2

Author Topic: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?  (Read 8728 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« on: April 24, 2009, 01:40:26 PM »
Hi,

I'm quite familiar with Unix and Mac OS X, but not with all the hackintosh stuff.
Got myself an eeePC 1000HE because I need something cheap (not a disaster if someone spills a coffee over it when I sit in a cafe, or when the luggage gets lost) that can run without AC power for 6h+, and that's good enough for e-mail, web, and iApps.

I have a 160GB drive that came with the machine, and it has an XP install on it, which I want to keep as is as a backup.

I further have an empty 500GB 2.5" drive that I want to use for OS X, plus potentially a small XP partition (VW car maintenance manual is a Win-only app).

Traditional retail installations seem to have issues with the eeePC 1000HE. Are these history with the new boot loader, or do I still have to use iDeneb 1.3 plus upgrade to 10.5.6 afterwards, as the only description of a successful OS X install on the 1000HE I could find suggests? (http://eeemac.blogspot.com/2009/03/install-os-x-on-eee-pc-900a-901-1000.html then look for Norm's comments)

Also, 1000HE specific issues aside, what's the procedure to create an Chameleon 2.0 based retail install?
How to install two OS?

In essence, I'm not clear as to
a) the sequence of partitioning, installing which OS, installing of the boot loader
b) if chameleon by itself patches issues with retail installations of OS X, or if the OS needs to be patched separately
c) what needs to be on the EFI partition, and which parts thereof Chameleon installs, and which I have to take care of myself.

Hey, I said I was a noob ;)

I should just add: I can install/prep the disk on an intel Mac, and then just toss it into the eeePC 1000HE, there's no need from my side to do it all on the PC. So if doing most/all of the disk prep on a Mac makes things simpler, I'm all for it...
« Last Edit: April 24, 2009, 02:01:23 PM by rcfa »

n1ght28

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 4
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2009, 08:46:14 PM »
Foolish human hahaha,

only joking,

From one noob to another, its the easiest thing i ever did once i figured it out after two weeks of installing os's and formating pen drives,

I've got a triple boot 1000he going using these easy easy steps,

1) use the guide that this norm chap you speak of was obviously talking about to install OSX http://smallcomputing.net/2009/02/25/how-to-install-os-x-on-asus-eee-pc-1000he-netbook/

but instead of making the one partion with the disk utility make how ever many you need, i have a setup of this,
i)OSX partition 20gb
ii)xp partion 20gb
iii)easy peasy (linux) 20gb
iv)swap for linx 2.9 gb they say it should be twice your ram but i'm 1gb ram soon to upgrade to 2gb and i couldn't handle the pressure so i flipped out and went with 2.9,
v)the rest is just fat32 where i keep all my music documents and the like (osx can read ntsf but i'm lazy and disk utility can only format fat32 or osx formats,

2)so you have installed osx in the first partition now install any other os's starting with a windows one (vista or xp) i love cut down versions of xp and hate vista so xp it was,
the a linux os if your going down that road, and make sure you install GRUB (the linux bootloader on the linux partition) dont worry this is easy there is a options or advanced button right beside the last "install" button, which is nice,

3) use boot-123 to boot into osx and then just install the chameleon 2.0 package and your done, take out the boot-123 disk and pee dowwn your leg with happiness,

hope this helps,

n1ght28

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 4
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2009, 08:50:17 PM »
forgot to say if your doing this all without a external dvd drive use these,

http://www.msfn.org/board/install-USB-WinSetupF-t120444.html

for xp

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

for linux (make sure you format the pen drive before using this one and the osx one, the xp one has a formating tool in it, its called hp something something)

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=110388

for OSX,

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2009, 10:03:21 PM »
Thanks for the answers. Since I posted my question I got quite a bit further, same trial and error method you referred to ;)

Anyway, what I have now is this:
3 partitions on a 500GB drive:
- EFI reformatted to HFS+ with Chameleon 2.0RC1 on it  => ~200MB
- Mac OS X with iDeneb 1.3 install upgraded to 10.5.6 and most things working (ethernet, web cam, sleep, screen resolution, but not WiFi (although after I put the WiFi card from my AppleTV in, it works, of course) and not sound (yet)) => ~410GB
- another HFS+ partition of precisely 64GB in size. I use this to store installers, etc. while I'm at risk having to re-install Mac OS X from scratch. Eventually I will dd the 64GB partition from the original 160GB drive (I shrank the XP partition down to precisely 64 GB before), and hopefully Chameleon will then recognize that as a bootable XP partition, but time will tell. Windows is the lowest of my priorities.

In other words, my system is workable, but it's not "clean", which means I would like to have a vanilla install on the OSX partition and any required driver mods, etc. on the reformatted EFI partition, such that I can upgrade the system safely and don't have to wait for some hacked up upgrade package to show up (or not).

To test vanilla bootability i dittoed an original Mac OS X 10.5.6 install DVD onto the 64GB partition. That works because ditto won't delete other files/folders unless there's a collision, so all my hacking tools I have in a separate folder. Chameleon also lets me boot from this partition now, but unfortunately the boot won't complete successfully.

In other words, I need more/different stuff in my Extras/Extensions folder on the EFI partition. Hopefully it's just a matter of time until I figure out what, because once I can safely boot that DVD disk copied to a partition, I should also be able to boot a regular install. Once the former works I can do an archive&install of the vanilla OS onto the iDeneb partition, and if all works, I can delete the "Previous Systems" folder and have a full vanilla install.

Hopefully that will happen sometimes soon, because I rather use computers than hack them ;)

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2009, 11:01:36 AM »
First the good news: I have a Mac OS X retail install on my EeePC 1000HE, booting with Chameleon 2.0RC1 from an HFS+ reformatted EFI partition on a GUID partitioned disk drive.
I had to hack some extensions to put in the EFI partitions's Extra/Extensions folder such that they override the extensions in /System/Library/Extensions. This was sufficient to get the system to boot.

To get proper screen display and BT that can be turned on/off unfortunately overriding from the EFI partition didn't seem to work, so there are three extensions that need to be replaced on the root partition. The good thing is, even if these get replaced by an OS update, the system likely will still boot, just at a lower screen res, but that's good enough to put the required kext's back into place.

Other than that, there are of course a bunch of extra kexts required, but since these don't overwrite/replace Apple kexts, that's not any worse than any number of third party driver kexts that one might install on a real Mac.
So the total extent of hacking the original install currently is replacing three kexts that are not essential for booting the system.

Now the bad news. After some trials and tribulations I also have now a WinXP partition on this drive. I can access it from Mac OS X (even read/write thanks to the Paragon NTFS driver I have installed on my system).
I even get it to start to boot, just enough that the WinXP boot screen flashes for a second, and then I'm back at the BIOS, and then Chameleon.

If my intuition is correct, WinXP has trouble with the GUID partition scheme. So, NOW WHAT???

If anyone has an idea on how to convince WinXP to boot from a GUID partition, such that I can dual boot my EeePC 1000HE, I'd be golden, and could then start documenting what I did to get this all working.

pootify

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 4
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #5 on: May 05, 2009, 11:23:28 AM »
Hey rcfa, great work! I'd love to see the step by step for how you got where you are right now, for the vanilla install. Is it anything more complicated than: Connect 1000HE drive via USB, Run Chameleon RC1 installer, Install Retail DVD, Copy over kexts and boot?

As for your XP question, check out this thread:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=133507

It appears that the dual booting might work if you delete your "data" partition, so that the XP partition is third, due to some Microsoft boot code quirk. Give it a try!

Also note that you're technically not booting off a GUID partition, since when you use Apple Disk Utility to partition a drive as "GUID", it actually makes a hybrid GUID/MBR drive.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2009, 11:30:12 AM by pootify »

monkey

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 2
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #6 on: May 05, 2009, 02:42:55 PM »
Hey RCFA,

I am very interested to know exactly which kexts you needed to overwrite to get the vanilla install working.
I have tried myself with no luck. Is it the ACPI APCI ones?
great to hear a success story.

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #7 on: May 05, 2009, 11:56:33 PM »
Thanks for the various pointers, I'll check them out.

I hope I'll find the time to write it all up in the next few days or so. There are still a few refinements I'm testing, and I have a pile of "real" work to do, too.

Once I'm done, I'll upload the required stuff, or if there's a site where I can upload the boot-132 iso image, plus a dmg with the post-install mods, that would make things easier. Not sure these fit in the 8MB limit for file uploads allowed here.

pootify

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 4
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2009, 04:18:02 AM »
hit me up if you end up needing more webspace, but mediafire and zshare should take care of most of your needs. also, i think i've found a way to make the 1000he stock wireless card work!
« Last Edit: May 07, 2009, 03:32:58 AM by pootify »

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2009, 08:06:23 AM »
Quote
hit me up at pootify AT gmail DOT com if you end up needing more webspace, but mediafire and zshare should take care of most of your needs. also, i think i've found a way to make the 1000he stock wireless card work!

Don't mediafire et al. require sign up, etc.? Don't feel like doing that. I could probably host it on mobileMe, but I'm not sure what Apple's stance is on me hosting Mac OS X hacking related things on their servers ;)

Anyway, very interesting about the stock wireless card, that's the only thing I don't have working. I ripped a WiFi card out of an AppleTV, and stuck it into the Eee. The advantage of this is, it is recognized as an airport card, so all the built-in WiFi support just works, while some other stuff requires extra tools to do the config, etc. so I'm not sure how well it plays e.g. with Locations, etc. But please let me know what you did. Maybe we can combine it all into a generic 1000HE setup.

Ronald

Now if only someone (Apple) were to make a netbook with a 1280x768 screen, Atom 330-like CPU and an ION GPU, and a transreflexive screen, an ExpressCard slot, and about 6h of real-world operation. That would be the ultimate road-warrior, traveler's or out-doors persons laptop.
I don't care about more than the 10.5" screen size or ultra-thin. All of the above would well fit into the same footprint we're already familiar with.

pootify

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 4
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #10 on: May 07, 2009, 05:51:59 AM »
rcfa, as soon as you post your method so that I can get my 1000HE to boot a retail install, I'd be happy to test out my method for the stock wireless card and post it :)

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2009, 09:12:43 AM »
If you don't mind getting a few MB worth of attachments, I can e-mail you what I got, and then maybe if your native WiFi thing works, we can put together a definitive 1000HE native-install-how-to-page.

I just wish Apple would finally ship 10.5.7, so we could test against that, too...

pootify

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 4
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2009, 02:34:34 PM »
sure dude, send em over to pootify at gmail dot com. is this all the kexts that go inside /Extras/Extensions on the EFI partition?

rcfa

  • Member
  • Posts: 47
Re: noob Guide? eeePC 1000HE?
« Reply #13 on: May 21, 2009, 08:42:57 AM »
Quick status report: just about everything works now, including XP boot and running XP from the boot camp partition with VMWare Fusion. Somehow the disk image I had cloned was corrupt, that install in the mean time doesn't even work properly on the original disk. I wonder if that hard drive is hosed or what. Anyway, installing XP from scratch onto that partition worked just fine (well, as fine as anything works with Windows, I had to twice call up MS to get things activated, because between installing Boot Camp drivers, and starting things up in Fusion, Windows thought I had moved the install between different computers multiple times and gave me the activation finger. So annoying, particularly when you work with a legitimate XP license. Grrr....

Further discussion of the EeeMac 1000HE is likely best carried out over here:

http://smallcomputing.net/forums/index.php/board,5.0.html

I hope some of the people who have been provided with the required materials will have time to write up a good how-to guide; I won't have the time to do this anytime soon.

Only open issues right now circle around sound (line/mic input levels can't be controled through CoreAudio and Mac OS X standard controls), power management (fan control, GUI of GenericCPUPMControl), and hibernation (image written, but even with ForceWake=y it's not restored), and the lack of dedicated Elan Tackpad driver.
For the super picky, I guess drivers for the Fn keys would require some sort of hooks into the BIOS. otherwise all is peachy.
What also would be nice would be patched video drivers that are based on more recent Apple releases, because as time goes on, the chance goes up that they will become so old that due to dependencies they can't be loaded anymore. Of course, ideally, Apple would get it right at some point and just recognize the supported devices more universally.