Because Apple didn’t release the Darwin 10.2.0 XNU sources (the kernel in Mac OS X 10.6.2)  yet (as of 11-14-09), there’s no way to re-enable Atom CPU support on the MSI Wind (and other Atom based netbooks) once you update to 10.6.2. I’ve seen some russian bin-hacks (Tea’s kernel) but they don’t work on the Wind, the kernel panics while booting. Once the XNU sources are out it will be pretty easy to compile a modified kernel with Atom CPU support but for the time being, you might as well re-use the kernel that came with your 10.6.0 Snow Leopard installation. So far, I haven’t seen any limitations using the older kernel in 10.6.2.

All you need is the USB stick you initially installed Snow Leopard from and some basic Terminal skills.
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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!

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The ASUS P6T is one of the less expensive LGA 1366 motherboards at the moment. It features some cool overclocking BIOS settings, FireWire, external E-SATA onboard port, and is SLI/CrossFire-capable. SLI/CrossFire is the main difference between the P6T and the P6T SE but you could always cross flash the P6T SE into a P6T to get SLI support. I put a Core i7 920 CPU in it and populated three of the six RAM banks with 2 GB Patriot Viper DDR-3 DIMMs. This baby has OSX86 written all over it, it screams to be run on Snow Leopard :-) Read more »

Here’s the ACPI DSDT (Darwin-style) for the Gigabyte P55-UD3 Intel LGA 1156 socket mainboard revision 1.0, BIOS version F4i. I’m using it with a Lynnfield Core i7-860 CPU. Created using DSDT Patcher 1e so you may need to recompile it shortening the RTC IO block length from 4 to 2 in case you get a BIOS reset when booting into OSX86 SL (once a 10.0.x XNU kernel supporting the new CPU/stepping is out). Read more »

Today, my Mac crashed with a kernel panic. After rebooting I tried to start iTunes but it just showed this error message:
iTunes application could not be opened. An unknown error occurred (13010).

I remembered that I was in the process of updating the iTunes Genius database when the kernel panic occurred. I was able to start iTunes again after deleting the iTunes Library Genius.itdb file. You’ll find the Genius database file in the direcory $HOME/Music/iTunes.

Just like in the MMI 2G, there’s a hidden menu in the MMI 3G too. I don’t encourage anyone to enable the hidden developer menu as it’s hidden for a good reason. So, if you’re the kind of person who likes to press buttons without knowing what they do, the hidden menu may not be for you! Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Read more »

Did you know you can enable a battery capacity bar in your MMI 3G?

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Due to popular demand there’s a MMI 2G/3G VIM login-code generator application available in the download area. Windows-only. And you need .NET Framework 3.5 in order to run it. You will be asked to download it from Microsoft during the installation if it can’t be found on your system.

Now, this is something for the Audi folks. If your Audi is equipped with a MMI TV-module or a DVD-player, security restrictions have been applied to stop video-playback while your car is moving above a certain speed threshold. This feature is also called VIM (Video In Motion) lock. There’s a guy from Russia who offers a VAG-COM/VCDS based solution to disable this restriction but a) he wants your precious money for this hack and b) he needs online access to your computer and to your car to set the VIM threshold. There are also expensive, CAN-based programming cables on the market for the same purpose. Read more »

A few weeks ago, my Safari 4 beta started to behave weirdly while starting up. At first, the “fastest browser in the world” just hung a few seconds after firing it up but in the end, it displayed a spinning beach ball for almost 2 minutes until I was able to actually do something with it. Well, I had hoped the 10.5.7 Mac OS X update or the latest Safari 4 beta update would cure the problem but no, they did not. Today, I was able to finally fix it!

After noticing several PubSubAgent Foundation::NetException errors in my Mac’s system log file whenever the spinning beach ball thing was going on, I had a strong suspicion it had something to do with RSS feeds. So I opened Mail, deleted the only exising RSS feed (Apple News something) and set the default RSS reader to Mail (was set to Safari) and guess what… everything is back to normal now! I’m using Google Reader for RSS feeds anyway.

My favorite GPS datalogger management application has received a major user interface overhaul. What a difference it makes!

Old BT747 user interface.

New BT7474 user interface.

The new user interface can be started using Java Web Start. Head over to BT747.free.fr and click on Install desktop version. Read more »

Much has been written about the “plays-it-all” Popcorn Hour A-110 media player. After digging through a lot of mostly very positive reviews I decided to get one too. My movie collection mainly consists of ripped DVDs (VIDEO_TS), .M4V H.264 MPEG4 files, lots and lots of MPEG2-TS files from my Dreambox DM800 HD cable tuner and a few .FLV and .XVID files. All these video formats play instantly and with no problems on my XBMC-enhanced Apple TV including digital audio passthrough to my A/V receiver. Read more »

After installing the latest Mac OS X 10.5.6 update my Mac refused to play any sound. It took me quite some time to find the problem: for some reason the update set the sound output to “Headphones” instead of “Internal speakers”. Once I set it back to “Internal speakers” the sound was back.

Here’s a review of iPhone and iPod touch apps that can be very useful to DSLR photographers. On one hand I was looking for iPhone apps which calculate sunrise and sunset times for a given location or even calculate the so called “blue hour”. On the other hand I was looking for apps that calculate depth of field, hyperfocal distance and flash exposure. I also had a look at some GPS coordinate tracker apps but due to (deliberate) limitations in the iPhone OS most of these apps don’t really work great. More on that later on. Read more »

The simple fact of notebook life is that notebooks simply don’t run as long on their batteries as they should. This is especially true for my MSI Wind U100 netbook. It came with a 3-cell battery that delivers approximately 1,5 to 2 hours of unplugged time. MSI offers a 6-cell battery and an even more powerful 9-cell battery is reportedly in the works. Read more »