Ed "The Computer Wizard"

Steve Jobs was once quoted as saying “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?” It is in that spirit that the OSX86 Project thrives. I have discussed turning my HP Mini 1000 into a Mac Netbook for some time now, and I think the project has come along enough to make this a useable Mini MacBook hack.

Image used with permission from David Cortes. Download this image as a wallpaper or buy a T-Shirt version at shinyblacksheep.com.

First of all, the legal stuff. The Apple Computer EULA States:

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
A. Single Use. This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.

The big debate is what constitutes and “Apple Labeled Computer.” I have a few Apple stickers from my old iPod shuffle, so I slapped one of those on the bottom to make things legal

Now, I can not advocate piracy, so I went online and found an auction for OSX, and I won! So, I own a nice, legal copy.

To install the OS, I could not use the Retail version. For now, that portion of the project is not mature enough. But what I did was use the iDeneb ISO to install from. I did not want to wipe out my Windows 7 partition, because I wasn’t sure how well this would work and I really like Windows 7 BETA. So, following these directions, I was able to install to a 16GB SDHC Card.

Once done, I did installed a tool to tweak the video resolution called ScaleResolution. I found it here: http://myhpmini.com/forum/essential-mac-os-netbook-utilities-t1017.html

Now, the system does not have sound, and I lived with that for a little while until I found this post: http://myhpmini.com/forum/audio-fix-voodoohda-t999.html

Now I have sound working on my system as well. The only thing not working is the ethernet port and the internal mic. Both of which I can live without for now.

So, here is my desktop…

I find that running from the SD card is a little sluggish, but I think that when I have to remove Windows 7, I will reinstall the MAC OS on the primary drive.

With the price of netbooks dropping and people wanting to run something other Windows, this is a good way create your own budget MAC OSX Netbook. I’ve seen this done on both desktops and laptops and with the number of forums out there dedicated to this type of project, I’m sure that you can make a MAC capable machine with the specs you want.

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