Mac OSX on Lenovo S10 and Dell Mini 9 | theKitch

Mac OSX on Lenovo S10 and Dell Mini 9

Published on March 3, 2009 in Tech. 124 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

S10andMini9

Notice! I have updated this with a new report on my latest attempt with OS X on my Lenovo S10. It’s easier than ever. It does require that you have a running OS X Leopard machine, but it is dead simple. See this post.

I’ve spent the better part of this past weekend working on getting Mac OS X running on a Dell Mini 9 and my Lenovo S10.  I’ve spent some time in the past Hackintoshing on various systems but it’s been quite some time since I had done it.  Abby’s recent Mini 9 purchase and the sale of my own iMac spurred this whole thing on.   This along with the step by step guide made famous by Gizmodo sparked all this insanity.

The whole thing is made possible by information gathered from:

The S10 (or a dell mini with an upgraded internal drive) makes a truly amazing Mini Mac.  Performance is VERY snappy.   Think of it as running a first gen single core Intel Mac Mini.  It’s nearly identical.   I’ve even got Virtualbox running the included XP Home in a virtual machine and it is trucking away happily.  The small screens do have some limitations but for the most part I have been happy with the real estate provided.  More than adequate.  The Mini9 is going to live on as an XP system, but the S10 shall forever more remain a Mac.  I love it!

Now the technical crap

First thing you’ll need to do is get some install media ready.  I don’t own an external DVD drive so I decided to use the “single key” USB drive install method outlined at mydellmini.  For this you will need one PC, one Mac, one 8gig USB drive, one retail OSX 10.5.6 DVD.

Use this AMAZING guide for step by step directions on how to do the install:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/how-to-mac-os-x-dellefi-installation-t3925.html

This worked perfectly on the Dell Mini 9.  You are DONE.  Note that I did my install to an external USB HD (need to use GUID partition table in Disk Utility) and it’s working fine.  Although sleep does not work.  Result of the USB drive or the 8gig SSD internal which has known sleep problems.

Some slight tweaks for the Lenovo S10.

1) I used the latest DellEFI beta from http://code.google.com/p/mydellmini/downloads/list

I used the DellEFI1.1b2.zip I removed the RealtekR1000.kext from DellEFI/Contents/Resources/Extensions/ in this package though since LAN doesn’t work on our S10s. It’s possible this could have been left alone, haven’t tried it yet with it in place.  I also removed IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext since it’s for the sd card reader on the mini 9 which we also don’t need.

2) When installing the DellEFI package I did advanced and did not do the system specific dsdt file since I suspect this might do bad things on the lenovo, more experiments to come later. YOU MUST INSTALL THE DSDT file option.  Without it the system will not power off, restart, or have properly working audio!!!!

There are a few more steps for the S10 as well.

For Audio install Audieee by following the directions exactly as they appear on the site.

For sleep and speedstep download:

Voodoopower from VoodooPower Kext

VoodooUSBEHCI from VoodooUSBEHCI

GenericCPUPowerManagement Application

Install the two kexts using kext helper from http://cheetha.net/

After rebooting then follow these steps:

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.

UPDATE:

Fixed fan issues by following the information on this thread.  More specifically I grabbed the 10.5.6 AppleACPIPlateform.kext from this post. Once you have gotten that you can use the kext updater again to replace it on your system and reboot. Fans work great now!

That’s everything you need to have a well oiled Mac Netbook!  Some of this is a bit vaugue so please feel free to ask questions.  It can be a little challenging to piece all this crud together from the various sites out there so if there is something that needs clarification please let me know.

Much thanks to Abby for the photo and loaning me her Dell Mini 9 for this experiment!  Also note, the mini9 is just running xp above, but yes, it’s also running Mac OS

124 Responses to “Mac OSX on Lenovo S10 and Dell Mini 9”

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  • bubba
    August 14, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    I have a Lenovo S10 1GB 320GB and my install was very simple.

    I started with the MSIWindow86.iso which was OS X 10.5.4. Then I applied the Apple 10.5.8 combo update. At that point the keyboard and trackpad (I hate trackpads I wish Lenovo would have stuck with the original IBM pointing stick but morons like to rub their trackpads and tap on them) stopped working and the display resolution changed to 800 x 600.

    I obtained a copy of 10.5.6 upgrade pack v2 and from that distribution I applied the AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext, the ApplePS2Controller.kext, the AppleIntegratedFramebuffer.kext and the LaptopDisplay.kext. DO NOT use the AppleIntelGMA950.kext as this causes the display to become unreadable after rebooting.

    With this method my keyboard works, trackpad works and the display works at 1024 x 600. The fan has always worked so I didn’t need to changed anything for that.

    I can’t tell you if sleep works or not. If I am using my S10 at home I have it plugged in so I don’t care if it sleeps. And when I use the S10 on battery I turn it off when I am done.

  • Napster
    August 28, 2009 at 11:00 am

    Hello Guyz

    Thanks for such a wonderfull article……. Till now I done a lot things with my S10 to give it ‘Savvy’ look….. First I disassemble my whole laptop…. painted all white parts like palm rest, LCD bezel in matte black colour…….. and then I painted the blue face plate with black also but did some stencil work for guess what…. Apple logo………..

    Then followed this guide to install MSIWINDX86 distro…. Everything is working great…… Sound is fixed by Voodoo kext, wifi by bcm enabler, track pad also recognise taps, web cam working neatly, sleep is working….

    Windows XP intact and dual booting. Recovery partiotion is intact……. (Just used 30 GB D: partition)

    Just still having problems with Ethernet and Fan….
    Hoping in future some body will provide a distro for S10 specifically….

    Thanks Again………..

    S10 Hackintosh Rocks……

  • Jesse
    December 16, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    So I’ve been using my Lenovo S10 Hackintosh for about 6 months now, and it rocks! But, I’ve yet to get sleep working! I’ve tried every fix i can find, and no matter what I do, when I close the lid or select sleep from the menu, the screen goes dim, and it seems to go to sleep, but then it wakes up again.

    I’ve check the console, and it looks like USB7 is waking it up once it’s asleep, but I can’t find out what that is or how to disable it. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

  • Scott
    December 19, 2009 at 9:30 am

    Can anyone tell me how to get my Lenovo S10 Hackintosh to work with my LCD projector? Everything has worked perfectly, except for this. I’m a teacher and need to be able to show powerpoints, videos, documents, etc. to my Spanish classes and I don’t want to have to buy another netbook just to have it work with the LCD projector.
    Please help!!

    • kitch
      December 19, 2009 at 9:36 am

      You cannot do mirror displays with your netbook. But hooking up an external display should allow you to do “extended desktop”. When I had mine and I plugged in an external display it automatically started working to extend my desktop. You just can’t have the same image on the built in display and the external display. Hope that helps.

      • Scott
        December 19, 2009 at 5:56 pm

        Thanks…the problem is that when I plug-in the LCD projector to the S10, the display goes black and/or looks like the old color lined screen from an old TV…I can’t get it to do anything else. I had tried a few tricks before plugging it in and once plugged in, but nothing seemed to work. Definitely wouldn’t automatically go to “extended desktop”
        Thanks for the try and any other advice you might have.

  • Phillip
    December 25, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    My 9 year had been asking me for a laptop for months before xmas and I was not even considering it, especially because every computer in my house and are all macs. A friend suggested hackintoshing and at first I still thought no way. I ran accross a Lenovo S10 on ebay for $150 and grabbed it right up. It was a pretty easy process to do and needless to say the gift was a hit. But twice today I tried to update to 10.5.8 and it seems like it’s going to work but then the screen scrambles. Any can anyone help?

  • Lord
    December 28, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    You have to reinstall the video kext..go into safe mode and reload the kext…. lots of how to’s on line

  • Daren Taddio
    April 6, 2010 at 9:45 am

    Have a go with & Have your iPad for Nothing! -> http://bit.ly/cFBuis

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