New Toy

discovered the browser's much more useable after hitting F11 for fullscreen mode


The research turns up that the webcam is supported by OS X, but the built in WIFI isn't. It can be swapped out for a Dell WIFI card that is supported. Found one on ebay for $16 (includes tax, free shipping). Since I have to open it up to swap out the card, I also ordered a 1 GB SODIMM ($20 with shipping/no tax) to replace the 512 MB SODIMM it comes with (the other 512 MB is built into the motherboard) to max the RAM out at 1.5 GB.

Only other issues are the netbook won't sleep, the built in card readers won't work, and the sound won't auto-switch when plugging in headphones. If the lid is closed OS X shuts down, but running InsomniaX will prevent that from happening. The sound can be fixed with an extension, or can be worked around by manually switching audio output (using SoundSource makes switching easier). The built in card readers aren't hooked up via USB, though there's 3 USB ports so an external card reader can be used w/out any problems.

Just for grins, here it is sitting on my 15" MacBook Pro

Cool. Keep us posted if you can get it running or not.

That's pretty awesome. I like me some netbooks. So, you're running OS X on this? Bet big brother Jobs wouldn't like that!

Not yet, I'm waiting to install the new WIFI card first since OS X doesn't like the one the Aspire One comes with.

There are a couple areas that Apple doesn't build for that I wish they did. Small notebooks and a Mac "not-Pro", "not-mini".

Anybody notice the difference between the first 2 pictures (besides the fullscreen browser that is)?

SpiceWare, on Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:52 PM, said:

You have removed the Microsoft Windows sticker! I always do this on my new hardware (since I run Linux), but these stickers have become increasingly more obnoxious to remove recently.

Chris

Yeppers! I was shocked at how easy this one came off, didn't even need a cleaner to remove the residue.

The RAM went in OK, the WIFI card has issues. With it plugged in the netbook might boot (but usually not). It never sees the card when it does boot.

For the most part it was easy to open, with the exception of removing the keyboard. Because of that I've put post-it-notes over the latches to prevent the keyboard from locking back in place until I can get another WIFI card.

The Dell WIFI 1390 went in OK. It needed "proprietary drivers" for Ubuntu, but it was able to install them via Ethernet. After getting them working I did the updates, which proceeded to break both the WIFI and Ethernet... Now to try to fix that and see about OS X.

On a better note

SpiceWare, on Sat Feb 28, 2009 12:40 AM, said:

That is a nice interview - it's always good to hear about what happens behind the scenes. I'm hoping that you will have more free time in the future to work on your next game project, as it is bound to be another classic.

Chris

Thanks! I plan to resume Atari projects once I'm back in my study. My ceiling's finally been replaced and I'm going to shampoo the carpet tomorrow. I still need to replace my desk, which was ruined by Ike. I really liked the layout:


This is an older picture. Before the hurricane I had my work laptop on the left raised area (where the scanner is), a 24" LCD on the middle raised area, and my MacBook on the right raised area. The Dell monitor has an input switch, so I used it with both laptops. The monitor in this photo sported 2 inputs (VGA and BNC) which I used with my OS/2 box (the white tower) and the PowerMac G3.

The company that made the desk went bankrupt a few years ago, and while I was able to find a place that had some old stock, it had it in the wrong color. I've been looking since the storm for a replacement and haven't had any luck until yesterday - I found this by Bestar. It's not exactly the same layout, but it's close enough. It doesn't match the other 3 pieces I have, but my insurance gave me $1000 for the old desk which covers replacing all 4 pieces! I'll repurpose the other 3 pieces into my guest room, it's kinda sparse.


Anyhow - back to the New Toy

Yesterday I was able to get WIFI working again. During the boot, GRUB gives you a few seconds to select another kernel version to boot. I selected the old kernel, it booted fine with working wired ethernet. I then reran the install for the WiFi, and it resumed working, even when booting under the current kernel.

Today I got Leopard running



Hardest part was getting the USB stick to boot. I was following the instructions from here that tell how to make the stick bootable by using OSX86tools, but no matter what I did it wouldn't work. I ended up using the instructions from here that used Chameleon instead. I went back to the prior link and followed those instructions for the actual install.

It didn't like how Ubuntu had split up the disk, so I ended up wiping out the drive and starting over. When I installed Ubuntu I had partitioned the drive into 3 Primary Partitions, a 58 GB one for Ubuntu, 2GB one for the linux-swap, and the rest for OS X. When I installed Ubuntu it didn't have the nice flexible disk partition tools I'd used in the past and instead Ubuntu did it's own thing. It took the first partition and turned it into an Extended Partition, then created 2 Logical Paritions inside of there, 1 for Ubuntu and 1 for the swap. My understanding of partitions is that the Extended Partition must be the last Primary Partition, so I gather OS X got confused when it saw it as the first.

Leopard's currently installed as the first Primary Partition. I'm getting ready to reinstall Ubuntu into the last.

Ubuntu's back on, but once it was installed Grub (the boot menu) didn't auto-add an entry for OS X like it did for XP when that was still on the machine. To fix that I had to add the following to /boot/grub/menu.lst

#hiddenmenu

title OSX_X86
root (hd0,0)
chainloader --force +1

hiddenmenu was an existing line, I just added the # to the front of it so I wouldn't have to hit escape to access the boot menu.

One weird thing happened - when I set up OS X, I made 2 partitions, one for OS x and one for Ubuntu which I formatted as FAT 32 (my other choices were OS X specific formats). When I installed Ubuntu, it changed the FAT 32 partition to FAT 16, shrunk it down, then added a 3rd primary partition and installed itself there. Now there's an itty bitty 118 MB partition between OS X and Ubuntu It's not enough space to worry about, so I ran a partition editor and flagged it as hidden.