Last night, a friend and I “hackintosh’d” his Dell Mini 9.
• Initial Guide we used: http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook (make sure to read the whole thing, including comments, there’s a bit there about the boot code if you’re using USB, it needs to be 81 and not 80).
• Here’s the guide we should have had (and found after): http://dellefi.mechdrew.com/guide/oldguide.shtml
So, friend bought a refurb Dell Mini 9 with an 8gig SSD. Sweet little machine. He’s a MCSA, so generally he’s a big Windows guy, but not blindly so. I think he mainly gravitates toward it because he knows Windows, and AD/Exchange, which is how he makes his money (he’s the AD Admin for the University).
So, hackintoshing this Dell was the goal behind him buying it. Since we didn’t have a giant USB thumb drive (8gig), or have a retail leopard disk (mine was lost long ago), I used an external USB drive, and partitioned it into two drives. One for TYPE11, and the other for the install media (which is just a dmg called “live.dmg”). You have to run syslinux to make the TYPE11 partition bootable, but that’s covered in the guide.
The main problem we encountered was, 8gig is not big enough for a 10.5.4 or 10.5.6 install. The former is over by 32meg, and the latter by 64meg. That’s with unchecking everything unnecessary. For some reason, the formatted drive is 7.2gig, the OS sees that as 6.8gig, and the installer seems to reserve 1gig for the install/swap. So, we had to hack the installer to not install some things. You’ll need xam to do that, and the file to hack is the “distribution” file that’s located in the OSInstall.mpkg, in /System/Installation/ on the Install DVD. You’ll need to make a r/w disk image in order to hack it.
First time around, we disabled installing AsianLanguages, AdditionalVoices, and iTunes. Install worked with 900meg available, but the setup after reboot never loads. Turns out, you MUST install AsianLanguages. *sigh* So, hack again, reenable that, and reinstall. 600meg available on top of install. Setup ran, and everything worked. Actually, the Mini runs great! Other than the screen being kinda vertically challenged, and the keyboard being a bit small, the speed is great (boots like a shot). SSD probably has a good deal to do with that. And, you can’t argue with the size. I checked, and it JUST fits inside my slotbar. Wish I could afford one. Maybe the rumors will turn out to be true, and Apple will release something early next year, though if it requires cell phone service with Verizon, then it’s not really an option. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll probably just buy something with my tax return next year. =)