EclipseEmpire

I have always been a huge fan of the 12″ Powerbook that Apple produced a few years ago.  Once they made the transition to Intel chips, the 12″ was left to memory with only a 13″ Macbook left to satisfy the the small form factor need. Fast forward a few years and the deign genius’ at Apple introduced a lightweight version called the MacBook Air.  Although they did trim the weight and thickness of the Macbook, they still stuck with a 13″ screen.  Now the MacBook Air is very light, but still quite large if you need to carry it for hours at a time.  We need a small, lightweight netbook that runs OSX.

After the rumors of an Apple made netbook that didn’t come true at the latest notebook event, I went looking for an alternative. The PC market is exploding with netbook options.  From 7″ screens, solid state hard drives and Intel’s latest Atom processor, to 10” screens.  After about a week of research, I found a model that met most of my needs.  I choose to purchase an Asus Eee PC 1000H.  The 1000H is a 10″ 1.6GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM and a 160GB 2.5″ SATA hard drive. This model also had the most success running OSX.  I found a lot of resources online for installing OSX86 on the Eee.  I also wanted to keep Windows XP on the machine which it comes with the Home edition.  I needed XP Professional in order to use it at my work. I also would like to run a special Linux distribution called Back Track to do penetration tests on my network. So after more research, I found a way to triple-boot my Eee.  Here are the play-by-play instructions I came up with after a Saturday of trial and error.

I won’t go into exact details however I will provide the links to the how-to’s needed for each step. 

First off you need to install Windows XP.  You can stick with XP Home if you wish.  If you want to install Windows XP Professional, follow the following how-to:

http://thew0rd.com/2008/10/14/how-to-install-windows-xp-pro-on-the-asus-eee-pc-1000h/

Once you have Windows XP installed, you now have to prepare for the OSX install.  You have to create a partition for OSX.  I use a program called EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition available at:

http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm

This program will allow you to change partitions without data loss.  You need to create a new unformatted partition (you will format it using the OSX install disk).  Be sure to make it a primary (not logical) partition.  

You will now be able to install OSX using the following How To:

http://www.maceee.com/how-to-mac-os-x-1054-for-the-eee-pc-901-1000h-27.html

Be sure to run the BIOS update and disable all onboard devices (Except USB) in the BIOS during the install.  During the OSX install, use Disk Utility to format your new partition as HFS+.  If your install hangs during the “Transfer Data from your old Mac” stage, do this:

Reboot your machine.

After reboot press F8 and type -s to go into single user mode.

Then type:

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

passwd root

-enter password, confirm password, restart and login as root and whatever you set your password to.

Although that article says sound doesn’t work, there is another site:

http://ipis-osx.wikidot.com/forum/t-100527/quick-and-dirty-guide-to-getting-temporary-audio-from-internal-speakers

That got it working.  There is also an application that does all the heavy lifting in the background for you called Audieee:

http://ipis-osx.wikidot.com/the_sound_tutorial

You should now have a dual-booting XP/OSX Eee PC.  Using the Darwin Bootloader you can choose what partition to boot.  

Now comes adding more operating systems to your new machine.  Whenever I want to add more OSs, I boot into Windows XP and use EASEUS to create a new primary partition.  I then install the new OS.  Most installs will make that new OS the active partition.  You can always use your hacked OSX install DVD to make the Darwin Bootloader the active partition.  To do this: 

Boot using your OSX DVD and press F8 and type -s to go into single user mode.

Then type the following (assuming OSX is on the second partition):

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0

flag 2

update

write

quit

reboot

You have now restored the Darwin Bootloader and can now select any of the partitions to boot to.  

I now have 5 partitions:

30 GB XP Pro

30 GB OSX86

10 GB Back Track 3 Eee Version

30 GB Windows 7 

60 GB Storage (Formatted FAT 32 so all OSs can use)

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