Sorry folks, some shipping of orders are running quite late. I've been ill lately, also the reason for a lack of updates.
I hope to be able to catch up with shipping this week.
Thank you for your patience.
-GReg
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Getting the most out of a 1024x600 screen Part 3: Screen Scaling
There are times that the window is just too small. Some applications need more space. Thank goodness for the scale factor in OS X.
There are several ways to do this.
1. The easiest is a small application by bmaltais.
Scale Resolution. It lets you scale the screen (menu bars and all) to 80% their normal size. This will give you a monitor that thinks it is 1280x750. This sets the scale globally for everything and all applications. It'll start the next time an application is loaded. It can mess up a few things in the top bar of windows, but usually I'm quite able to work around it. Just use this app to re-set back to 100% if you need to.
2. If there is a com. file for that application, you can set the resolution from the command linejust for that application.
the .75 is the scale %, restore it by changing that to a 1. Since you can't scale the SystemPreferences, this seemed like a good place to start. not every application has this file. This will not work with most applications.
There are several ways to do this.
1. The easiest is a small application by bmaltais.
Scale Resolution. It lets you scale the screen (menu bars and all) to 80% their normal size. This will give you a monitor that thinks it is 1280x750. This sets the scale globally for everything and all applications. It'll start the next time an application is loaded. It can mess up a few things in the top bar of windows, but usually I'm quite able to work around it. Just use this app to re-set back to 100% if you need to.
2. If there is a com. file for that application, you can set the resolution from the command linejust for that application.
defaults write com.apple.SystemPreferences AppleDisplayScaleFactor .75the .75 is the scale %, restore it by changing that to a 1. Since you can't scale the SystemPreferences, this seemed like a good place to start. not every application has this file. This will not work with most applications.
Getting the most out of a 1024x600 screen Part 2: Menu Bar
The menu bar is very user configurable. You can gain space here too with the limited screen size on these small computers.
Taking icons off the menu bar
Several icons are not that useful for your computer. You can take them off by pressing Command (alt) and click dragging the icon off the menu bar.
I get rid of the eject icon, and the time machine icon. If you have fast user switching selected, you can even get rid of that menu.
I leave the clock, that I set to only show the time, no am/pm or day
I leave bluetooth if you have it as hardware
I leave the battery monitor, but I just have it show the battery icon, not the time left or the %
You can't get rid of the speed step icon, but if you want, you can keep everything from speed step unchecked (in GenericCPUPMControl) So that only a check and a A in a circle show.
How to put these and other other Menu Applets back on the Menubar?
Go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras
Just double click on any of those items and they'll go live into the menu bar.
You can also re-arrange the order of these icons by holding down command (alt) and dragging them right and left).
There are several icons that load because of outside software and not because of the apple menu bar functions. These can't be dragged off.
Spotlight Icon: I have only found one way to easily remove the spotlight icon from the menu bar (I never use it, I always search from the top of any finder window) The application Onyx (54mb) does this and tons more. The option is located in Onyx under Parameters>Spotlight.
You may notice that I have a few extra icons in the image above. The left most one is DropBox I'll cover that in the part of this series about living in the cloud on a mac, the other is the status menu for my 3G internal modem I put in. Instructions for doing that are here.
Hiding the Menubar
You can gain more screen real estate (top to bottom) by setting the menu bar to hid like the Dock Hides. When you mouse to the top of the screen it'll come down. Best of all, you can set this function on an application by application basis, so you can do this only where you need to do this. OS X has this function built in, but there are no controls, so you need to download something that will allow you to set these functions.
PresentYourApps lets you do this and more.
This application lets you select from any open app the function of hiding your menbar for just that app, or if you want hiding the doc (if you don't hide it already) for that app. This gives you a lot of options to gain real estate on your screen.
Getting the most out of a 1024x600 screen Part 1: Dock Control.
This is the first of a series of posts on how to get the most from your limited screen space. Some of this is old hat for the long time mac user, but some of it I was glad and surprized to find when I was looking for solutions this past half year I've had my little eeeboot computer.
Apple never intended os x to run on the resolutions that most netbooks use. Those of you who have used it have discovered a few (very few) applications that either won't run due to the screen resolution or have bits of windows that fall off the screen. With some free tools I find I can get the most out of my little computer.
Configuring the look of the Dock.
The apple dock is a powerful tool, but with it's reflections, graphics, and location, it often is too big, and with the 3D effect it also takes processing power you just don't need to use. Here is what I do.
1. I use an either application called SuperDocker (7.2mb), or one called OnyX (52mb). (Onyx is much more powerful and I use it as well in part 2 of this post. In either case once you are don with your configuration you can delete either application to save space) This tool lets me configure the dock in ways apple just does not give you options for, but does internally support. I like this tool because besides the 2D control, it also gives you control over the dock being positioned to the left or right of the bottom of the screen. It has lots of other controls so look around it you try it. It has a nice restore button so if you don't like what you have, you can quickly go back to system defaults.
I like to Set the Dock Style to 2d, Align the dock to the left (this way it avoids the buttons on the lower right of a window) I Position on the bottom of the screen and I minimize it using Genie proportionally.
In Onyx the same configuration would look like this:
I then go to: Apple Menu> Dock Preferences in the Finder.
I set my doc size fairly small using the Size feature, I turn off magnification and I have it automatically show and hide the dock so I can use that real-estate for an application window. I like Opening Animations for applications, so I have that on too.
My Dock looks like this when I mouse down to the bottom of the screen.
It's tight and when hidden I can use the full width of the screen and if the dock pops up it does not interfere with my use of the lower right scroll arrows on a window.
Removing Items off the Dock.
You can just drag items off and on the dock to minimize the space the dock uses. You can drag any application, folder or commenly used document onto it as well. I keep my docments folder and my downloads folder on the dock. I got rid of things I don't use much or at all like mail, contacts, spaces and I added firefox. I like to keep my doc at a bare minimum. You can hide more on your doc by making a folder of application alias someone on your computer and putting the folder on the doc. It really saves room.
Removing hidden items that you need to run in the background off the Dock.
There are a few applications like the Speed Step Application (GenericCPUPMControl) that you want to hide from showing in the dock when it's running. For that an application called Dockless is perfect. Select the simple tab and just drag your application into this program, and it'll make the icon for that item not show up in the Dock.
Monday, March 23, 2009
So you already have OS X installed using the eeeboot system and you want to get ethernet working
It's easy to do this without a full re-install, so don't worry.
Ethernet Fix
1. Download the 1.11 version of the eeeboot cd image from here
2. Open the iso, and pull out the file EEE-Utilities.dmg. Get it onto your eee somehow (or just download the thing there in the first place).
3. Mount the EEE-Utilities.dmg file by double clicking on the icon.
4. Using the Kext Help in the Applications Folder in EEE-Utlities, install AttansicL1eEthernet.kext
5. Reboot and press F2 when it restarts to go to the bios set up.
6. In the bios set up turn on "Onboard Lan" in Advanced>Onboard Device Configuration. Save and reboot.
7. When it is rebooted again, re-mount the EEE-Utilities
8. Go to EEE-Utilities>Fixes>Dimming control wakeup and Ethernet
Double click on Ethernet & Fix Dim if things have changed.
Done.
Mirroring Fix
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>MirroringOff Double click on InstallMirror
Done.
Remote Mounting of CD's.
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>Remote CD-DVD Double click on DVDcdFix
Done.
There easy. For a full install of os x with everything, go to this post.
Ethernet Fix
1. Download the 1.11 version of the eeeboot cd image from here
2. Open the iso, and pull out the file EEE-Utilities.dmg. Get it onto your eee somehow (or just download the thing there in the first place).
3. Mount the EEE-Utilities.dmg file by double clicking on the icon.
4. Using the Kext Help in the Applications Folder in EEE-Utlities, install AttansicL1eEthernet.kext
5. Reboot and press F2 when it restarts to go to the bios set up.
6. In the bios set up turn on "Onboard Lan" in Advanced>Onboard Device Configuration. Save and reboot.
7. When it is rebooted again, re-mount the EEE-Utilities
8. Go to EEE-Utilities>Fixes>Dimming control wakeup and Ethernet
Double click on Ethernet & Fix Dim if things have changed.
Done.
Mirroring Fix
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>MirroringOff Double click on InstallMirror
Done.
Remote Mounting of CD's.
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>Remote CD-DVD Double click on DVDcdFix
Done.
There easy. For a full install of os x with everything, go to this post.
Install OS X on an EEE PC 900A, 901, 1000, 1000H, 1000HD (and possibly HE) Version 1.11 Now with working ethernet!
Update 3/26/08 EEE Boot Version 1.11
Keep in mind I'm upgrading this stuff very often, so please check your version to make sure you have the latest one. The current link will be in this post.
Updates: Working Ethernet, Video out, Remote Mounting of CDs/DVDs off your desktop mac or windows box. 1.10 had a few bugs I added, so 1.11 just fixes them. Sorry about that.
If you already have EEE Boot 1.09 installed, go to this post to just add the new "features"
Stability: It is clear that there may be a few issues with 1.11. If you have issues, 1.09 is stable, go to the other post about 1.09 for install instructions.
Ingredients:
Hardware:
Software
Upgrade Bios
If you don't have a 900A, 901, 1000, 1000H, 1000HD or the eee box 802, skip this step and look at my other post on upgrading the bios. From current reports if you have a 1000 HE, you don't need to do anything, the shipped bios works. (Let me know if this is not the case)
If you do have a 901 or 1000, boot the computer with the DVD drive connected and the EEEboot cd in it. Hold down Alt-F2 when booting. It will eventually boot to a bios upgrade screen that will automatically upgrade the bios at this point. When it tells you to reboot by pushing down the power button, follow it's instructions and Reboot.
Setting the Bios
Boot the computer and hold down the F2 key (no alt this time)
This will take you to the BIOS SETUP UTILITY.
These instructions are specifically for the 901 The 1000, 1000H and 1000HD have several less options in the bios set up. if you don't have an option, don't sweat it.
There are five tabs across the top, we will go from left to right.
Instructions on how to navigate this Setup Utility is on the right hand side of the screen.
Main (first tab)
Make sure the system time and date are correct.
Advanced
Don't do anything under this tab
Boot
We are going to do this one out of order
Exit
Take the time now to plug in and power up your USB DVD drive with your Boot-132 disk in it.
From the Bios menu, Select Exit & Save changes, give it an OK when you get the option to.
It will boot your computer again, and hopefully from the CD. You should see roughly the following (There will be a quick error that flashes on the screen, don't worry about it, it's looking for something that has not been loaded yet)
The boot loader has a bunch of .kexts loaded on it to load at this point that will allow the OS X install disk to work properly.
It will boot to a screen where you can enter options.
If you are not putting in an option, hit enter (and you won't).
It may give you a flash of an error here again, Don't worry about that. It's looking for a file you have not installed yet. You may get a few of these. It is asking here to choose what device to boot off. But first you need to eject the boot CD you made, and keep it handy. You will need it again.
Put in to your DVD drive your original OS X install disk as you bought from apple (you did buy it didn't you). The default option of EF will boot off your DVD rom.
When the apple DVD is in, hit enter. It will now boot, or get you to press F8 to enter Boot Commands.
It will now ask you to enter any boot commands. There are a few, but you should not need the last one this first time.
Most of these exist since pressing a key when booting (as you would do in on a traditional mac) does not work with the bootloaders we are using.
Heck, I've been recently telling people just to use it. It won't hurt anything, and it could save time. To repeat, in that prompt put:
"Graphics Mode"="800x600x32"
Don't forget the quotes.
If all goes well, you should get a gray apple logo with a spinning icon underneath and you will eventually get a screen like this. The time it takes depends a lot on the speed of your hard drive.
What? You don't see a screen like this. You get a message that says: "This software cannot be installed on this computer." Well it seems you don't have a retail OSX DVD, but instead one that came with a mac when it was purchased. This DVD won't work on anything but that computer. Sorry about that, go get a retail DVD and let Apple earn some money they deserve.
Are bits of the menu off the screen to the point it's hard to operate? I mean by this the top menu bar, you need to reboot, and enter the "Graphic Mode"x"800x600x32" option. Your computer is trying to work at a resolution larger than your screen. This will vary from model to model of the eee. Just scroll up a bit. Better instructions are back there.
Double click on the language you want to use.
When you get the option to select drives, you will see at least one, and possibly more (if you have a 4gb ssd with linux on it, it'll show up, but it'll have a red ! on it.
Go to the pull down menu Utilities, and select Disk Utility
In Disk Utility, select the drive (not he partition) you want to put OS X on. Select the partition tab as shown the the photo.
Things to do:
Select the top option, "GUID Partition Table" and hit OK. Then click on Apply
Click on the Partition option it gives you. This can take a little while, kick back for a while. When it's done, quit out of the Disk Utility by selecting quit from pull down menu under "File"
You are now back here. Click on the drive you want to install OS X on. It will show you a green arrow so you know it's selected. Now click on continue.
Now we are going to make this install smaller. This is critical to install onto a SSD, and will greatly speed up your install time. If you ever need what you did not install here again, you can easily install these options from the OSX install disk once you've got your system to boot.
Deselect everything you can. The printer driver selection is almost as big as the OS. If you have a printer, do open this up and just select the install option for the brand of printer you own. If you own a HP printer, don't do this, it'll install far too many drivers, just download the drivers from the HP site and install later. It'll take up less space if you do it this way.
Click done.
Click install.
It's going to start doing a consistency check on your DVD. This is not a bad idea the first time. It checks that the media is fine, and it checks if your drive is fine as well.
I 've clicked skip for this check every time after my first install from this media It takes too long. (and yes I've done a lot of these now).
It will take a while, (depending on the drive you have) to install. Don't trust the Time Remaining setting. It gets stuck from time to time, a quick wipe of the trackpad can fix that. The sleep function does not work yet. We'll fix that with later patches, it will keep the screen on but won't refresh it. A flick of the finger on the trackpad, or a key press will get it to refresh. Kick back get some coffee, when you return you'll have this on your screen:
Don't worry about this. The install did not fail, it just can't find the boot loader to tell it what drive to boot to on the next boot. This is not surprising, you have not installed the boot loader yet. Press the restart button and wait. This can take over a minute for the computer to restart, and when it does, it's going to try and boot off the OS install DVD, which it can't do. It'll boot to a black scree. At this point you will have to do a hard power off by pressing down on the power button until the blue light turns off. This can take a few seconds. When your computer is powered down, eject the OS X DVD and put in the 132-Boot CD again. I find that on my USB DVD drive, I can't eject at this point unless I unplug my DVD drive and re-plug it in from my computer. What happens on your computer? No idea.
Boot your computer off the boot loader CD, when you get to this screen:
You are going to use another setting. This screen lets you choose what device you will boot off. You now want to boot off your internal drive. If you set your bios settings correctly so that the boot drive is where you put OS X, you should enter "80" (no quotes) here and press enter.
You will have to press enter a 2nd time and your computer will boot from the hard drive.
If you have trouble booting with the 80 option, try 81, If 81 works, your bios is set wrong and it won't boot by itself until you fix it. You will need to go to the bios menu (f2 on boot up), go to the Boot tab, and in the 2nd option from the top, choose Hard Disk Drives. Swap the order of the two drives and you should be fine.
Click continue.
Select your keyboard
Don't try to transfer data using this screen. Select "DO not transfer my information now".
Click Continue and see what page comes up.
Now you get to see if you have the boot loop problem. It happens some times. It does not even seem to be the hardware, since I've had times it's happened and times it has not on the same hardware with the same install CD's.
If you click on continue and you go to either the screen requesting you to choose a network, or the screen asking for your name and address, you are ok and you should skip the next step, and finish doing what the computer asks for. You will eventually get to the desik top.
If you are in the loop you need to ...
Fix the registration loop
Once again, if your computer is NOT taking you back over and over again to the menu where you choose a language, skip this step. If not, you will need to restart you computer by holding down the power button for about 5 seconds. When it boots to your CD, type in 80 for the option for what drive to boot off, but on the next (and last) boot loader menu, boot with the -s option.
The computer will boot in a text only mode and drop you to a command line.
Type in the following command carefully.
it will ask you to type it in twice to make sure you typed it in correctly.
When your password is set type
reboot
Hit enter.
And your computer will re-boot to the CD. Boot to drive 80, and just hit enter for the boot options. Your computer will boot to a password screen.
Enter username: root and the password you picked. When you do it should take you to the desktop. At this point it is important to set up a non-root account.
Go to "settings" in the bottom Dock, the icon looks like gears in the recent versions of OS X, and click on it to load it. Click on Accounts in the screen that pops up. Click on the + button on the bottom left, create a new user, give yourself a password. Click on login options. Make sure your "Display Login Window" is set to list of users. You can if you want set up automatic login so that your new account is logged in when you boot without a password. This is up to you. just don't use the root account unless you know what do do with it. Close out of System Preferences. Go to the apple in the upper left hand corner of the screen and restart. Enter the 80 when you need to, and get back to the deskup. You are now down with the Boot Loop Fix.
Fixing issues with your install.
You will get to your desktop. A few moments later the EEE Boot CD will show up.
You will also notice a few things. 1. If you have the original wifi-card in your computer, wifi won't work. (the fix comes later) and 2. your screen is stretched. We will fix all of this.
Copy EEE-Utilities.dmg folder to your hard drive.
Open the CD by double clicking on it, and you will find a folder named EEE-Utilities. Copy this to your desktop. When it has finished loading, mount it by double clicking on it.
Making your computer boot without the boot CD
In EEE-Utilities>Fixes double click on "Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk"
It will mount this disk image, when it's loaded, open it and click on "Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.pkg", I've already put everything you need in the "Extra Contents". No need to touch it.
Follow it's instructions to install. When done, select shut down from the apple menu.
When the computer is off, unplug your DVD Drive.
Press the power button.
You should now have a booting os x computer with a stretched screen.
Install the Ralink Drivers.
Update: There are new Ralink Drivers, get them here. Third choice from the top of the list. You can still use the ones on this CD, but the new ones seem to be better.
If you have the stock wifi card, Ralink, it's maker has provided non-apple drivers for it. They work fine, they are just ugly :).
There is a catch. These drivers work by making the computer think the Wifi card is connected through the ethernet port. It appears at this point if you want to use the ethernet port, you can't use these Ralink drivers, and if you want to use these drivers you can't use the ethernet port. The simple fix is to get an apple compatable wifi card, put it in, and forget these drivers. You have nothing to loose to try, so please let me know if you do how this works out.
If you have upgraded your wifi card, ignore this step.
Go into EEE-Utilities>Fixes>RalinkDriver. Open the folder, Run the install script. The uninstall script is here too in case you ever upgrade your wifi card.
Restart (you have no choice.)
Restart issues
For some reason, sometimes, after you restart, if the computer has installed something new you can get this screen.
It's a funny little screen with the slashed circle over the apple. I've never seen it before. Don't worry about this. Just press the power button for about 5 seconds until the computer shuts off. Press it again to restart, and everything will be fine.
Upgrade to the latest version of the OS
This step needs a working wifi connection. Open up safari and make sure you can connect to the net at this point. If you can't connect, use the Ralink drivers, or the apple wifi controls to select a network so you can download your upgrades.
Now go to the apple menu, Select software update. Pick the packages you want. Update your computer. When it's done it'll give you a button to restart the computer. Restart.
The computer will take a long time doing this restart and installing the update. Give it time. You may have to move a finger over the trackpad from time to time to get the screen to update. When done, the computer will restart to the latest version of the OS ... cool huh?
Install the kext's
K-Extensions will make your mac respond properly to the eee hardware. We need to install them.
Important: Install these all at once. Some are dependent on others. Install them one at a time and you may loose the ability to boot off the SSD or hard drive. Mind you if you do, you can still boot off the EEE Boot CD and re-install them to fix.
Go to EEE-Utilities>Applications
Launch "Kext Helper b7" by double clicking.
Close the Applications window (not Kext Helper)
Go to EEE-Utilities>Extra kexts
Select all of these files (there should be 10 of them) and drag them into the window of the Kext Helper. they should show up in a list.
Enter your password.
Click "Eazy Install"
When it is done, it'll tell you to restart. Under the apple menu, select restart.
When it boots up, things should no longer be stretched.
Fix the power management bundle.
Go to EEE-Utilities>Fixes>Power Management Bundle
Click on "Update PowerManagement Bundle"
Enter your password.
When it is done, you are done.
This script moves the old bundle to /bundles.backup
Moves the new bundle in
and correctly sets the permissions for this file.
Fix audio
You will need to Download the free application CHUD from the apple developers site onto your eee. Under EEE-Utilites>Fixes>Audio Files there is a file called "connect.apple.com". It should take you to http://connect.apple.com. If you have an apple developers account, log on, if not the accounts are free, sign up for one.
When you are on go to:
Downloads>Developer Tools
In there you will find CHUD, download it and install it.
(What? you don't want to download chud. It's actually on your OS X install DVD. Mind you I'm not sure if it's a recent enough version to work, so I'm steering you to the safer option. If you want to try, stick in your DVD to your booted eee. Go under Optional Installs>Xcodetools>Xcodetools.mpkg Run the installer, Select Customize Install. only install the "Developer Tools System Components" Only my 10.5.4 Install DVD it's the 2nd check box. It should be around 90mb. If it does not work because it's too old a version, a download from the net should update your computer to the lastest version. If you do, do this, please post in the comments that it worked/did not work and what version of the install DVD you have.)
Go to: EEE-Utilities>Fixes>Audio files
We need to put Audee into the Applications folder, and then also set it up so it loads when we log in.
Drag the Audeee file to the Applications Folder.
Also Drag the Spark file to the Applications Folder.
Open the applications folder.
Load System Preferences, Go to Accounts, Select Login Items.
Drag the Audee icon into that window. Check "hide".
Close the system preferences.
When you have restarted you will find a new icon roughly in the middle of your menu bar. it is a pull down menu, Select Internal Speakers. This is how you will select where your sound will go.
You now have audio out. A volume icon should also show up there.
Time to get the audio buttons working
Go to System Preferences, select Keyboard and Mouse>Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down until you find ALL Windows under Doc, Expose and Dashboard ... It is listed as F9 on the right. Uncheck it. Close System preferences.
Go to your application fold and load spark. let it install whaver it wants. It'll want a password.
I'm setting these buttons to match the audio buttons as printed on a 901. The 1000 shows these printed on F10, F11 and F12, you could use those if you wish, mind you if you do, you will need to remap any of the functions those buttons do that you want to use to some other function key. This can be done between Spark and System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse/Keyboard Shortcuts.
Double click on "system" in the left column.
Click on the Shortcut window, press the f7 key, it should display in there.
Pull down the action menu, select Mute
Click Display Notification Icon
Click update.
Double click on "system" in the left column.
Click on the Shortcut window, press the f8 key, it should display in there.
Pull down the action menu, select Volume Down
Click Display Notification Icon
Click update.
Double click on "system" in the left column.
Click on the Shortcut window, press the f9 key, it should display in there.
Pull down the action menu, select Colume Up
Click Display Notification Icon
Click update.
Quit out of Spark
You will now have your volume buttons (f7,f8,f9) working with a graphical icon on the screen showing the volume level, just like it should.
Fine Tuning: If you reboot and still don't have audio after doing everything here, your AppleAzaliaAudion.kext might not have been loaded for one reason or another. Re-install from "extra kexts" the AppleAzaliaAudio.kext using the "kext helper" app. Reboot and things should work. For some reason people are reporting that this is not installing the first time. It seems to work fine with a re-install. You can always go to /System/Library/Extentions and see if it's there.
Fix the Brightness controls for wakeup and Ethernet.
This does a double wammy. It fixes the brightness controls and it fixes the on board Ethernet. Cool huh? If you are interested these two have been grouped together because they both use sleepwatcher.
Shut down your computer, reboot and press F2 to get to the bios. Turn on the Internal Lan option (we told you to turn that off when you installed os x, it was important to turn it off, or os x can hang during the install trying to connect to the not then working port). Reboot then continue
This fix requires Chud, but you have already installed it for the audio fix. If not, install it now.
I have
At this point, if your computer goes to sleep, you can wake it up, but the monitor does not come on after it wakes up until you press the fn button plus f4. (fn+f4).
The first thing you need to do is to install sleep watcher.
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>Diming Control Wakeup
Mount Sleepwatcher. Install both Sleepwatcher.pkg and Sleepwatcher StartupItem.pkg
Click on Set Up Wake
It will ask you for your password.
This script does a bunch. (make sure you've installed sleep watcher first).
First it figures out what the device number of the display currently is. I say currently because if you turn things off and on in your bios this number will change. (wifi, bluetooth, etc). More on this later. It then creates two new executables in your /etc directory. rc.DIMsleep and rc.DIMwake, and then it modifies the rc.wake and rc.sleep that sleep watcher uses to call these two scripts. DON"T INSTALL THIS MORE THAN ONCE. It's a dumb script and will let you install this as many times as you click it. If you do install it more than once it'll slow down your wakeup (it won't do much more than that). It's effecting /etc/rc.wakeup and /etc/rc.sleep so if you need to poke around, look there.
You should now be done. The screen should go back on when the computer wakes.
If you ever change things and your display controller number changes, run "Fix Dim if things have changed". This is the same code as "Set Up Wake", except it does not effect the rc.wake and rc.sleep files. You only need to fix these two files once.
Now a little fix that I messed up for this install script.
(Sorry about this, I'll get it working via the scripts in the next update)
The dim controls file where it stores your last brightness level is not there.
Open terminal
sudo touch /etc/last_brightness
sudo chmod a+w /etc/last_brightness
Close terminal ... Done for this bit.
Operation of Ethernet.
The Ethernet driver does not seem to detect at all times the connection of the Ethernet cable. To get your eee to detect Ethernet, just put your computer to sleep and wake it up again. It's as easy as closing the case, waiting a few seconds, opening it again and waking it up.
Speed Step
Speed step varies the speed of your CPU depending on the load. This will extend battery life a lot.
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>SpeedStep fix.
We need to put "gcpupmcontrol" and "GenericCPUPMControl" into the Applications folder, and then also set it up so it loads when we log in.
Drag the both files to the Applications Folder.
Open the applications folder.
Load System Preferences, Go to Accounts, Select Login Items.
Drag just GenericCPUPMControl to that window. Check "hide".
Close the system preferences.
This will take effect the next restart.
This does have an annoying feature. The GenericCPUControl will live from now on in your dock taking up valuable real estate. You can fix this by using Dockless that will hide any application so it wont show in the dock. You can find that here.
Fix Video Out.
The issue with video out is that by default, the external video trys to mirror the 1024x600 video of the internal monitor. Since this is a non-standard resolution, it fails. The trick is to turn off mirroring, so you have a 2nd monitor.
Go to Fixes>MirroringOff
double click on InstallMirror
That's it. After the next reboot your external monitor will work when plugged in. Go to this blog entry for full instructions of how to use this.
Fix about this mac
Go to EEE-Utilites>Applications and click on "AboutThisMac"
This little installer will fix the description of your computer in the "about this mac" section of the apple menu.
Activate Quartz GL
Quartz GL will greatly increase the graphics speed.
This will only work if your screen is at 1024x600. If it looks stretched still, you may need to re-load your kexts, look at the section market Install the kext's
Go to EEE-Utilites>Applications and load OSX86Tools. Click on Enable/Disable Quartz GL. enter your password at least twice when asked. When done, restart. You may have to do this manually, it sometimes does not do this when you click on the OSX86Tools's restart button.
When it restarts, you can check to see if this worked by going under the apple menu to "about this mac">More info>Graphics/Displays . If it's working, you'll have
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Quartz GL: Supported
You are now done. You have os x installed from an original OS X DVD with as much working as I can get it.
Now you should invest in a RunCore SSD to speed your computer up by a factor or 2 or more, get 2gb of ram and upgrade your wifi card to something that apple uses internally.
Remember, if you want to upgrade your card, uninstall the Ralink Drivers. The uninstral program is in EEE-Utilites.
You will want to keep this little folder, so stick it somewhere safe. You will need to run that Upgrade script every time you do an apple upgrade. Keep in handy.
Get OS X to boot automatically
So far, when you boot off the hard drive, it has prompted you to put in a boot option. You don't want to do this, you want it to boot on the fly. I have an easy script to install what you need to make this happen.
Go to EEE-Utilities/Fixes/Boot. Click on installBootplist
That's it. It'll boot up now with a 5 second timer to let you hit a key so you can enter any options.
Want less time and a faster boot. Edit com.apple.Boot.plist and change the timeout of 5 seconds to 1 or whatever you want. (you can open this file in TextEdit to edit it.) Change the option Quiet boot to yes, and you will get no prompt at all.
If you have a eee pc 901
Ignore this if you don't have a 901.
The 901 Bios is a little weird. There have been two patches. One makes it easier to do installs but has a bad bug. When your computer goes to sleep you can only wake it with the power button. If you use the mouse or keyboard, the machine will lock, needing a hard restart (by holding down the power button for about 5 seconds).
The most modern version of the patched bios does not have this issue, but if you have this bios in when you install os x, you can't read the menus on the apple install screen since parts of them are off screen.
At this point you should update to the latest bios for the 901 found here.
http://osrom.net/biosmod/
Uncompress the file you will download for the 901, Rename the file to "901.ROM" (all caps)
take this bios and either
1. Install it in the top directory a thumb drive, put it in your computer when the computer is off, boot the computer holding alt-f2 (making sure this is the only USB drive in the computer, make sure the USB DVD drive is not attached).
or
2. Burn an iso 9660 format DVD or CD with this file as the only file on it. Put it in your DVD drive. Boot your computer with the drive attached while pressing down alt-f2.
I go into this more here http://eeemac.blogspot.com/2008/11/upgrading-your-bios.html
When you wake now you can wake using the keyboard or the power button, but sometimes, you will find a key repeating (a 0 or a 1). This is not keyboard failure, this is bios failure. I'm sure it'll be fixed in a future version. just hit any key once you wake up to make it go away. This has become habit with me, so it just does not bother me any more. It's better than locking the computer up.
Future upgrading
Final notes.
For that matter, scan all the posts on this blog, I'm only putting clear solutions in this post, test stuff will get it's own post until I'm sure it works. Specifically check the posts listed as Fixes.
Also follow me on twitter my name there is iiyoyoguy
Please donate to help keep me in parts to do other mods. This lets me break things so you don't have to.
Also get a sticker from me (see the left column) so that your eee too can look right.
Keep in mind I'm upgrading this stuff very often, so please check your version to make sure you have the latest one. The current link will be in this post.
Updates: Working Ethernet, Video out, Remote Mounting of CDs/DVDs off your desktop mac or windows box. 1.10 had a few bugs I added, so 1.11 just fixes them. Sorry about that.
If you already have EEE Boot 1.09 installed, go to this post to just add the new "features"
Stability: It is clear that there may be a few issues with 1.11. If you have issues, 1.09 is stable, go to the other post about 1.09 for install instructions.
Ingredients:
Hardware:
- USB external DVD Drive. (You can find one of these on e-bay for less than <$40)
- An EEE PC, 900A, 901, 1000, 1000H, 1000HD (this should work with all of the atom EEE PC's, but you may need to get a bios update for them from another source if the stock bios won't work for you. Please let me know if you have any issues/success.
- Some way to download an ISO image and burn it to a DVD (A Windows, Mac or Linux computer). If you don't know how, google around.
- A working wifi net connection. and some bandwidth (The Apple upgrade from 10.5.4 to 10.5.6 is almost 700mb, it can take a while.).
- A cool sticker for your mac that you can get for free if you pay for the shipping available from left column of this web site :)
Software
- You need to burn an image of the boot disk I have cobbled together. Download it from this site, the latest Iso's should be there : http://www.pd.net/eeeboot.
- This above disk is a Boot-132 CD. I'm letting you know because I will be using this name for it.
- You need a copy of an OS X 10.5.x install disk, you buy these from apple, Best Buy, and apple store, Tiger Direct or your local college computer store. THIS WILL NOT WORK WITH AN INSTALL DVD THAT CAME BUNDLED WITH A APPLE COMPUTER.
- A copy of Chud, free for download from apple for sound and dimming to work (instructions in the appropriate section) It is also available on your os x install DVD, depending on the version. 10.4+ seems to work, I have not tested any earlier versions.
- You are going to install OS 10.5.x
- These instructions assume you have a stock out of the box eee. I have a 901, so these instructions are skewed towards the 901, but will work on the 1000 family too. They are almost identical computers.
- These instructions also assume that OSX is the only OS on this particular drive. Since I don't dual boot, I can't help you here. The 901, that comes with SSD drives comes with either 12gb or 20GB of storage. in these are actually two drives, a 4gb one used for linux or Windows and an 8gb or 16gb used for storage. The 8gb is possibly to do an install from a retail DVD, but is really a bit too small. Mind you the windows 901 or 1000 with the 12gb (4/8) is the best bang for the bug to upgrade from. Go to mydigitaldiscount.com and spend less than $80 on a blazing fast 16gb ssd and swap out. The 16gb that they ship with drives you can easily use for os x, and the other for another OS (linux or windows) can fit on the 4gb drive and have dual boot that way. If you have a hard drive version, this will work too, so don't worry. If you have not yet bought a EEE, I hope to have a blog at some point about picking out the best machine for you.
- These instructions will get os x installed on your computer in a way it can be upgraded using apples software upgrade.
- The image I have given you is a modified boot loader that is out there, with Kexts you need and all the other install items you need including the ability to patch the Bios of your 900A, 901, 1000, 1000H or 1000HD directly from this CD.
- Upgrades (from at least 10.5.4 to 10.5.6)
- Ethernet
- Remote mounting of DVD's and CD's from a desktop Mac or Windows box
- Video out
- Wifi (with either stock or an upgraded card)
- WWAN
- bluetooth
- sleep
- speedstep
- audio out (no microphone)
- sleep
- brightness control
- Camera if you got a 901 with windows on it as the stock OS. Unsure about issues with the 1000's.
- Microphone in from the mic or the microphone socket. Audio in works great via blue tooth (so does audio out). I've always used a bluetooth headset to skype with, so this is not an issue for me.
- Weirdly the power button will not pop up a shutdown/sleep button when pressed from OS X. It works for every other install I have. This I suspect I can get to work in time.
- Burn the .iso you have downloaded from above to a CD. It is only 80mb. You can burn it to a DVD also if you wish.
- Get your eee pc ready and plug in your USB DVD device. Make sure this is the only USB storage device plugged to the computer.
- Make sure your eee is plugged into a wall. You don't want to loose power during an install.
- Plug in USB DVD Drive, boot your EEE while holding down alt+f2 to install bios. Restart.
- Fix bios settings so devices that need to be on or off are, and so it'll boot off DVD Rom and the SSD or HD you want to use. Save, reboot.
- Boot off Boot-132 CD (the one your downloaded from above). When menu comes up, swap the CD in the DVD drive to OS X install DVD.
- When booted into install DVD, Partition drive to one to be GUID partition that is formatted Extended Journaled, name the drive. Customize the install to only have essentials (critical if you are installing in a 8gb or 16gb SSD). Install. Will get error message at end about bad install, that's ok, ignore it, restart. Give it time to restart.
- Computer will now try to boot off OS X DVD (it's in the drive), it can't do that. Will leave black screen. Press power button for about 5 seconds until computer shuts down.
- Put in Boot-132 CD. Restart. When screen comes up, enter 80 to choose the first internal drive. If the correct first drive is selected in the Bios, the computer will boot to OS X setup. Enter information.
- If your computer gets stuck in setup loop (takes you back to the first screen asking again and again for the same information), follow the fix instructions.
- If you are using original WIFi card, install Ralink drivers. Restart.
- Run the apple update to upgrade to the latest version. (takes a long while)
- Install Kexts. Restart. (takes a while)
- Download CHUD, go to apple developers site (click on icon in folder). You may need to sign up for a free acount if you don't already have one. Login go to Downloads>Developer Tools Download the latest version of CHUD, Install (it might hide this file in your downloads folder if you need to hunt for it.) You can also get this from your install disk if you have a recent version of OS X. restart.
- Install Audeee. Click off the check box for whatever command is connected to f9 from system preferences>Keyboard>Keyboardshortcuts. Copy Sark to applications. Spark Set up spark for keyboard sound controls to work. Double click on system add each command, check graphics
- Get dimming control to restore brightness when computer wakes from sleep. Install Sleep watcher and sleepwatcher startup item. Chick on Check, find out number of Display Controller.
- Set up speed step. Add to boot up code
- Run about this mac, and use OS X tools to turn on Quicktime GL - restart
- if you have a 901, upgrade bios off usb card, or CD, restart. Re-set up bios (sorry guys)
Upgrade Bios
If you don't have a 900A, 901, 1000, 1000H, 1000HD or the eee box 802, skip this step and look at my other post on upgrading the bios. From current reports if you have a 1000 HE, you don't need to do anything, the shipped bios works. (Let me know if this is not the case)
If you do have a 901 or 1000, boot the computer with the DVD drive connected and the EEEboot cd in it. Hold down Alt-F2 when booting. It will eventually boot to a bios upgrade screen that will automatically upgrade the bios at this point. When it tells you to reboot by pushing down the power button, follow it's instructions and Reboot.
Setting the Bios
Boot the computer and hold down the F2 key (no alt this time)
This will take you to the BIOS SETUP UTILITY.
These instructions are specifically for the 901 The 1000, 1000H and 1000HD have several less options in the bios set up. if you don't have an option, don't sweat it.
There are five tabs across the top, we will go from left to right.
Instructions on how to navigate this Setup Utility is on the right hand side of the screen.
Main (first tab)
Make sure the system time and date are correct.
Advanced
- IDE Configuration:If you are using your larger SSD Drive, it will probably be the slave. Look at it's name and remember it for later. (esc to exit) If you have a hard drive in your system instead of an SSD, i'm not sure what you'll find, but you may have only one option. That is the one to use.
- Onboard Device Configuration: Disable Onboard Lan, Enable everything else.
- CPU Configuration: Max CUPID value limit [Disabled] the other two options enable
- Escape to exit
Don't do anything under this tab
Boot
We are going to do this one out of order
- Hard Disk Drives: Using the +/- keys make your boot drive, the large one the 1st drive.
- Boot Disk Priority: Using the +/- keys make the CD Rom the first boot device. Your harddrive should be 2nd or 3rd
- Boot Setting Configuration: All enabled
Exit
Take the time now to plug in and power up your USB DVD drive with your Boot-132 disk in it.
From the Bios menu, Select Exit & Save changes, give it an OK when you get the option to.
It will boot your computer again, and hopefully from the CD. You should see roughly the following (There will be a quick error that flashes on the screen, don't worry about it, it's looking for something that has not been loaded yet)
The boot loader has a bunch of .kexts loaded on it to load at this point that will allow the OS X install disk to work properly.
It will boot to a screen where you can enter options.
If you are not putting in an option, hit enter (and you won't).
It may give you a flash of an error here again, Don't worry about that. It's looking for a file you have not installed yet. You may get a few of these. It is asking here to choose what device to boot off. But first you need to eject the boot CD you made, and keep it handy. You will need it again.
Put in to your DVD drive your original OS X install disk as you bought from apple (you did buy it didn't you). The default option of EF will boot off your DVD rom.
- Possible comands at this point are:
- ef - (default) Boot from the USB CD Rom
- 80 - Boot from the first booting hard drive as selected from the Bios
- 81 - Boot from the second booting hard drive as selected from the Bios
When the apple DVD is in, hit enter. It will now boot, or get you to press F8 to enter Boot Commands.
It will now ask you to enter any boot commands. There are a few, but you should not need the last one this first time.
Most of these exist since pressing a key when booting (as you would do in on a traditional mac) does not work with the bootloaders we are using.
- Commands:
- -s single user mode
- -v verbose
- -x Safe mode
- -f Force load
- "Graphics Mode"="800x600x32"
Heck, I've been recently telling people just to use it. It won't hurt anything, and it could save time. To repeat, in that prompt put:
"Graphics Mode"="800x600x32"
Don't forget the quotes.
If all goes well, you should get a gray apple logo with a spinning icon underneath and you will eventually get a screen like this. The time it takes depends a lot on the speed of your hard drive.
What? You don't see a screen like this. You get a message that says: "This software cannot be installed on this computer." Well it seems you don't have a retail OSX DVD, but instead one that came with a mac when it was purchased. This DVD won't work on anything but that computer. Sorry about that, go get a retail DVD and let Apple earn some money they deserve.
Are bits of the menu off the screen to the point it's hard to operate? I mean by this the top menu bar, you need to reboot, and enter the "Graphic Mode"x"800x600x32" option. Your computer is trying to work at a resolution larger than your screen. This will vary from model to model of the eee. Just scroll up a bit. Better instructions are back there.
Double click on the language you want to use.
When you get the option to select drives, you will see at least one, and possibly more (if you have a 4gb ssd with linux on it, it'll show up, but it'll have a red ! on it.
Go to the pull down menu Utilities, and select Disk Utility
In Disk Utility, select the drive (not he partition) you want to put OS X on. Select the partition tab as shown the the photo.
Things to do:
- Under "Volume Scheme" There is a pull down option menu that lets you select the number of partitions. Select one.
- Under "Volume Information" name your drive and select for the format Mac OS (Extended Journaled)
- Now click on the "Options" button under the partition window.
Select the top option, "GUID Partition Table" and hit OK. Then click on Apply
Click on the Partition option it gives you. This can take a little while, kick back for a while. When it's done, quit out of the Disk Utility by selecting quit from pull down menu under "File"
You are now back here. Click on the drive you want to install OS X on. It will show you a green arrow so you know it's selected. Now click on continue.
Now we are going to make this install smaller. This is critical to install onto a SSD, and will greatly speed up your install time. If you ever need what you did not install here again, you can easily install these options from the OSX install disk once you've got your system to boot.
Deselect everything you can. The printer driver selection is almost as big as the OS. If you have a printer, do open this up and just select the install option for the brand of printer you own. If you own a HP printer, don't do this, it'll install far too many drivers, just download the drivers from the HP site and install later. It'll take up less space if you do it this way.Click done.
Click install.
It's going to start doing a consistency check on your DVD. This is not a bad idea the first time. It checks that the media is fine, and it checks if your drive is fine as well.
I 've clicked skip for this check every time after my first install from this media It takes too long. (and yes I've done a lot of these now).
It will take a while, (depending on the drive you have) to install. Don't trust the Time Remaining setting. It gets stuck from time to time, a quick wipe of the trackpad can fix that. The sleep function does not work yet. We'll fix that with later patches, it will keep the screen on but won't refresh it. A flick of the finger on the trackpad, or a key press will get it to refresh. Kick back get some coffee, when you return you'll have this on your screen:
Don't worry about this. The install did not fail, it just can't find the boot loader to tell it what drive to boot to on the next boot. This is not surprising, you have not installed the boot loader yet. Press the restart button and wait. This can take over a minute for the computer to restart, and when it does, it's going to try and boot off the OS install DVD, which it can't do. It'll boot to a black scree. At this point you will have to do a hard power off by pressing down on the power button until the blue light turns off. This can take a few seconds. When your computer is powered down, eject the OS X DVD and put in the 132-Boot CD again. I find that on my USB DVD drive, I can't eject at this point unless I unplug my DVD drive and re-plug it in from my computer. What happens on your computer? No idea.
Boot your computer off the boot loader CD, when you get to this screen:
You are going to use another setting. This screen lets you choose what device you will boot off. You now want to boot off your internal drive. If you set your bios settings correctly so that the boot drive is where you put OS X, you should enter "80" (no quotes) here and press enter.
You will have to press enter a 2nd time and your computer will boot from the hard drive.
If you have trouble booting with the 80 option, try 81, If 81 works, your bios is set wrong and it won't boot by itself until you fix it. You will need to go to the bios menu (f2 on boot up), go to the Boot tab, and in the 2nd option from the top, choose Hard Disk Drives. Swap the order of the two drives and you should be fine.
Click continue.
Select your keyboard
Don't try to transfer data using this screen. Select "DO not transfer my information now".
Click Continue and see what page comes up.
Now you get to see if you have the boot loop problem. It happens some times. It does not even seem to be the hardware, since I've had times it's happened and times it has not on the same hardware with the same install CD's.
If you click on continue and you go to either the screen requesting you to choose a network, or the screen asking for your name and address, you are ok and you should skip the next step, and finish doing what the computer asks for. You will eventually get to the desik top.
If you are in the loop you need to ...
Fix the registration loop
Once again, if your computer is NOT taking you back over and over again to the menu where you choose a language, skip this step. If not, you will need to restart you computer by holding down the power button for about 5 seconds. When it boots to your CD, type in 80 for the option for what drive to boot off, but on the next (and last) boot loader menu, boot with the -s option.
The computer will boot in a text only mode and drop you to a command line.
Type in the following command carefully.
/sbin/mount -uw /
touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
passwd root
it will ask you to type it in twice to make sure you typed it in correctly.
When your password is set type
reboot
Hit enter.
And your computer will re-boot to the CD. Boot to drive 80, and just hit enter for the boot options. Your computer will boot to a password screen.
Enter username: root and the password you picked. When you do it should take you to the desktop. At this point it is important to set up a non-root account.
Go to "settings" in the bottom Dock, the icon looks like gears in the recent versions of OS X, and click on it to load it. Click on Accounts in the screen that pops up. Click on the + button on the bottom left, create a new user, give yourself a password. Click on login options. Make sure your "Display Login Window" is set to list of users. You can if you want set up automatic login so that your new account is logged in when you boot without a password. This is up to you. just don't use the root account unless you know what do do with it. Close out of System Preferences. Go to the apple in the upper left hand corner of the screen and restart. Enter the 80 when you need to, and get back to the deskup. You are now down with the Boot Loop Fix.
Fixing issues with your install.
You will get to your desktop. A few moments later the EEE Boot CD will show up.
You will also notice a few things. 1. If you have the original wifi-card in your computer, wifi won't work. (the fix comes later) and 2. your screen is stretched. We will fix all of this.
Copy EEE-Utilities.dmg folder to your hard drive.
Open the CD by double clicking on it, and you will find a folder named EEE-Utilities. Copy this to your desktop. When it has finished loading, mount it by double clicking on it.
Making your computer boot without the boot CD
In EEE-Utilities>Fixes double click on "Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk"
It will mount this disk image, when it's loaded, open it and click on "Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.pkg", I've already put everything you need in the "Extra Contents". No need to touch it.
Follow it's instructions to install. When done, select shut down from the apple menu.
When the computer is off, unplug your DVD Drive.
Press the power button.
You should now have a booting os x computer with a stretched screen.
Install the Ralink Drivers.
Update: There are new Ralink Drivers, get them here. Third choice from the top of the list. You can still use the ones on this CD, but the new ones seem to be better.
If you have the stock wifi card, Ralink, it's maker has provided non-apple drivers for it. They work fine, they are just ugly :).
There is a catch. These drivers work by making the computer think the Wifi card is connected through the ethernet port. It appears at this point if you want to use the ethernet port, you can't use these Ralink drivers, and if you want to use these drivers you can't use the ethernet port. The simple fix is to get an apple compatable wifi card, put it in, and forget these drivers. You have nothing to loose to try, so please let me know if you do how this works out.
If you have upgraded your wifi card, ignore this step.
Go into EEE-Utilities>Fixes>RalinkDriver. Open the folder, Run the install script. The uninstall script is here too in case you ever upgrade your wifi card.
Restart (you have no choice.)
Restart issues
For some reason, sometimes, after you restart, if the computer has installed something new you can get this screen.
It's a funny little screen with the slashed circle over the apple. I've never seen it before. Don't worry about this. Just press the power button for about 5 seconds until the computer shuts off. Press it again to restart, and everything will be fine.
Upgrade to the latest version of the OS
This step needs a working wifi connection. Open up safari and make sure you can connect to the net at this point. If you can't connect, use the Ralink drivers, or the apple wifi controls to select a network so you can download your upgrades.
Now go to the apple menu, Select software update. Pick the packages you want. Update your computer. When it's done it'll give you a button to restart the computer. Restart.
The computer will take a long time doing this restart and installing the update. Give it time. You may have to move a finger over the trackpad from time to time to get the screen to update. When done, the computer will restart to the latest version of the OS ... cool huh?
Install the kext's
K-Extensions will make your mac respond properly to the eee hardware. We need to install them.
Important: Install these all at once. Some are dependent on others. Install them one at a time and you may loose the ability to boot off the SSD or hard drive. Mind you if you do, you can still boot off the EEE Boot CD and re-install them to fix.
Go to EEE-Utilities>Applications
Launch "Kext Helper b7" by double clicking.
Close the Applications window (not Kext Helper)
Go to EEE-Utilities>Extra kexts
Select all of these files (there should be 10 of them) and drag them into the window of the Kext Helper. they should show up in a list.
Enter your password.
Click "Eazy Install"
When it is done, it'll tell you to restart. Under the apple menu, select restart.
When it boots up, things should no longer be stretched.
Fix the power management bundle.
Go to EEE-Utilities>Fixes>Power Management Bundle
Click on "Update PowerManagement Bundle"
Enter your password.
When it is done, you are done.
This script moves the old bundle to /bundles.backup
Moves the new bundle in
and correctly sets the permissions for this file.
Fix audio
You will need to Download the free application CHUD from the apple developers site onto your eee. Under EEE-Utilites>Fixes>Audio Files there is a file called "connect.apple.com". It should take you to http://connect.apple.com. If you have an apple developers account, log on, if not the accounts are free, sign up for one.
When you are on go to:
Downloads>Developer Tools
In there you will find CHUD, download it and install it.
(What? you don't want to download chud. It's actually on your OS X install DVD. Mind you I'm not sure if it's a recent enough version to work, so I'm steering you to the safer option. If you want to try, stick in your DVD to your booted eee. Go under Optional Installs>Xcodetools>Xcodetools.mpkg Run the installer, Select Customize Install. only install the "Developer Tools System Components" Only my 10.5.4 Install DVD it's the 2nd check box. It should be around 90mb. If it does not work because it's too old a version, a download from the net should update your computer to the lastest version. If you do, do this, please post in the comments that it worked/did not work and what version of the install DVD you have.)
Go to: EEE-Utilities>Fixes>Audio files
We need to put Audee into the Applications folder, and then also set it up so it loads when we log in.
Drag the Audeee file to the Applications Folder.
Also Drag the Spark file to the Applications Folder.
Open the applications folder.
Load System Preferences, Go to Accounts, Select Login Items.
Drag the Audee icon into that window. Check "hide".
Close the system preferences.
When you have restarted you will find a new icon roughly in the middle of your menu bar. it is a pull down menu, Select Internal Speakers. This is how you will select where your sound will go.
You now have audio out. A volume icon should also show up there.
Time to get the audio buttons working
Go to System Preferences, select Keyboard and Mouse>Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down until you find ALL Windows under Doc, Expose and Dashboard ... It is listed as F9 on the right. Uncheck it. Close System preferences.
Go to your application fold and load spark. let it install whaver it wants. It'll want a password.
I'm setting these buttons to match the audio buttons as printed on a 901. The 1000 shows these printed on F10, F11 and F12, you could use those if you wish, mind you if you do, you will need to remap any of the functions those buttons do that you want to use to some other function key. This can be done between Spark and System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse/Keyboard Shortcuts.
Double click on "system" in the left column.
Click on the Shortcut window, press the f7 key, it should display in there.
Pull down the action menu, select Mute
Click Display Notification Icon
Click update.
Double click on "system" in the left column.
Click on the Shortcut window, press the f8 key, it should display in there.
Pull down the action menu, select Volume Down
Click Display Notification Icon
Click update.
Double click on "system" in the left column.
Click on the Shortcut window, press the f9 key, it should display in there.
Pull down the action menu, select Colume Up
Click Display Notification Icon
Click update.
Quit out of Spark
You will now have your volume buttons (f7,f8,f9) working with a graphical icon on the screen showing the volume level, just like it should.
Fine Tuning: If you reboot and still don't have audio after doing everything here, your AppleAzaliaAudion.kext might not have been loaded for one reason or another. Re-install from "extra kexts" the AppleAzaliaAudio.kext using the "kext helper" app. Reboot and things should work. For some reason people are reporting that this is not installing the first time. It seems to work fine with a re-install. You can always go to /System/Library/Extentions and see if it's there.
Fix the Brightness controls for wakeup and Ethernet.
This does a double wammy. It fixes the brightness controls and it fixes the on board Ethernet. Cool huh? If you are interested these two have been grouped together because they both use sleepwatcher.
Shut down your computer, reboot and press F2 to get to the bios. Turn on the Internal Lan option (we told you to turn that off when you installed os x, it was important to turn it off, or os x can hang during the install trying to connect to the not then working port). Reboot then continue
This fix requires Chud, but you have already installed it for the audio fix. If not, install it now.
I have
At this point, if your computer goes to sleep, you can wake it up, but the monitor does not come on after it wakes up until you press the fn button plus f4. (fn+f4).
The first thing you need to do is to install sleep watcher.
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>Diming Control Wakeup
Mount Sleepwatcher. Install both Sleepwatcher.pkg and Sleepwatcher StartupItem.pkg
Click on Set Up Wake
It will ask you for your password.
This script does a bunch. (make sure you've installed sleep watcher first).
First it figures out what the device number of the display currently is. I say currently because if you turn things off and on in your bios this number will change. (wifi, bluetooth, etc). More on this later. It then creates two new executables in your /etc directory. rc.DIMsleep and rc.DIMwake, and then it modifies the rc.wake and rc.sleep that sleep watcher uses to call these two scripts. DON"T INSTALL THIS MORE THAN ONCE. It's a dumb script and will let you install this as many times as you click it. If you do install it more than once it'll slow down your wakeup (it won't do much more than that). It's effecting /etc/rc.wakeup and /etc/rc.sleep so if you need to poke around, look there.
You should now be done. The screen should go back on when the computer wakes.
If you ever change things and your display controller number changes, run "Fix Dim if things have changed". This is the same code as "Set Up Wake", except it does not effect the rc.wake and rc.sleep files. You only need to fix these two files once.
Now a little fix that I messed up for this install script.
(Sorry about this, I'll get it working via the scripts in the next update)
The dim controls file where it stores your last brightness level is not there.
Open terminal
sudo touch /etc/last_brightness
sudo chmod a+w /etc/last_brightness
Close terminal ... Done for this bit.
Operation of Ethernet.
The Ethernet driver does not seem to detect at all times the connection of the Ethernet cable. To get your eee to detect Ethernet, just put your computer to sleep and wake it up again. It's as easy as closing the case, waiting a few seconds, opening it again and waking it up.
Speed Step
Speed step varies the speed of your CPU depending on the load. This will extend battery life a lot.
Go to EEE-Utilites>Fixes>SpeedStep fix.
We need to put "gcpupmcontrol" and "GenericCPUPMControl" into the Applications folder, and then also set it up so it loads when we log in.
Drag the both files to the Applications Folder.
Open the applications folder.
Load System Preferences, Go to Accounts, Select Login Items.
Drag just GenericCPUPMControl to that window. Check "hide".
Close the system preferences.
This will take effect the next restart.
This does have an annoying feature. The GenericCPUControl will live from now on in your dock taking up valuable real estate. You can fix this by using Dockless that will hide any application so it wont show in the dock. You can find that here.
Fix Video Out.
The issue with video out is that by default, the external video trys to mirror the 1024x600 video of the internal monitor. Since this is a non-standard resolution, it fails. The trick is to turn off mirroring, so you have a 2nd monitor.
Go to Fixes>MirroringOff
double click on InstallMirror
That's it. After the next reboot your external monitor will work when plugged in. Go to this blog entry for full instructions of how to use this.
Fix about this mac
Go to EEE-Utilites>Applications and click on "AboutThisMac"
This little installer will fix the description of your computer in the "about this mac" section of the apple menu.
Activate Quartz GL
Quartz GL will greatly increase the graphics speed.
This will only work if your screen is at 1024x600. If it looks stretched still, you may need to re-load your kexts, look at the section market Install the kext's
Go to EEE-Utilites>Applications and load OSX86Tools. Click on Enable/Disable Quartz GL. enter your password at least twice when asked. When done, restart. You may have to do this manually, it sometimes does not do this when you click on the OSX86Tools's restart button.
When it restarts, you can check to see if this worked by going under the apple menu to "about this mac">More info>Graphics/Displays . If it's working, you'll have
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Quartz GL: Supported
You are now done. You have os x installed from an original OS X DVD with as much working as I can get it.
Now you should invest in a RunCore SSD to speed your computer up by a factor or 2 or more, get 2gb of ram and upgrade your wifi card to something that apple uses internally.
Remember, if you want to upgrade your card, uninstall the Ralink Drivers. The uninstral program is in EEE-Utilites.
You will want to keep this little folder, so stick it somewhere safe. You will need to run that Upgrade script every time you do an apple upgrade. Keep in handy.
Get OS X to boot automatically
So far, when you boot off the hard drive, it has prompted you to put in a boot option. You don't want to do this, you want it to boot on the fly. I have an easy script to install what you need to make this happen.
Go to EEE-Utilities/Fixes/Boot. Click on installBootplist
That's it. It'll boot up now with a 5 second timer to let you hit a key so you can enter any options.
Want less time and a faster boot. Edit com.apple.Boot.plist and change the timeout of 5 seconds to 1 or whatever you want. (you can open this file in TextEdit to edit it.) Change the option Quiet boot to yes, and you will get no prompt at all.
If you have a eee pc 901
Ignore this if you don't have a 901.
The 901 Bios is a little weird. There have been two patches. One makes it easier to do installs but has a bad bug. When your computer goes to sleep you can only wake it with the power button. If you use the mouse or keyboard, the machine will lock, needing a hard restart (by holding down the power button for about 5 seconds).
The most modern version of the patched bios does not have this issue, but if you have this bios in when you install os x, you can't read the menus on the apple install screen since parts of them are off screen.
At this point you should update to the latest bios for the 901 found here.
http://osrom.net/biosmod/
Uncompress the file you will download for the 901, Rename the file to "901.ROM" (all caps)
take this bios and either
1. Install it in the top directory a thumb drive, put it in your computer when the computer is off, boot the computer holding alt-f2 (making sure this is the only USB drive in the computer, make sure the USB DVD drive is not attached).
or
2. Burn an iso 9660 format DVD or CD with this file as the only file on it. Put it in your DVD drive. Boot your computer with the drive attached while pressing down alt-f2.
I go into this more here http://eeemac.blogspot.com/2008/11/upgrading-your-bios.html
When you wake now you can wake using the keyboard or the power button, but sometimes, you will find a key repeating (a 0 or a 1). This is not keyboard failure, this is bios failure. I'm sure it'll be fixed in a future version. just hit any key once you wake up to make it go away. This has become habit with me, so it just does not bother me any more. It's better than locking the computer up.
Future upgrading
- When apple comes out with another update. Here is what you will do to do the upgrade.
- Load EEE-Utilities (you saved that .dmg somewhere right?)
- Run the apple upgrade.
- Load the kexts from the extra kexts folder in EEE-Utilities with the kext install application. This is described in the section "Install the kext's" in this blog entery.
- Restart the computer.
Final notes.
- The Alt key is your command key as apple calls it.
- Depending on the model, your home key (with the image of a house) or the windows key is your option key as apple calls it.
- Battery meter not working: Reinstall the ACPIbattery.kext
- VGA port not working: Read this post.
- Camera not working: You have an eee that was originally sold with Linux on it, sorry, read this.
- Sound Not working: Reinstall Azalea Audio kext ... Also make sure chud is installed.
- Computer won't sleep when you close the lid: Reinstall ClamshellDisplay.kexts
- Computer has issues shutting all the way down: (blue light stay on power button): Reinstall OpenHaltRestart_1.0.3.kext
- Can't get Skype or Gtalk (with video/audio) to work: You don't have a mic. These things don't work without one. The internal mic does not work. Get a blue tooth head set, or a USB mic, or even just a USB divice that has audio in. Select that device in System Preferences>Sound and it will work.
- Ethernet is not working: First reboot your computer and go into the bios. Check to make sure that the LAN is Enabled. If not try putting your computer to sleep and waking it back up with the ethernet cable connected. One of these will solve the problem.
For that matter, scan all the posts on this blog, I'm only putting clear solutions in this post, test stuff will get it's own post until I'm sure it works. Specifically check the posts listed as Fixes.
Also follow me on twitter my name there is iiyoyoguy
Please donate to help keep me in parts to do other mods. This lets me break things so you don't have to.
Also get a sticker from me (see the left column) so that your eee too can look right.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Use the CD/DVD drive of your desktop as a remote Mac Drive for your EEE
The Macbook air like the EEE does not have a CD/DVD drive built in. That computer takes care of this by letting you remote mount a drive of a desktop, either a OS X box or a Windows box.
While the Macbook air is cooler, letting you mount the drive from a box without an OS on it, we can do it from our EEE after os x is installed.
Limitations: This will only let you mount an OS X mounted disk, it does not seem to work on iso 990 disks like the EEE Boot CD, nor can you play a Video DVD. It does work just fine for data DVD's and CD roms.
To activate this function open your terminal and enter the following commands.
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool trueNow you need to configure your desktop box:
If you are on a windows computer, download and install this application from apple. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/dvdorcdsharingsetupupdateformac.html
You don't need to install anything if you have a recent version of os x.
Now go to this web page for full configuration information. (apple gives out nice instructions).
To use CD/DVD sharing:
You need to be on the same wireless network as the host computer.
On your eee, open a new window in the finder. On the left hand side a new icon will appear called "Remote Disk". Click on it.
If all is set up correctly, you should have a list of computers that have CD/DVD sharing turned on. Select that computer. If a CD/DVD is in that computer it should show up in the list under that computer name. Double click on the CD/DVD and it will mount on your desktop.
On a mac at least, to eject this disk, it needs to be first ejected from your eee, then the host computer.
Special thanks goes to Luomat who pointed this out to me.
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