Snow Leopard 10.6 on MSI Wind U100 netbook

This is not a how-to guide, tutorial or walk-through, I just list the kexts and settings needed to get Snow Leopard 10.6.0 or 10.6.1 up and running on an MSI Wind U100 netbook. Even though I haven’t personally tested it, the kexts should also work in the Wind U100 plus model. Up to OS X 10.6.1 the Atom 270/280 CPUs are natively supported by the Darwin kernel a.k.a. the vanilla kernel. There are rumors that this may change in a later release of OS X. In fact, Apple already seeded an OS X 10.6.2 developer version with Atom support disabled.

Added 11/10/09: Do NOT update to 10.6.2 as Apple deliberately disabled Atom CPU support and your MSI Wind netbook will go into a reboot loop or simply crash! You’ll need a modified kernel to run 10.6.2 or higher on an Atom CPU! If you’re fluent with Terminal, you might as well install the 10.6.2 update and reinstall the old kernel, see this post for more information. I tried it and it works fantastic!

I suggest you use one of the USB based installation guides to start off with.

BIOS settings

It may not be neccessary but make sure you enable AHCI disk support in the BIOS (see advanced tab).

Kernel Extensions

To run 10.6.1 on the Wind properly there’s quite a number of kexts involved. This is the list of kernel extensions needed:

AHCIPortInjector.kext
AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext
AppleIntelGMA950.kext
AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin
AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle
AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle
AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext
fakesmc.kext
IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext
NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
RealtekR1000.kext
SleepEnabler.kext
VoodooBattery.kext
VoodooHDA.kext
VoodooPS2Controller.kext
VoodooPowerMini.kext

Download kext archive here.

If you’re using a USB based installation guide, make sure you put all those kexts in your Chameleon RC3 (or newer) /Extra/Extensions (E/E) folder on your USB stick, even though not all of them may get loaded at that point. You probably will need a USB mouse and keyboard to complete the OS X installation.

Post installation tweaks

Once Snow Leopard installation is completed and you installed Chameleon RC3 on your Wind’s internal drive make sure to load the grey kexts (see screenshot, click to enlarge) from /S/L/E. I’m always using Kext Helper b7 to do this but OSX86Tools works as well. Keep the kexts marked red in the /E/E folder on the Wind but remove the grey kexts from /E/E because you just installed them to your /S/L/E folder.

You may have to re-apply all the AppleIntel* kexts after an OS X update if your screen resolution falls back to 800×600 mode.

The following files have to be copied to the /Extra folder on your USB installation stick and to your Wind’s internal hard drive:

com.apple.Boot.plist for MSI Wind U100
SMBios.plist
DSDT.aml – this DSDT needs BIOS revision 1.0E Wind U100 and may not work with earlier/later BIOS revisions or different Wind models! DSDT is patched to fire an event if the lid is closed (important for sleep).

Download the files here.

Wi-Fi/WLAN

If you’re still using the original wireless card Realtek RTL8187S that came with the Wind, you’ll need Realtek’s wireless drivers for OS X too. To auto-close the Realtek WLAN Client Utility you may use the included AutoCloseRealTek Automator script. To load it at startup you have to mark it to open at login. It will then automatically close the WLAN Utility after 20 seconds which is usually enough to connect to your pre-configured Wi-Fi access point.

Download WLAN archive here.

For the record:

• I’m only using 32-bit kernel mode (-legacy flag in com.apple.Boot.plist)
• Internal camera works very well using Photo Booth (you may have to press Fn-Camera to activate it)
• Sleep works when closing the lid or pressing the power button or after a specified inactivity timeout
• Display is running in native 1024×600 mode
• QE/CI is working for the GMA950 GPU (Test: Start FrontRow. If the screen stays black, QE/CI is not working)
• Bluetooth is working (you may have to press Fn-Satellite-Dish to activate it)
• Wireless is working (you may have to press Fn-Satellite-Dish to activate it)
• Internal memory card reader works
• Internal speaker works and volume/mute can be controlled with the Fn-Keys
• Internal mic is not working
• CPU energy management (a.k.a. SpeedStep) is working thanks to SuperHai’s VoodooPowerMini.kext (verified using x-CPU.app by netkas). Make sure it’s enabled in the BIOS as well!
• Sound and SpeedStep still work after waking from sleep
• Boot time is about 35 seconds, waking from sleep is instant

I haven’t tested the external VGA port and the external sound connectors. Even though sound works using VoodooHDA I personally don’t like it and I’m still looking for another way to get sound working.

Once everything is running smoothly, you may want to add these lines to your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist on your internal drive:

<key>GUI</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<value>2</value>
<key>Legacy Logo</key>
<value>Yes</value>

This will speed up booting and you’ll also get the nicer logo, IMHO.

Please refer to the appropriate forums for detailed installation support.

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