HOW TO – OS X on the MSI Wind

Computers & Mobile
HOW TO – OS X on the MSI Wind

Msimacosx
Wow, Jose @ Planetx64x has a nice step-by-step on installing Mac OS X on the super tiny MSI Wind, it’s a pockable Mac almost – via /.

Recently I’ve managed to install Apple’s OS X Leopard operating system 10.5.4 onto a 10 inch MSI Wind Netbook, and you can too. Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself an Apple fan, and run nothing but authentic Macs in my home studio office. If you’re looking for another Mac vs. PC debate, then there’s is nothing for you to see here. Move right along please.

The Victim: An MSI Wind U100 Netbook. This slick little machine comes preloaded with your choice of Windows or Linux. Armed with an Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD, built-in ethernet, wifi, webcam and bluetooth. That said, the most enticing feature is its crisp & clear 10 inch screen.

To accomplish this procedure, you will be opening the MSI netbook to upgrade the memory and swap out the factory wifi card (which will void your warranty). So think twice if you are not comfortable doing such a thing. We need to do this bacause having more memory always helps any operating system run snappier. OS X is no different. The MSI Wind takes up to 2 GB of RAM. More importantly the factory wifi card that it comes with, does not work in OS X out of the box. So you’ll need to acquire a Dell Broadcom DW 1390 or 1490 internal mini pci wifi card, which are both inherently supported in OS X.

I found both the 1 GB memory upgrade stick and a 1390 card on ebay for no more than $20 each. You’ll need a special Leopard build titled “MSI WINDos x86”, of which the Hackint0sh community should be credited for assembling. It’s a slipstreamed “Kalyway” build which includes all the proper Kexts, drivers, Kernel modifications, and other files necessary to achieve a fully working installation on the MSI wind. Please do not inquire about where to find this disk image, it’s in all the typical shady places on the net.

6 thoughts on “HOW TO – OS X on the MSI Wind

  1. Onetrack says:

    This disk has absolutely nothing at all to do with Kalyway, it is built directly off of a retail disk specifically for the msi wind, advent 4211 and medion akoya.

  2. Satisfied user says:

    I installed MSI WINDos x86 version of OSX onto an MSI Wind laptop and it is amazing. With the Broadcom Wifi card and more memory (both cost me $20 total) everything works under OS X except the audio in and out ports (and in a pinch you could use a USB audio device). It drives external monitors up to 1920×1200 (as far as I tested)and is a wonderfully small Mac.

    Even better, I swapped into the laptop a 200GB 7200 RPM hard disk, and used the extra space to dual boot OSX and Windows XP. The faster hard drive makes for an even faster computing experience and having both OS’s available in one tiny fast working machine is hugely impressive.

    For the heck of it I’m going to try to triple boot Ubuntu.

  3. Curios in Seattle says:

    Any words of wisdom or tips on making the dual boot would be helpful. I wish to do the same (500 GB Drive) but have only performed dual Win 2K and XP or XP and Vista installs. I have an external CD, If I do a startup from this will I be able to see the partitions so I don’t over-write?

    Curious

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