This week a wanted to share a project that I started playing with a few months ago, and am planning on re-visiting soon – Installing OS X on my Acer Aspire One Netbook. I got this little Netbook almost a year ago now, and have enjoyed it ever since. I Love it, and I now carry this little marvel around with me everywhere I go. It's great for work too. Now I can check email or remote into my server from anywhere without having to carry around a, now giant, 15 inch, six pound laptop.This Netbook came preloaded with Windows XP Home... BORING! It lasted almost week. I soon had XP Pro and the latest release of Ubuntu dual booting. I was surprised how fast this little laptop ran. It's truly amazing.
I have seen a lot about getting OS X installed on Netbooks on the Internet lately. It seems that they actually run really well. I thought this might be an awesome project to try. Also, there's one thing that you need to know about me. I have a HUGE crush on OS X. I think it's beautiful, and have made every computer I use look as much like OS X as I can. (Mac4Lin on Linux, Flyakiteosx for Windows)
So as usual, I consulted Google and soon found www.aspireoneuser.com. This site has all kinds of information on my particular brand of Netbook, and also has forums and guides containing instructions on installing this forbidden OS on to non-apple hardware.
What doesn't work
There were a few issues, and this was not a perfect install. Firstly, the wireless networking was not going to work. Many have tried, and all have failed to find a way to get the native (Atheros) wifi card to work with OS X. If I wanted to have wifi working, I was going to have to replace it with an OS X friendly one. Luckily finding a wifi card that would work was easy. Apparently the Dell DW 1390 and 1490 cards work without any additional drivers or setup. All I had to do was remove the old card and install the new one.
Secondly, there is no working suspend functionality for this hackintosh. Suspending this computer will drop the OS into a grey screen of death, requiring a reboot and a permission repair, just to keep things running smoothly.
Also, at that time, you could not run a native Apple update without killing the OS and leaving you with a Kernel Panic.
At this point, I can live without suspend and apple updates if everything else still worked. So the project was still a go. I just needed to order a new wifi card and install OS X.
Prepping for Surgery
Now, normally I would have no issue removing and installing a new network card, however, I've always been afraid to muck around in a laptop. I could easily swap out RAM or a Hard Drive, but beyond that was more than I have been willing to do, until now. My fear is not really in the taking apart, per-say, but in the ART of reassembly. These systems are all proprietary and the screws are CRAZY tiny! To make matters worse, this was a Netbook. It weighs in at about two pounds and is half the size of a regular laptop.
I love the Internet. I say this almost everyday, and it's still true. I found several YouTube videos detailing exactly how to open up and replace the existing wifi card.
I was also able to find used Dell DW 1390 card on Ebay for $12. In a week it arrived and I was sitting, prepped for surgery, next to my half gutted Netbook.
It was actually quite painless and in about 30 minutes, it was installed and working in XP.
Now, I had also ordered a one gig so-dimm to upgrade the RAM in my Netbook to 1.5 gigs. I thought that I would do this while I had my Aspire One opened up. However the process required to upgrade the RAM was far more involved than the wifi surgery had been.
Even with How-To videos, I didn't feel comfortable taking the entire computer apart. Really, who designs a RAM slot under the motherboard and requires you to remove the keyboard, track-pad, outer plastic casing, heat-shield, display cabling, hard drive, Wifi Card, a daughter-board, and the freaking motherboard just to access the RAM slot!!! CRAZY!!!
Installing OS X
Once the surgery was done, I was ready to start the install. I have a Mac Mini, and I do have a copy of OS X Leopard that I would love to just install straight onto my Netbook. But Apple just won't let that happen. So I had to resort to “Finding” a copy that had been patched to work on a regular PC.
I choose the iAtkos distribution of OS X to install, mostly because there was a list of after install tweaks listed on the Aspire One User Forum for this particular install.
The install went smoothly and there were no issues. I went through the list of tweaks and I could boot and run my new OS X system perfectly. Even the Web-cam worked right out of the box. I have to admit that not being able to just close up my Netbook and have it suspend was more of a nuisance than I thought it would be.
In Conclusion
I kept OS X installed for about a month. I usually change the OS after a month or so on this Netbook. There are so many new and exciting OS flavors to try that I can't just pick one and leave it. I can't wait to tell you how well Windows 7 works! But that's for another time.
Related Links
Aspire One User
www.aspireoneuser.com
Aspire One Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One
iAtkos Site
http://iatkos.wikidot.com/
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