It’s been a LONG time since I have done any updates on running a Lenovo S10 hackintosh. When the 13″ MacBook Pros were released I ran right out and picked one up. I love the little hackintosh netbook, but it just doesn’t have the grunt I really need for running Lightroom and other photo editing software. So I am thrilled with the real deal Mac, but I still wanted to revisit the Lenovo to see how things were coming along. The good news is that it’s going VERY well.
What you’re going to need now:
- A working OS X 10.5.6 install (use your real Mac or a friends Mac or Hackintosh, you can do this with only a windows system but it’s a bit more complicated. See this thread from SilverZero)
- Retail OSX Leopard DVD 10.5.6
- NetbookBootMaker 0.8.1 from http://netputing.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4
- VoodooHDA from this thread.
- kext helper from http://cheetha.net/
If you have all the items above you are ready to go! Most everything you need to do is covered in this NetbookBootMaker howto thread. The only change is that in step 9 do not hide files. Once you have completed these steps pretty much everything other than audio and sleep is going to be working on your Lenovo. Those are up next.
To enable sleep you have to edit the Info.plist in
/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEHCI.kext/Contents/
You need to add these lines
<key>OSBundleCompatibleVersion</key>
<string>1.0</string>
under
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>3.1.5</string>
Then you will need to refresh your kexts by using the advanced section of the kext helper utility and running the kext permissions and tag cache rebuild options and rebooting.
To get Audio working:
- Delete the AppleHDA.kext from /System/Library/Extensions/ (make a backup of it somewhere to be safe)
- Copy the VoodooHDA.kext to the /Extra/LenovoS10Ext/ folder on your boot drive
- Run UpdateExtra from the /Extra/ folder
- Reboot
- You’re done!
There are still shortcomings however. Still no mic working. Still no wired ethernet working. The Audio has some issues after resuming from sleep. I haven’t tried it but apparently this thread has some steps that can fix the sound on sleep issues. Some nice bonuses are a new trackpad control panel entry that gives REALLY nice two finger scrolling capability. Very impressed with this, a huge improvement to the overall experience.
Finally, I’m not really using my S10 anymore. If you are interested in purchasing it please send me an email at web@thekitch.com I’m somewhat flexible on price, make me an offer. This includes both the stock 3 cell battery and a 9 cell battery as well as the 2gig ram upgrade. I’m happy to sell it with a working OSX installation but you’ll need your own 10.5 licensed copy.
Any luck with updating the S10 to 10.5.8? I get a crazy white screen with black lines when running the update.
I had no issues doing the update. We’re you updating from 10.5.6? You might need to boot into safe mode (-x at the boot screen) and then rerun the netbookinstaller (or dellefi) utility.
Hmmmm, the Leopard disk I have is 10.5.0
Is there something about this process that cannot be overcome?
When trying to run the netbookinstaller, it refuses to see any volume to apply the changes to.
Tried the dell efi application, and it saw my disk, but made it unbootable. (Kernel Panics even in safe mode)
ideas? suggestions?
Okay, so I obtained a 10.5.6 image. Total fail again. When Software Update installed 10.5.8… graphics destruction. Is this something with 10.5.8 or a missing step in this process that some people assume is happening?
Fred,
If you are having the scrambled video issue after applying the update you really should just have to boot into safe mode. Do this at the Chameleon bootloader screen by hitting any key. Then you can provide boot options, do -x and hit enter. This should get you safely into safe mode. Then rerun netbookinstaller (or dellefi) and you should have your video issues resolved. Did you already try these steps as I pointed out above?
I’m having the same issue with the video scrambling. I tried to re-run the netbookinstaller and when I hit install it says “select target volume” but nothing happens when I got o select the “volume” from the drop down menu at the top. I’ve been running 10.5.6 for weeks just fine and tried to download and install 10.5.8 from the “software update” right from the mac. Do I need the usb drive with the installer disk image plugged in? What and I missing?
I attempted the entire process (as far as I understood it). Running in safe mode and trying to run netbookinstaller or dellefi, does absolutely nothing. I’m sure there are steps or something that people keep glossing over because no matter what I’ve tried, updating hoses the graphics. Whatever those apps are supposed to do, isn’t happening when I run them.
aside/gripe at the internet..
It might seem obvious to people who make them, but when instructions are missing granular details It’s confusing as hell. I haven’t seen one set of instructions on the web that shows how to do this start to finish w/o going on a 3 hour trip through pointless discussion board topics that are not referring to the computer I’m trying to use.
anyway,
thanks for your assistance, especially since you sold your S10 already.
@fred
Try sticking with just 10.5.7 and see if you can get everything to work. Not all the kinks have been worked out of 10.5.8 yet. However, generally, when things break, boot to safe mode and reinstall s10 extensions in netbook installer.
I have not updated to 10.5.8 on my system yet, so I can’t comment on the video issue. Netbook installer runs perfectly fine whether 10.5.6 or 10.5.7. When updating however, you do need to run the installer again in safe mode to bring everything back.
I’m considering doing this on my S10. I’ve got a Mac Mini running OS 10.5.8 – but the System OS disk that came with it is earlier. I’ve bought a 500GB drive and will pull the 500gb drive I currently have in the S10 out, so I can fall back easily to XP Home if something goes wrong – but I’ve got a couple questions…
(and probably more to come once I try to do this).
Will the steps that require a running Mac work OK with my Mini with 10.5.8?
Once installed, can I run bootcamp to dual boot the Lenovo into OS X or a Win32? If that doesn’t work, will Parallels run on a S10 Hackintosh?
Yep, using you mini with 10.5.8 will work perfectly. However, the DVD that came with your mini may not work. You’ll need to get a retail disk to do these operations, maybe a friend has one?
You cannot use bootcamp to do dual booting. It is possible to dual boot, but its a bit more complicated. You’ll want to take a look at the OSX forum at s10lenovo.com for info on how to do multibooting. Good luck!
Fred, most people who don’t work in Technology have a very difficult time writing good step-by-step documentation. I generally go through, writing down each step (click start, goto programs, click on Administrative Tools…) with a screenshot. It isn’t as easy as it might seem. But I do agree, the Hackintosh HowTo: documentation has generally been leaving something to be desired. Of course, it isn’t your every day thing, either. It certainly makes sense that hacking OS X to run on a stock IA86 machine is more difficult than installing say, Ubuntu.
Well stated. The real issue is that very thorough documentation for something that is this detailed and technical takes eons. I wish that I had the time to build a really detailed book describing the whole thing, but sadly, I have a day job. All of these guides are designed for use by those with decent technical background, especially in mac\linux. The real trick to getting it to work is to just blindly follow the directions and make assumptions. If you stop to try and understand how\why things work you’ll go crazy. I did for a while, but then I just said screw it and went for it. I definitely had my share of screw ups before I got it all working, but in the end I learned a lot by doing, and got a great working mac netbook.
Well, even with my technical background, I have had a real heck of a time with this. I understand the issue with wanting to know “WHY” every step of the way. I refuse to “just believe” like technology is some sort of magic. Couple this with my job that, coincidentally involves writing lots of documentation and I have a recipe for confusion.
All that is to say: I have a very functional S10 running 10.5.7 and I’m not upgrading till I absolutely must.
Many thanks to all the interweb folks that filled in the blanks. Maybe I’ll work on writing this all up one day… just in time for it all to need rewritten.
…Anyone get the touch pad to accept taps? I hate the clicky buttons.
What method did you use to install? If you used netbookinstaller it actually adds a trackpad control panel item that allows you to do tap clicks, two finger right clicks, and two finger scrolling. It is based on some work done by folks in the mydellmini forums if you want to manually add it. No, I don’t have a link to it and I doubt there are any good writeups.
Well, I just picked up a Seagate 2.5″ 500gb drive for My S10 and I’ve pulled the 500gb with Win XP on it for the “archive”. If things work out and I like it, the 500gb I pulled will end up going into my Mini. If not, it’ll go back into the S10 and this drive will go into the Mini. Either way it seems like a win to me. I’m at the office and I don’t have a Mac here, so I’ll be waiting until I get home to try this. I’m going to either have to use the DVD that came with the Mini or hit the Torrents (I may have a retail of Tiger lying around somewhere, but it sounds like that might also not work). I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed that the bundled DVD will do the trick. Is there a particular reason that makes you certain that the bundled DVD will not work, or is it just a hunch or concern?
The intergrated wired ethernet not working sucks, as does having to further hack to dual boot. What about running inside of Parallels? I guess the problem there is that the HAL that is presented to Win32 is through the Parallels VM, so if OS X can’t see the wired ethernet, a Parallels VM isn’t going to be able to see it either.
Tiger won’t work with these instructions.
The need for the retail DVD I am not sure about. I just know that is what everyone uses, I’ve not tried my macbook or iMac DVDs.
I use VirtualBox and it works just fine. I think the new releases of Parallels\VMWare Fusion may require the VT bit be enabled for your processor so they may not work. VirtualBox is free though and I was able to run XP and Windows 7 in it just fine on my S10.
FWIW… can’t install from a bundled Mac OS X disk, requires a retail DVD. Not sure why – it will boot, allow you to format a HD, but won’t install.
Very tantalizing seeing the OS X desktop on my S10.
Hi,
I’ve tried you method with the netbookbootmaker and it loads fine, select the language, then it stops and says “Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer”. I’ve tried erasing the disk and formatting it as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” but it doesn’t help. I’ve already had 10.5.6 running successfully for a few months and the disk is partitioned as WINXP 50gb and OSX 100gb. I wanted to install a cleaner version and upgrade to 10.5.8.
Do you have any suggestions for what I am doing wrong?
Thanks for you help, I found your instructions the most helpful so far.
James,
That is exactly what is happening to me. I assumed that this was because I was using a bundled OS X DVD that came with a system, not the retail disk. Are you sure you’ve got a retail copy of OS X?
Yes, I’m using the retail that came with my mac mini, it’s 10.5.6. I posted on the the lenovo board http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2760&start=120 and they say it’s cos these intructions are for GUID partitioned drive where as mine is MBR cos I’m running XP as well. So You have to modify the installation DVD source, they have a USB Maker there but I’ve not been able to get it to run. Wish they could make the instruction n00b proof!!
I have the trackpad pref panel, but it does not work. Is it meant for the newer S10’s with multitouch?
James,
The copy that comes with your Mac Mini is *not* “retail”. It is “bundled”. A Retail copy is what you would get if you went into the Apple Store and plopped down $99 for a brand new, boxed “retail” copy of OS X Leopard (I can’t think of many reasons why you should have to do this, but I’m sure for $99, Apple can think of a lot of reasons why). The copy that comes with a Mac, for example, has two disks, Install Disk 1 and 2. Retail, I think the entire OS is on 1 disk.
Clearly there is some difference between the “retail” version of OS X and the bundled version that comes when you purchase a Mac, and part of that difference is that it can tell when you try to install it on Non Apple hardware. Your options are the semi-legal option of buying a “retail” copy, or the completely illegal option of finding a “retail” .iso on bit torrents and downloading it.
I of course, have simply completely given up on pursuing installing OS X on non-apple equipment and decided to buy a highly overpriced Mac Powerbook which costs more than a Sony Vaio despite having identical hardware specifications. Why would I want to run OS X on my Lenovo S10 with an $800 Mac Tablet PC coming out at some time in the near future, anyhow?
Let me reiterate – if you get the error that says, “Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer”, you are using the bundled DVD that came with a Macintosh Computer. You need to follow the instructions exactly as outlined here, including using a retail box copy of OS X. Google… is your friend.
I don’t get the part about installing the audio. I can’t find a folder /Extra/LenovoS10Ext/ on my S10. When you say boot drive, do you mean on the USB drive I used to install OS X? I tried to open that, but it just opens to the “installer” for OS X, I can’t browse the folder structure. But I’ve got a feeling that isn’t what you meant, anyhow.
When you run the netbookinstaller software make sure that you are not hiding the files. There is an option or show the extensions that are installed, you want to make sure that it is showing them. Then you will have a /boot/ folder that you can see on the harddrive that you installed to. Hope that helps.
I figured it out. I had skipped the part to update to 10.5.7 (I figured, “how important could the OS update be to things like getting the audio to work”)… Silly me, especially after talking about how you needed to carefully follow all of the steps of the installation. In order… I also had a USB mouse plugged in and had trouble rebooting to reapply the S10 extensions and that made it fail to boot into safe mode – so it is worth noting that you should remove anything extra or unnecessary from your S10 while doing the install. The reboot into Safe Mode took a LONG time and LOOKED like it was hung up. I walked away for about 15 minutes. So far, things are looking good, and your instructions are great. I’m basically a Mac noob. I’m pretty good with Debian and Ubuntu but I’m a Win32 guy. These are the best instructions for a Hackintosh I’ve seen yet. Thanks for everything.
I’m stuck on the sound. Do I need to do the kext hacks to get sleep mode working before I do the VoodooHDA steps? I’ve tried your instructions and tried installing per the forum message you link to in the instructions. One thing is that there are two versions of VoodooHDA, on comes with a control panel and the other does not. It looks like the VoodooHDA itself is the same in either case?
I installed only the audio kext alone from that thread, not the control panel version.
Just stuck it in the /Extra/LenovoS10Ext/ folder and ran the UpdateExtra. If that’s not working you may also need to use the kext helper to refresh the main kext cache.
It’s also worth checking in About this Mac->More Info->software->extensions to see if AppleHDA is loaded (should not be) and if VoodooHDA is loaded, should be.
Fixed the trackpad by uninstalling, rebooting then reinstalling the trackpad preference pane.
Perhaps this might help if anyone else runs into this problem.
When I went into the Kext Helper and refreshed the main kext cache, almost immediately the speaker icon appeared in the apple bar at the top of the screen – so that seems to have done it. Prior to that neither AppleHDA or VoodooHDA showed in About This Mac\More Info\Software\Extensions. The sound would have been a deal breaker, and I actually had blown off OS X and installed Win 7 today, but thought I’d give it one more chance. Thanks for everything, Kitch.
Oh, and anyone applying the 10.5.7 patch and getting scrambled graphics – has MISSED the step of booting into safe mode and reapplying the S10 extensions. Had it happen to me on this install.
So, the first time I did this, and couldn’t get the sound working, the fan was spinning so much it was driving me nuts. Very loud. This time, I can’t hear the fan kicking on at all – and in fact, the only spinning I can seem to hear seems to be the hard drive. This of course, worries me. I thought I read some comments in your original S10 hackintosh post about issues with the fan. Could there be something I’m missing that is affecting the fan in this thing?
http://www.s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=862&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
22. to get fans working in 10.5.6 replace the depency in AppleACPIThermal.kext
to do this edit: /S/L/E/AppleACPIPlatform.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleACPIThermal.kext/Contents/Info.plist
and change the depency version below the key com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform to 1.2.4 (from 1.2.1)
Not sure exactly what this means or exactly how to do it, but I think it means I’m right. My fans are not spinning – which seems bad.
Hey,
Just an update for you about the S10 status.
I’ve uploaded a new version (0.8.2 RC4) that enables sleep and audio without any user intervention. I’m currently having it instal a patched version of AppleAzaliaAudio to get sound so you will only have internal speakers.
You can still install VoodooHDA or Audeee if you want to, but now at least you will have audio from the start (w/ a 10.5.6+ dvd, otherwise once you update to 10.5.6+).
EVERYTHING WORKS! EVEN THE MIC!!!!
Here’s my setup in case some are having trouble
Have S10 running 10.5.8 using Mechdrew’s Netbook Installer guide # 1 which uses Netbookmaker/ NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 RC2
http://osx.mechdrew.com/guides/nbi1.shtml
(Installed with my 10.5.0 retail disk then updated using 10.5.8 combo updater via USB drive)
Had to do the mach_kernel trick at startup to be able to boot the first time and remove “.10.5.6″ from com.apple.Boot.plist in /Extra folder.
Rebooted
Everything worked on the spot except Ethernet (of course) and mic. Sound worked beautifully.
Found a lovely patch here–>
http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3249
and did the following with perfect results…
1. Deleted AppleAzaliaAudio.kext from /Extra/S10Ext folder – authenticated
2. Dropped VoodooHDA.kext into /Extra/S10Ext folder – authenticated
3. Dropped VoodooHDA.prefPane into System/Library/PreferencePanes folder
4. Ran UpdateExtra app in the /Extra folder
5. Reboot
6. Followed bsiv’s setup instructions….
“Go to System Preferences > Sound > Input, set level of the Mic to MAX.
Configure VoodooHDA in System Preferences with these settings:
Speaker to 90%
Mic to 100%
iMix to <10%
Recording Level to 40%
Monitor to 100%"
VOILA! Perfectly working internal mic!
Thanks to everyone for all of their hard work on this!
Pete