Friday, December 19, 2008

Intrepid Leopard XP on My MSI Wind, Part 2 (Dec 20 08)

This is the second installment of my account to install Windows XP (SP3), Ubuntu 8.10, and Mac OS X 86 Leopard 10.5.4 on my brand new MSI Wind U100x, so that this UMPC triple boots to any of the three OSs.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that PC Corner created a 30GB primary partition and installed the default (legally licensed) Windows XP there.

When I got home, I prepared a USB installer for Ubuntu 8.10.  I already have an iso image of Ubuntu 8.10 upgraded with the latest packages, plus development packages of my choice,which include gcc, g++, perl, mysql, etc.  This iso image is available for download from

http://curry.ateneo.net/~ambo/yebuntu.html


On my desktop at home, I created the Ubuntu USB thumbdrive installer from the Yebuntu iso image, using the Unetbootin utility, available for download from:

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

I then booted the MSI Wind using this Ubuntu USB installer.  I created a 30GB primary partition that I reserved for Leopard, a 30GB primary partition for Ubuntu, and the rest of the 160GB I created into logical partitions for Linux swap (4GB swap for my 2GB real memory) and Linux /home.  The installation of Ubuntu proceeded without problems, and the default grub bootloader was installed in the boot sector of /dev/sda.  I then made some desktop reconfiguring to allow me to conveniently use the 1024x600 screen, as mentioned in my previous post.

Next comes the magical moment: the installation of Leopard on the MSI Wind.

First you must buy a license to use Leopard.  In the Philippines,you need to go to any of the Power Mac Centers to buy your license:

http://www.powermaccenter.com/contact.php

A single PC license will cost you a little over PHP7,000.00.  If you are a student or an educator, you can get an academic discount:

http://store.apple.com/ph-k12/product/MB576Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDAzOA&mco=MTYwMDcyMg

and the Leopard license will cost you only PHP6,690.00.  I wish, though, that Apple will sell the license to teachers at ten percent of a public school teacher's salary, or under PHP2,000.00, so that it becomes more affordable to teachers in the third world, like the Philippines. Software licenses should be priced like books, so that students and teachers have not only the freedom, but also the ability, to buy them.

So much for the advocacy.  Now for the hard work.

The original Leopard DVD will not install on the MSI Wind.  Use your favorite torrent program to download the file MSIWindosx86.iso, which is available from many torrent sites on the Net. The 3.5GB iso image took me around two days to download on my 384k SmartBro microwave link. Then you need to burn this file as a DVD image, using your DVD burner.

Now, the MSI Wind does not have a DVD drive, so you need to cable your external DVD drive to a USB port of the Wind. Place the MSIWindosx86 DVD in the DVD drive, and power up the Wind.  Press F11, and select the USB DVD drive as boot device. The Leopard installer will boot.  When you see the [Mac Installer] task bar appear, select [Utilities], and click on [Disk~Utility]. On the left frame, you will be shown the various partitions available for installing Leopard. In my case, the partitions are:

Partition1:  NTFS for WinXP
Partition2:  Linux (free)
Partition3:  Linux (containing Ubuntu)
etc

Now click on Partition2, and click on erase to format the partition.  In the drop-down menu, select the partition type [HFS extended, journaled].  Name the partition with some convenient name, like Leopard, and then click [erase]. Now exit the Disk Utility [click on the red button]. When you reach the final installation screen, click on [Customize], select [Patches], and uncheck the [Kernel] patches, since the kernel patches are for the AMD processor, and will not work with the Atom processor of the Wind. Exit the customize screen, and click on [Install]. The installation will take about 30 minutes or longer.  At the end of the installation, you will be asked to reboot the system. When the system reboots, uncable the DVD drive, and you will be booted into Ubuntu (my default choice, since I am using the grub bootloader).

While in Ubuntu, you need to fix the boot order. Go to /boot/grub, and edit the file menu.lst

cd /boot/grub
sudo gedit menu.lst

At the end of the file menu.lst add the following entries for Leopard:

title Mac OS X 86 Leopard (Darwin 10.5.4)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1


In the entry "rootnoverify (hd0,1)", the device (hd0,1) stands for /dev/sda2, where Leopard is installed.  Next look for the line with the entry

hiddenmenu

Comment out this line by preceding it with a sharp sign, so that it now looks like:

#hiddenmenu

Now save the file menu.lst, and reboot the system.  When the system reboots, you will be given a grub menu from which you can select which of the three operating systems to boot:
Windows XP, Ubuntu, or Leopard.

If you select Leopard, you will get an initial welcoming screen where you can enter your user data. After this, your Leopard system is ready to use. You will discover that the wireless card and the web camera do not work.

Just recently, Realtek Taiwan made available the Leopard driver for the RTL8187SE wireless adapter on the MSI Wind,you can download the driver from RapidShare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/171809218/Realtek_RTL8187SE_MacOS10.5_Driver_073_UI_1.6.2.zip

Now you can truly enjoy your MSI Wind Mac Mini Leopard 10.5.4!




Please get your legitimate Mac license, from the URLs that I mentioned above. Thanks.

1 comment:

bobbiescap said...

Hi Ambo, I stumbled on your website as I have a U100 that was giving me hassles with the webcam. It worked for a while under Karmic but I think a kernel upgrade has wiped the driver module.

I really liked your post on Leopard on the Wind and am going to try it. I will take your advice and purchase the licence.
Kind regards,
Roger Barnes
Australia