) c) If you want to avoid a system partition creation (Windows7 creates one by default), partition the disk with the above CD tools PRIOR TO INSTALLING ANY OS.

3) In theory it should be so. Such disks are used to install from a retail OS X DVD. Any distro disk, doesn't need the above procedure - it just runs by itself.

My mate said everything worked except the wireless card which is an Intel 4965AGN.

But I'm thinking I can replace that for cheap?

You can find a used one for really cheap.

[bobg2008]

Hi 3.14r2,

 

Many thanks for your reply and advice. Yeah I asked my mate about it already. He had installed a distro he downloaded somewhere and wasn't dual booting. I went and p[urchased snow leopard which I was happy to do. I guess my questions were more about dual booting it.

 

I found this link aswell. Which although for a different laptop I think might just work.

 

http://kylesinterestingstuff.blogspot.com/...ow-leopard.html

 

In regards to the wireless card. I was going to get one of these.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/New-802-11-n-mini-P...=item19c0af07eb

 

From what I've read it 'should' work. However my existing card has 3 antenna cables connected to it ( white,grey and black) but from the pictures on the listing it looks like it might only have 2 connection.... any idea's?

 

Thanks for you advice.

[3.14r2]

However my existing card has 3 antenna cables connected to it ( white,grey and black) but from the pictures on the listing it looks like it might only have 2 connection.... any idea's?

In my not-yet-working HP notebook there are two wires Gray and Black. The card is A/B/G. Gray was connected to AUX (auxiliary antenna) and Black one to MAIN (main antenna)...

So basically a longer wire should be connected to MAIN, an shorter to AUX accordingly. In the end it is only an antenna - no power goes through it. Nothing terrible would happen if you miss connect them.

If a signal is low, then swap them. You should take a note of how it is connected now (which is AUX and MAIN) and connect them accordingly to a new(replacement) card. The problem apparently is that the stock card is A/B/G/N then the replacement is A/G/N.

I found this link aswell. Which although for a different laptop I think might just work.

It does in many cases...

[bobg2008]

Hi, Thanks again.

 

In my not-yet-working HP notebook there are two wires Gray and Black. The card is A/B/G. Gray was connected to AUX (auxiliary antenna) and Black one to MAIN (main antenna)...

So basically a longer wire should be connected to MAIN, an shorter to AUX accordingly. In the end it is only an antenna - no power goes through it. Nothing terrible would happen if you miss connect them.

If a signal is low, then swap them. You should take a note of how it is connected now (which is AUX and MAIN) and connect them accordingly to a new(replacement) card. The problem apparently is that the stock card is A/B/G/N then the replacement is A/G/N.

It does in many cases...

 

I'm not really able to tell which one is longer unless I take apart the laptop completely. I guess I could just use the grey and black as you have suggested. I'll probably have to do some more research.. Are you able to reccommend any wireless mni pci-e cards which work with 3 antenna's?

 

 

cheers.

[3.14r2]

Are you able to reccommend any wireless mni pci-e cards which work with 3 antenna's?

Honestly no. There is a list of compatible cards. Don't know which one has 3 connectors though.

[dothacker]

the wireless N cards has 3 connectors, Wireless A/B/G has 2. you can use either or, just as long as the chips on the wireless cards are supported by Mac OS X.

 

like for example, the Dell 1390 mini-pcie wireless cards have 2 connectors (black and white). And the Intel 3945 has 3 connectors (black, white and grey)

 

be warned though, the 3945 is not really working on Mac os x so stick with 1390 / 1490 which has 2 cables, that's all u need anyways.