Snow Leopard 10.6 on MSI Wind U100 netbook
Comments(28) 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.
You may also be interested to read:
- MSI Wind U100 netbook: How to update to 10.6.2
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I was successfully able to update to 10.6.2. I just had to reinstall the 10.6.1 kernel in order to get a bootable system. As far as I can see, everything is working, including QE/CI and SpeedStepping.
due the kext have full suport to the trackpad?
There’s no 10.6 kext available (yet) for this PS2 trackpad that supports things like double-tapping to emulate a left-click if this is what you mean. Apart from that it’s working pretty well.
I have tried to install the kexts, but now I get a blank screen after I booted; I forgot to add the kexts on my installation USB stick, and hence ended up doing the kexts installation post-install.
I read somewhere that I might need to add a valid GFX string in some com.apple.Boot.plist file, and a working “graphics enabler/injector”, but I am not sure what that is, and how to do this;
should I try and do the installation all over again to get it right, or is there a simpler way of doing this?
I posted the plist file you need for the Wind U100 in this post. But if need installation support, you better ask in the appropriate forums.
Thanks for the Kexts! I finally got the native resolution back after being stuck on 800×600 for no apparent reason. All I did was to install your Kexts using KextHelper and reboot.
Karim
Hi, I used your hints to install Snow Leopard on an MSI Wind U100 Plus (with Atheros WLAN chipset – working directly und Snow ;-).
I have only one problem: the webcam is not working well. Starting Photo Booth, I just get a black window. Which of the kext is for the webcam?
Kind regards
Karl
Karl, the internal webcam doesn’t need a kext. It works out of the box. The problem is, I have no idea why it’s working great for me but not for you. Maybe the U100 plus camera has a different firmware or even is a different model. Are you using DSDT? Did you activate the webcam with the function keys?
Hi Jan,
yes, I use DSDT. Maybe I have to turn it off? It is interesting that in Photo Booth, the little orange light on the left of the camera “burns”, but the Photo Booth window keeps black …
Any idea on this?
Kind regards
Karl
This is the data I get from System Profiler for the webcam.
BisonCam, NB Pro:
Product ID: 0×0203
Vendor ID: 0×5986
Version: 0.02
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Location ID: 0xfd500000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 500
If yours is different, then it may be something on the firmware/hardware level. There are some posts that say v0.03 doesn’t work with Mac OS, only v0.02 does.
Cheers,
Jan
Hi Jan,
yes, this seems to be the problem – my profile is identical. Only the version is 3.08 ….
Is there any chance to downgrade the firmware??
Kind regards
Karl
Hello Karl,
unfortunately, I don’t know if that is possible.
Cheers,
Jan
Is there any reason the grey kexts can’t be loaded also from the E/E folder? Also are all these kexts compatible with Leopard as long as the fakesmc is swapped?
Golbez, this is just a personal preference. Most can be loaded from E/E as well but a few have dependencies on other modules.
Cheers,
Jan
Hi Jan, thanks for this. I’m just wondering what the following kexts do, as I have seen other tutorials that exclude them, I’ve also found that when excluding the GMA bundle/plugin files, I don’t face resolution errors anymore
AHCIPortInjector.kext
AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin
AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle
AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle
IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext
NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
Cheers!
LIC
Hi LIC,
The NullCPUPowerManagement disables (nulls) the Mac OS CPU speedstep kext as it is not compatible with the Atom CPU. That’s why I use the VoodooPowerMini kext to re-add speedstep support.
I have no idea what the bundles do. Sometimes I have to install the GMA950 kexts/bundles twice and reboot in between to get the native resolution back (after installing a Mac OS update). It’s kinda weird but it works.
The AHCI kexts are related to the I/O controller hub and add support for several ICHs and make sure internal drive icons don’t show up as external drive icons.
Cheers,
Jan
Awesome, thanks for your time.
1 more quick question:
Any reason why you picked VoodooPowerMini over VoodooPower? Can you explain the difference please?
Thanks again!
Mini has a smaller memory footprint because unnecessary (for the Atom CPU) code was thrown out.
Cheers,
Jan
Any luck on speedstep after resuming from sleep?
In my case it works using the kexts & DSDT above. Verified with cpu-x.app
Cheers,
Jan
Hello, and thanx a lot for the great tutorial !
Can someone please share, if the microphone is working, and (if necessary) how does one make it work ?
Thanx a bunch,
Cheers
Microphone is working by using SliceVoodooHDA and its prefpane, go on insanelywind.com/forum you will find everything you need for your osx on u100
Can you point me to a guide which I can follow? Will this work?
http://insanelywind.com/wiki/i.....ow_Leopard
Hi – great job, installation went smoothly, unfortunately there`s one BIG problem: Network don`t work, no WLAN, no internal LAN, no Apple USB to Ethernet adapter, nothing. The main problem seems to be that I can`t access Network Settings in System Preferences. Whenever I click on the icon, it says “Loading Network” but nothing happens, the systems runs slower but you can do everything, to stop the process or even try to restart or shut down you have to kill the beast !
Anybody got any idea ??
By the way, it`s a U100X in original configuration with BIOS EN011IMS Ver.10A
Hi, Thanks so much for your instructions. I got my MSI Wind U120 up and running with your kexts.
Have you been able to test the external sound and VGA connectors?
VGA Connectors tested with a 1440×900 monitor, worked like a charm!.
Great work!