MSI Wind is basically 100% compatible for Hackintoshes now

[Agentbolt]

In a move that will surely get someone fired, Realtek released awesome beta drivers for the MSI Wind for OSX. Having to buy another wireless card was the thing stopping me from trying to Hackintosh it, so since that wall came down, I went to go buy a Wind today.

Started from scratch and 2 hours later, here I am, posting from my Wind in OSX 10.5.5. Headphone output works currently by simply double click a script, BUT there's an eminent hack in the works from the Vodoo team (as of 12/23/08) anyways that promises to make the headphone jack work like it's supposed to. I.e. plug in headphones, sound comes out of those. Without headphones, speakers.

The synaptic trackpad already has drivers that allow multi-touch gestures.

The realtek drivers work BEAUTIFULLY. You need to real the Realtek program to connect to wireless networks, but it works like a charm.

It runs pretty quickly too. Heck even the black and white coloring matches the old school Macbooks pretty closely.

Although a few people have run into MBR difficulties and can't boot, from personal experience this was completely idiot proof. Make the partition, install to the partition, update to 10.5.5, and then download a few KEXTs and other random stuff. Took me 2 hours without any trouble.

I heartily recommend the Wind to anyone looking to do a Hackintosh laptop.

 

[rikadik]

This is great news.

I originally bought the Wind in anticipation of greater compatibility with OSX. I personally couldn't see the point in installing OSX with onboard audio and wireless weren't going to work. It looks like these are now solved so I'm going to give it a go sometime in the next few days.

Nice find AgentBolt, thanks for bringing to my attention! And merry christmas!

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
In a move that will surely get someone fired, Realtek released awesome beta drivers for the MSI Wind for OSX. Having to buy another wireless card was the thing stopping me from trying to Hackintosh it, so since that wall came down, I went to go buy a Wind today.

Started from scratch and 2 hours later, here I am, posting from my Wind in OSX 10.5.5. Headphone output works currently by simply double click a script, BUT there's an eminent hack in the works from the Vodoo team (as of 12/23/08) anyways that promises to make the headphone jack work like it's supposed to. I.e. plug in headphones, sound comes out of those. Without headphones, speakers.

The synaptic trackpad already has drivers that allow multi-touch gestures.

The realtek drivers work BEAUTIFULLY. You need to real the Realtek program to connect to wireless networks, but it works like a charm.

It runs pretty quickly too. Heck even the black and white coloring matches the old school Macbooks pretty closely.

Although a few people have run into MBR difficulties and can't boot, from personal experience this was completely idiot proof. Make the partition, install to the partition, update to 10.5.5, and then download a few KEXTs and other random stuff. Took me 2 hours without any trouble.

I heartily recommend the Wind to anyone looking to do a Hackintosh laptop.

Can you comment on battery life? How long with the 3 cell battery?
Does suspend work? Does it resume correctly after a suspend / closing the lid?

 

[Agentbolt]

Battery life with Windows is pretty awful. Maybe 2 hours at best. In OSX it appears to be more on the order of 2.5 hours, MAYBE 3.

Suspend doesn't hurt anything currently. The only thing it does is reset the sound to speakers. Instead of double clicking the script to change things, a small app was written to do the thing automatically. Double click the headphone icons, and the headphone jack is activated. Double click the speakers, and speaker mode is activated. So when it sleeps, you have to double click the headphone icon again if you were using headphones.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
Battery life with Windows is pretty awful. Maybe 2 hours at best. In OSX it appears to be more on the order of 2.5 hours, MAYBE 3.

Suspend doesn't hurt anything currently. The only thing it does is reset the sound to speakers. Instead of double clicking the script to change things, a small app was written to do the thing automatically. Double click the headphone icons, and the headphone jack is activated. Double click the speakers, and speaker mode is activated. So when it sleeps, you have to double click the headphone icon again if you were using headphones.

No worries on audio; I don't use headphones. However, for the battery life, does OS X cycle the Wind's CPU as appropriate, so that when it's off AC power the CPU goes into low-power mode? How does this work?

 

[Agentbolt]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
Battery life with Windows is pretty awful. Maybe 2 hours at best. In OSX it appears to be more on the order of 2.5 hours, MAYBE 3.

Suspend doesn't hurt anything currently. The only thing it does is reset the sound to speakers. Instead of double clicking the script to change things, a small app was written to do the thing automatically. Double click the headphone icons, and the headphone jack is activated. Double click the speakers, and speaker mode is activated. So when it sleeps, you have to double click the headphone icon again if you were using headphones.

No worries on audio; I don't use headphones. However, for the battery life, does OS X cycle the Wind's CPU as appropriate, so that when it's off AC power the CPU goes into low-power mode? How does this work?

OSX doesn't control the CPU speed, the BIOS does as it uses Speedstep. It works fine in OSX. The 1.09 BIOS also includes an overclocking utility, so you can overclock the Atom processor 8, 14, or 24%. The overclocking works fine in OSX as well, as it's also controlled by the BIOS.

I plan to just buy a 6 or 9 cell battery sometime soon. Decent ones seem to run about 70 bucks on Ebay.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
Battery life with Windows is pretty awful. Maybe 2 hours at best. In OSX it appears to be more on the order of 2.5 hours, MAYBE 3.

Suspend doesn't hurt anything currently. The only thing it does is reset the sound to speakers. Instead of double clicking the script to change things, a small app was written to do the thing automatically. Double click the headphone icons, and the headphone jack is activated. Double click the speakers, and speaker mode is activated. So when it sleeps, you have to double click the headphone icon again if you were using headphones.

No worries on audio; I don't use headphones. However, for the battery life, does OS X cycle the Wind's CPU as appropriate, so that when it's off AC power the CPU goes into low-power mode? How does this work?

OSX doesn't control the CPU speed, the BIOS does as it uses Speedstep. It works fine in OSX. The 1.09 BIOS also includes an overclocking utility, so you can overclock the Atom processor 8, 14, or 24%. The overclocking works fine in OSX as well, as it's also controlled by the BIOS.

I plan to just buy a 6 or 9 cell battery sometime soon. Decent ones seem to run about 70 bucks on Ebay.

$49.50 4400 mAh replacement batteries on DealExtreme:

Black

White

 

[rikadik]

I'm currently trying to install OSX onto my Wind and have already hit a stumbling block.

I don't have an external DVD drive or big enough USB stick so am using a USB HDD. I have followed weaksauce12's instructions (posted here, linked by Kaido in this thread but am having difficulty getting the Leopard installer to load.

So far I have downloaded the 'MSIWindosx86.iso' iso, mounted it in OSX, restored it to my USB HDD, and then installed Chameleon 1.0.11 to it. I then plug the USB HDD into the Wind, hold F11 on start up, select my USB HDD from the list and it says 'boot1: error'.

As general troubleshooting I am currently trying:
- Trying over and over again (each time wiping and restoring the USB HDD)
- Perhaps using an older version of Chameleon (older versions I see in guides refer to 10.0.6)
- Downloading a fresh copy of MSIWindosx86.iso
- Frantically googling around (with so far limited success).

Anyone got any ideas? (particularly Kaido who seems to know a lot about this!)

Many thanks :gift:

 

[Agentbolt]

Ugh, installing with a USB stick is BRUTAL.

Use this guide.

http://forums.msiwind.net/mac/...ick-usb-dvd-t4701.html

No USB stuff neccessary. It's what I used.

 

[rikadik]

Cheers, I think I will give that a go! :beer:

EDIT:

Ahh I've buggered my Wind now. Was creating new partition structure and the system completely froze. Now Windows won't boot, and I"ve wiped the recovery partition! Guess I might be needing that external DVD drive anyway!

EDIT:

Wind is now back to life... currently installing OSX! Wahey!

 

[Agentbolt]

Originally posted by: rikadik
Cheers, I think I will give that a go! :beer:

EDIT:

Ahh I've buggered my Wind now. Was creating new partition structure and the system completely froze. Now Windows won't boot, and I"ve wiped the recovery partition! Guess I might be needing that external DVD drive anyway!

EDIT:

Wind is now back to life... currently installing OSX! Wahey!

What'd you use to Partition it? I used *****, which is free and seems less prone to freakouts than Partition Magic.

Anyways, glad to hear you're back on track. Let us know if it worked. I'm vaguely considering doing a walkthrough for the various other stuff that needs to be done after OSX is installed (Updating to 10.5.5, installing the right video kexts to keep 1024x600 resolution, installing the speaker/headphone switching apps, etc... It's all info that's out there but it's kind of scattered.)

Seriously? "EASE US" without the space is a dirty word here? Whatever.

 

[rikadik]

Please to say I'm posting from my MSI running Leopard flawlessly.

Installed from external HDD in the end. I found that installing Chameleon didn't work, installing Chameleon with OSX86 Tools didn't work... but I used OSX86Tools followed by Chameleon made it work! I now have a reliable bootable HDD with MSIWindosx86 on it.

I used EASE US too. It was all going fine and dandy but froze at 99% and hung for 3 hours. Did a restart and the XP partition was missing files to boot up. Fortunately my HDD (which didn't work the previous 10 times I'd tried it) managed to boot the Leopard installer.

I haven't gotten around to updating much. I've installed Ralink drivers (mine isn't Realtek despite the fact Realtek drivers coming out persuaded me to hackintosh the thing) which work great.

Plan to do 10.5.5 and 10.5.6 at a later date.

Am I correct in thinking that I can allow Software Update to go ahead and update everything except the 10.5.5/6 updates?

Also, once I have this fully up and running is it easy to create an image of my OSX install to make reinstalls a breeze in future?

 

[Kaido]

I need a beta tester for my 10.5.6 Wind package. You'll need a Wind and either a Mac with a SATA connector (direct or enclosure) or a USB CD-ROM drive, as well as a desire for adventure. Inquire within.

Shoot me a PM if you'd like to give it a shot I am looking for someone who is using the stock wifi card, if possible - mine is upgraded.

 

[Kaido]

Guide & Software:

http://leopardsoup.pbwiki.com/wind

 

[Agentbolt]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Guide & Software:

http://leopardsoup.pbwiki.com/wind

That guide looks a lot more complicated than the setup using an .iso and HD Helper. Most people are looking to install OSX without access to a Mac or a USB CD Rom drive.

Also, one part of the guide is slightly outdated, the "going into the terminal and calling the switch.sh macro" method isn't neccessary anymore. There's an app package that's been brought out that does it automatically. You type in your password the first time, then simply double click the app on your desktop to enable speakers or headphones.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt

Originally posted by: Kaido
Guide & Software:

http://leopardsoup.pbwiki.com/wind

That guide looks a lot more complicated than the setup using an .iso and HD Helper. Most people are looking to install OSX without access to a Mac or a USB CD Rom drive.

Also, one part of the guide is slightly outdated, the "going into the terminal and calling the switch.sh macro" method isn't neccessary anymore. There's an app package that's been brought out that does it automatically. You type in your password the first time, then simply double click the app on your desktop to enable speakers or headphones.

Do you have a link to that?

Also, it may be more complicated, but it works great

 

[rikadik]

Just saying Happy New Year from my MSI Wind running OSX 10.5.6 with everything working! I'm even running Logic Pro 8 on this thing, amazing!

 

[Agentbolt]

Excellent, glad to hear it. What're you using for the headphones? (If anything)

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

What about closing the lid and opening it. Will it go to sleep?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
What about closing the lid and opening it. Will it go to sleep?

Yup. There's a clamshell driver for it.

 

[murphy55d]

If only the screen in these was a little bigger. Whats the most compatible laptop available?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: murphy55d
If only the screen in these was a little bigger. Whats the most compatible laptop available?

The MSI Wind :evil:

Laptop Hackintoshes are notoriously evil. I recommend avoiding at all costs lol. The Wind is pretty good, but it's a netbook - I sold mine because it was giving me hand cramps to type on. If you want a Mac laptop, my recommendation is to buy a real Apple model. For desktops and netbooks, it's a different story, but I haven't had good experiences with laptops. Browsing the success rates over at InsanelyMac tells me there's still plenty of weird bugs going on. It's doable, but it can be EXTREMELY frustrating.

 

[Agentbolt]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
What about closing the lid and opening it. Will it go to sleep?

It goes to sleep fine in every situation except when the battery dies. For some reason it doesn't do Safe Sleep correctly unless you muck around in the Terminal. There's apparently a fix on the way.

 

[murphy55d]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: murphy55d
If only the screen in these was a little bigger. Whats the most compatible laptop available?

The MSI Wind :evil:

Laptop Hackintoshes are notoriously evil. I recommend avoiding at all costs lol. The Wind is pretty good, but it's a netbook - I sold mine because it was giving me hand cramps to type on. If you want a Mac laptop, my recommendation is to buy a real Apple model. For desktops and netbooks, it's a different story, but I haven't had good experiences with laptops. Browsing the success rates over at InsanelyMac tells me there's still plenty of weird bugs going on. It's doable, but it can be EXTREMELY frustrating.

Wife uses OS X at work, and would like one for home as well. We looked at the MacBooks but for all the more she'll use it(internet, watching movies, etc) $1000 is too much.

The $300 Hackintosh desktop is a sweet price, but its a desktop. Not what we're looking for. The Wind is almost perfect, except its screen is too small.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Originally posted by: murphy55d

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: murphy55d
If only the screen in these was a little bigger. Whats the most compatible laptop available?

The MSI Wind :evil:

Laptop Hackintoshes are notoriously evil. I recommend avoiding at all costs lol. The Wind is pretty good, but it's a netbook - I sold mine because it was giving me hand cramps to type on. If you want a Mac laptop, my recommendation is to buy a real Apple model. For desktops and netbooks, it's a different story, but I haven't had good experiences with laptops. Browsing the success rates over at InsanelyMac tells me there's still plenty of weird bugs going on. It's doable, but it can be EXTREMELY frustrating.

Wife uses OS X at work, and would like one for home as well. We looked at the MacBooks but for all the more she'll use it(internet, watching movies, etc) $1000 is too much.

The $300 Hackintosh desktop is a sweet price, but its a desktop. Not what we're looking for. The Wind is almost perfect, except its screen is too small.

Just get a LCD Monitor and hook it up to it. External Monitors with OS X is amazing. A lot better then Windows.