Another friend of mine is going to get a dell mini 10v: the now discontinued easily hackintoshable netbook. Since I did the install and it was hellish from the current how-to’s available in June of 2010 (because of bit rot and lack of updates regarding versions of software in those how-to’s), I thought I would include some links and notes on how I got it finally working.

I bought a retail version of os x snow leopard 10.6.3 and tried to install it, but it didn’t work for me in the least. In the end I borrowed a retail version of snow leopard 10.6.0 from a friend, used it in conjunction with netbookmaker 0.8.4 rc1, from an external usb harddrive formatted from a working snow leopard 10.6.4 machine. You can’t format the external usb harddrive from anything lower than an existing snow leopard 10.6.0 machine.

Just to be clear: installing hackintosh directly from 10.6.3 doesn’t work, and won’t ever work. Find an earlier os x version 10.6.0 or 10.6.1 (in the retail version, single user copies won’t work) then upgrade but only step by step upgrades to 10.6.2 then 10.6.3. Currently my hackintosh runs 10.6.3 fairly happily, with some kernel panics about once a week.

I first formatted the internal harddrive when setting up os x to have 2 large partitions so I could then install linux as a dual boot.

To do my initial install I followed this how-to:

step 1: http://www.mymacnetbook.com/2010/03/09/guide-to-installing-mac-os-x-snow-leopard-10-6-2-on-a-dell-mini-10v/

and then this forum post to step up to 10.6.3:

step 2: http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-10v-mac-os-x-discussion/21424-install-osx-hard-drive-while-enclosure-before-putting-back-into-mini-10v-2.html#post158355

Then for the dual bootness with linux, I did a classic ubuntu install from usb stick and I think I fixed the grub issues by following this http://www.dailyblogged.com/booting-ubuntu-with-the-chameleon-bootloader/ … but I’m not sure since it has been several months.

I then successfully reflashed the hackintosh’s built in broadcom wireless card (from the ubuntu partition) with airport product + vendor id’s, + most importantly, region free for wifi channel 12 + 13, using this how-to: http://prasys.info/2009/12/rebranding-broadcom-802-11abgn-cards-as-airport/ . Please note that in step 8 of the how-to, the git path in that how-to has moved to this: git clone git://git.bu3sch.de/b43-tools.git .  The system profiler on os x now reports my card as an AirPort Extreme with the Locale: ETSI  and adds and subtracts channels based on my current location.

So now I have a working system where I use the chameleon bootloader to dual boot os x snow leopard 10.6.3 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx.