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Scott's Column
Dual Boot PC with Mac OSX & Win XP, Android
2.1
May 1, 2011
By Scott Lewis
This month I finally decide what to do with my old PC. I turn it into a multi-booting machine running Mac OSX Snow Leopard. It also boots to Windows XP. Each has its own story so read below. I also start to really enjoy my phone with Android 2.1 on it.
Current Topics:
Last month I told you I planned on getting a video card to get my old
PC running. I did just that... and also picked up a KVM switch so I
could use both machines side-by-side with my existing keyboard, mouse
and monitor.
This is not a simple story as I played around a lot.
For starters... I wanted to try and get Mac OSX Snow Leopard
running on this PC. The first thing I did was purchase the Retail DVD of
Snow Leopard from an Apple store. (This gets you version 10.6.3. The
current version of Snow Leopard is 10.6.7, which becomes import later in
this story.)
I found a web site that showed how to install Snow Leopard from the
Retail DVD onto a PC. Unfortunately, it did not work. The installer just
hung with the gray Apple logo showing. It didn't even try to install.
I won't give up that easy. So I downloaded a hacked version of Snow
Leopard called iAktos s3 v2. This is a customized installation of OSX
version 10.6.3 that is designed to install on PCs. This installed on my
PC without issue.
Time to get everything working. Out of the box I had network access and
could connect to the Internet. That leaves video and sound. Sound is
supposed to be easy, so that will wait until the end. I tried everything
I could to get the ATI video card I had working. I had no such luck.
I crashed the OSX installation a number of times. I only managed to find
1 web page that claimed it could get my ATI card working. However, when
I installed the drivers it provided my system would either crash when it
booted, or crash as I installed the drivers. It was very frustrating.
I decided to do some digging on the Internet and I found that more
people seem to have success with nVidia cards than ATI. In fact, the
site I found that showed how to build a PC from scratch (and provided
the instructions for using the Retail DVD) was using an nVidia GeForce
9500GT video card.
I saw that the 9500GT was at Best Buy for only $70, so I figured I would
buy it. While I was at Best Buy they had a newer nVidia GeForce GT 240
video card for only $10 more... and it was from a brand I had heard of,
PNY. The 9500GT card was from a company I had never heard of, and the
box looked much more generic.
I pulled out my phone and did a quick Google search for the GT 240 and
osx86 and saw a few pages mentioning success. So I spent the extra money
and bought the GeForce GT 240 for $80.
Now that I was using an nVidia card... I decided to go back to the
retail DVD install method. To do this you first boot your PC from a CD
with a utility called iBoot. Once booted, you swap the iBoot CD for the
Apple DVD and go from there.
The Retail version of Snow Leopard installed just fine. Of course I
still didn't have video or sound. Well, I have video... but it was 1024
x 768 (as it has been up to this point), but that does not count.
Shortly after the install I was notified that OSX wanted to do an
update. It was going to update the system to 10.6.7, the latest version
of OSX. Since this was the retail version I figure why not (I would not
do an Apple update to a hacked version, but I have not hacked
anything... yet).
The update seemed to go perfectly. So it was time to get the video
working properly. I installed my USB thumb drive (which was holding the
tools, drivers, etc. I had downloaded from the Internet). As soon as I
plugged the drive in the OS crashed to a gray screen of death. I reboot
the computer and it immediate booted into the gray screen of death. I
removed the USB drive and reboot. OSX came up... but crashed again after
plugging in the USB drive. So much for the Apple update to 10.6.7.
So... start over with the retail DVD and DO NOT run the Apple updates. I
did some checking on osx86Project.org and looked for the latest version
of OSX that specifically mentioned success with the GT 240 video card.
That lead me to version 10.6.5. I downloaded this from InsanelyMac and
installed it. Everything went well. I plugged in the USB drive and
everthing was still working.
I installed a utility called MultiBeast (it was with the iBoot
utility... which BTW I am still using at this point to boot the machine
then pointing iBoot to Snow Leopard to finish the boot process).
MultiBeast includes some utilities and configures your hard drive to
allow it to boot directly into OSX without the need for the iBoot CD.
MultiBeast also included some generic drivers for ATI and nVidia cards.
I selected the nVidia graphic drivers option as part of installing
MultiBeast. The machine reboot fine... and did not need the iBoot CD
anymore. But video was still at 1024 x 768. I then tried installing a
driver I found called NVEnabler 64.kext. Kext is the file extension for
Mac OSX drivers. I installed this with a utility called Kext Helper B7,
which is used to make installing drivers in Mac OSX easier. I installed
the kext and reboot the machine.
Voila... the machine came up in 1680 x 1050... exactly what my monitor
supports. I then tried to find a kext file for my audio. I had written
down the audio (or so I thought) before I started this and searched for
that chipset with kext and was lead to a page with a kext file to
download. I installed it with the B7 utility and reboot. No sound.
I looked up my motherboard on the Gigabyte web site and sure enough I
wrote down the Ethernet chipset... which was already working. So I got
the name of the audio chipset from the Gigabyte web site and searched
for that with kext. It took me to a page to download a file. I
downloaded and installed it with the B7 utility and reboot. Tada!!! I
have sound.
All is working perfectly... almost. I did have to mess around with the
keyboard configuration to get certain Windows keys to map correctly to
appropriate functions on Mac OSX. But overall this was a success.
Windows XP
The next step was to try and install Windows XP. But I lent my Windows
XP Pro disc to a friend to repair an XP installation on an old laptop he
had. A coworker offered to lend me a Windows XP disc. I tried to install
it on my 320 GB IDE drive (BTW... I installed OSX on my 100 GB SATA
drive because I read that you are supposed to install it on SATA drives,
not IDE).
Windows saw my drive as 131 GB. Hmm. I installed it anyway and it hung
on the reboot. I thought this was odd and maybe when I partitioned this
drive with Windows Server 2003 it might be an issue. I pulled out my Win
2003 Server disc and booted to it. Then deleted the partitions on this
drive, and put one large partition on it. I put the Windows XP disc back
in and it saw it as a 131 GB drive.
I did some digging around and found out that Windows XP did not support
drives larger than 137 GB until SP1. So... I returned the disc I
borrowed and got back my own disc which was... a Windows XP Pro SP2
disc. It was able to see the 320 GB drive without issue, so I installed
Win XP Pro easily.
At this point I had a machine that could dual boot Windows XP Pro and
Mac OSX Snow Leopard. Very cool.
But the story does not end here. See... I actually had three spare hard
drives. The afore mentioned 100 GB SATA & 320 GB IDE, as well as having
a 120 GB IDE. I was originally hoping to install Linux on the 120 GB
drive. Unfortunately, my motherboard only has 1 IDE connector... and it
could only support 2 IDE devices. My CD/DVD drive was an IDE device. I
could disconnect the 320 GB IDE drive while I installed Linux on the 120
GB IDE drive. I would then have to remove the CD/DVD drive from the
machine when everything was up and running, so I could have the two IDE
hard drives working.
This was not an option. Getting this video card was with the intent to
do some gaming. Not hard core gaming... I have my main machine for that.
But if I ever put my main machine in the living room (another story
coming), this machine needs to play some games. I will need that CD/DVD
drive for Windows to play games.
I have to save something for next month... so I will leave you now. Just
as a teaser know this... I started completely over.... and next month
you will learn why and what the final outcome of this adventure is.
I am really getting into my phone lately. I upgraded it to Android
2.1 (from 1.5). It is almost like getting a new phone. Almost everything
is better with two LARGE exceptions.
Problem 1 - The phone is too difficult to end a call. I
used to be able to push on the trackball or the back button to bring the
screen alive if it blanked during a call. Then I could press the
onscreen End Call button. The back button and the trackball don't do
anything in this situation now. And even when the screen did not balnk,
it was too sensitive and I found myself at the home screen without
having ended a call. I then have to get back into the phone part of the
interface to see that I am in a call and press the end call button. This
is more difficult then it ever was in the old version.
Problem 2 - The alarm clock is so incredibly sensitive
to going into snooze. I have heard the phone go off in my pocket and
before I even REACH for my pocket the alarm goes off. But not off...
snooze... and then goes off in another 10 minutes. I have missed the
chance to slide my finger on the screen multiple times for the same
alarm. I end up having to lay the phone down and wait for the alarm to
go off again just to stop the alarm instead of it snoozing again.
Other than that it is a great phone. I also LOVE the calendar
application that comes with it. I had been using the Calendar that was
part of Outlook Express in Windows Vista. I really liked how you could
set it to remind you of events. And in Windows it would pop up a
reminder even if Outlook Express was not running.
The ONE thing that Windows 7 does worse that Windows Vista is the
calendar part of Windows Mail Live. When I got my current main machine
running with Windows 7 I migrated all my calendar entries over to
Windows Mail Live's Calendar. But I was not getting any reminders. I did
some digging and Microsoft never implemented the alert feature in the
Calendar part of Windows Live Mail. Yet you have no way of knowing this
to look at the application. It allows you to put in reminders. They just
don't do anything. Apparently they were planning on making this an
online service... I assume where Microsoft would send you an e-mail
reminder.
So I wanted to use a calendar that would work with my phone. I was at an
event in Austin and was being told about another event. I could not
check my calendar at that time to see if I was free for that upcoming
weekend. I knew that the Android comes with Google Calendar, so I
thought I would check it out.
I love it. It is not perfect, but I find that if I Google it with the
feature I am looking for I can find it. So it is NOT EASY to find some
settings, but they are there somewhere and a search will usually turn
them up.
I setup my GMail account to forward all calendar notifications to my
home email address. And I setup Google Calendar to email me by default 2
days before any event. I also have Google Calendar default to send me a
text message 1 day and then again 2 hours before each event. Of course,
these are the defaults as I have setup. I can always change the
reminders to anything I want per event.
All in all I am having a lot more fun with my phone. I even BOUGHT a
couple of apps for it. WSOP Texas Hold'em and Raging Thunder 2. This
also means I use my phone more and now it does not last two full days on
a charge. I have to start getting into the habit of charging it every
evening... and unplugging it once it is charged. I don't like leaving it
on the charger overnight if that's not necessary.
Conclusion
Next month I will have some more details on the multi-booting PC, plus information on a new apartment.
