Guide: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger OSx86 for Eee PC
Welcome to the first fully supported OSx86 Guide for the Eee PC. Unlike other guides, we’re going to keep this one updated, so you have the latest (and best) step-by-step walkthrough. As the title indicates, we’re going to give a walkthrough for Tiger first… we’ll get to Leopard later.
Note: Please read our brief legal primer before proceeding, and if in doubt, consult a legal professional. We believe that these instructions, when followed properly, are legal. However, we cannot assure that installing Mac OS X on unsupported hardware is legal in your area.
If you are confused about which you should install (Leopard or Tiger), please check this quick primer as well…
You’ll need a few things for this guide:
1) A #1 paperclip (trust us)
2) JaS OSx86 10.4.8 Installation DVD (sorry, we can’t help you get this one, it is available on file sharing and BitTorrent web sites).
3) A genuine Mac OS X Tiger or Leopard install disc (don’t steal software)
4) An ASUS Eee PC 4G or 8G (ready to be completely erased)
5) A USB 2.0 DVD-ROM Drive
Please note that Wi-Fi is not working currently. To date, nobody has created a driver for the Atheros wireless networking card inside of the Eee PC.
Step 1: The Paper Clip
Source: InsanelyMac
As shown above, you need to take a small paperclip and clip off one of the loops. Now, insert the paperclip into the two points of the VGA port as shown. Be gentle, but push it all the way in so that it makes contact.
Why are we doing this? Inserting this tricks the graphics card into thinking there’s an external monitor. Due to a bug in Mac OS X, this is necessary to enable hardware acceleration (and to get things to display properly).
Step 2: Starting the Tiger Installer
Start by connecting your USB 2.0 drive, and insert the Tiger OSx86 disc into the drive. Power on the Eee PC. Press F2 to go into BIOS settings. Scroll over to the Boot tab, and change boot device priority so that the USB 2.0 drive will be set to the top.
Now, exit BIOS settings (be sure to save changes). The Eee PC will reboot. It should, at this point, pick up the Mac OS X install disc prompt. Press any key when it appears, so that the system will start up from the disc.
After several minutes, the Mac OS X installer prompt will appear. Select your language and continue to the main screen.
Step 3: Formatting the SSD Drive
We now need to format the SSD Drive (the Hard Drive) for use with Mac OS X. This is due to the drive being formatted for either Windows or Linux at the factory, which the Mac OS X installer does not expect.
To do this, go to the Utilities menu and chose Disk Utility. When it launches, you will want to click the green button in the top-left hand corner of the window, to resize the window to fit the screen.
Now, select the SSD Drive by clicking on the hard drive icon in the left column. Then, click on the Partition tab.
You want to change three things in this area. First, chose 1 Partition from the pull-down Partitions Menu. Then, give the partition a name (like, Macintosh HD or Eee SSD). Finally, click the Options button and ensure that the partitioning format is set for Master Boot Record (MBR). Ignore the note in the window that suggests you should chose GUID/GPT partitioning (MBR is what you want).
Finally, click the red close button in the top-left corner of the window to return to the installer).
Step 4: Installing Mac OS X Tiger
You now are set to go through the Tiger installation. Follow the on-screen instructions through the Read Me and License Agreement areas. Select the Eee’s SSD Drive as the install target (it should be the only drive listed, if it is missing, re-read and repeat Step 3).
Now, when you are at the install confirmation window, click the Customize button. You want to make a few changes. First, uncheck Foreign Languages, Printer Drivers, and X11 if they are selected. This is necessary to make the installation fit on the Eee PC’s small drive.
Next, click the patches tab and select the following patches: Intel ATA Patches, Laptop.Power.Management.bundle, and Intel GMA 900 drivers. These three are buried under a few tabs, but all three are easy to locate.
Finally, click the Install button. Tiger will now install. After awhile, your Eee PC will restart, and the Setup Assistant will appear.
Step 5: Hurdling the Setup Assistant
When the Setup Assistant appears, you have a couple of options. You will notice that the bottom of the screen is cut off. So, you can’t see the Continue and Go Back buttons that need to be clicked.
You have two choices: Remove the paperclip and plug in an external monitor. Or, use the tab key blindly to click the keyboard button.
Using the tab key is very easy actually, but you may accidentally go back a couple of times when you wanted to continue. The good news is, there are a few tricks to make this go faster. Simply fill out the forms and press the tab key once/twice (depending on the window) to reach the hidden Continue button.
Follow the prompts until you get to “Chose my internet connection.” Select “This Mac does not connect to the internet.” Don’t worry, it’s only used for the setup assistant, it won’t affect using the Eee PC online. This will skip several settings windows.
Now, you should be at the window that asks for your name, address, and contact information. Hold the Alt key and press Q. This will bring up a prompt to exit the Setup Assistant. Click the Skip button. Note that you have to get to this point in the Setup Assistant before the instructions will appear.
You will be taken to the user name setup window. Give yourself a username and password, then tab to the hidden Continue button.
Finally, at the following window, press Alt-Q again. You will be given an option to Quit the Setup Assistant. Press Quit.
Step 5: Post-Install Cleanup
The first thing you should do is run Repair Disk Permissions. Installing OSx86 leaves some disk permissions incorrect, and this quickly fixes them. To do it, open your hard drive, go to Applications, then Utilities. Open Disk Utility.
Click on the Eee PC’s SSD drive, and then click the Repair Disk Permissions button that appears.
Next, you will notice that the battery status is missing. To enable this, go to Apple Menu > System Preferences. Click on Energy Saver, and then go to the Options tab. Click the box that is unchecked to enable the menu icon. You can also get time and percentage options by pulling down the menu that appears.
Step 6: Enabling GMA 900 Hardware Acceleration
Right now, the system may seem quite a bit slow. That’s because the graphics chip (the Intel GMA 900) is not yet fully accelerated.
To enable this, download Diabolik’s GMA 900 Enabler (ZIP). Open the zip archive, and launch the resulting package file that will appear. Follow the installer instructions, and complete the installer. Reboot the system when prompted.
After this, you should have Quartz Extreme and Core Image acceleration. You can verify this using the System Profiler utility.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you have now installed Mac OS X Tiger on your Eee PC. We strongly advise you to be careful when installing Software Updates that will appear from Apple. Updates such as Mac OS X 10.4.11, and various recent Security Updates, will cause your Eee PC to not start up.
You may be asking how to update from 10.4.8, to 10.4.11. We have tested all the currently-available update options, and found none of them to be reliable. We suggest you stay at 10.4.8, as it is the most stable, latest build that works well on the Eee PC.
Of course, stay tuned to MacEee.com as we’ll keep you updated with new drivers, patches, and updates that we find and that will develop.
If you have questions, issues, or just need help completing setup, post in the comments below.
Your solution to the licensing problem deserves a gold star for ingenuity, or perhaps chutzpah, but I have my doubts that a court would buy it. It’s pretty obvious in context that “Apple labeled” means more than “has had an Apple label attached,” and I don’t see that tying on an old RAM chip will change that.
One question… . Could the same technique be used to install OSX on an SD or a USB flash drive, giving a machine that normally operated in Linux but could be booted in OSX by inserting the appropriate piece?
What you suggest is using GRUB to configure a secondary boot target (the SD card).
Theoretically, it’s do-able. However, the SD memory card speed is much slower than the SSD, and that would slow down Mac OS X significantly. Mac OS X would be writing the virtual memory to the SD storage space, as well as the slow speed of reading files from the drive.
So, I wouldn’t suggest it. However, the Eee PC 900 Series has two SSD storage pools (one 4 GB, and one 12 or 16 GB SSD drive). It would make sense to install Linux or Windows on the 4 GB pool, and then Mac OS X on the other SSD drive.
Are you encountering the clock slowdown still, or has that issue been resolved?
The clock slowdown continues, unfortunately. The only way to fix it, appears to be “overclocking” the FSB.
It appears that to fully fix the issue, the FSB may have to be clocked up to 133 MHz, which is faster than the Eee really can go. I haven’t heard reports from anyone testing it with a 100 MHz FSB.
The only real thing I can suggest, is to consider an Eee PC 900, which hopefully has this issue fixed for good.
If the Eee PC 900 arrives at brick-and-mortar retailers in the USA, I’ll be sure to let you know if it does work.
LAN is not working for me. Any advice? Thks
I have installed Tiger to the A Data SDHC 8GB card on EeePC 900. Still have the clock slowdown issue.
The animation is still in slow motion. Watching Apple trailers is much better on XP than on Tiger.
BTW, LAN issue can be solved in a easier way by using USB WiFi dongle.
where does it say “options” in the formatting SSD Drive?
Go to Utilities > Disk Utility > Select the drive > Partitions Tab > Options button (it’s in the right panel, near the bottom of the window).
The guides on this site (http://tigeroneeepc.wikispaces.com) are more comprehensive and delve further into enhancing slow downs with tweaking applications. Furthermore, you can get working WiFi by replacing the Atheros card with a DW1390.
And slow down issues are not caused by the FSB, do your homework. It is a bug in the OS X framework when running on processors <1GHz. Hopefully the 901 specs will solve this.
Panik, you assert the notion that this is something where we can “do homework” on. In fact, it’s a new field where we’re all trying to help one-another.
Please be a bit more constructive with your comments in the future.
Finally, if you actually would read the post you reference, you would find that most of the discussion still centers around the FSB. And, the links that the poster in that aforementioned thread cited… are all broken. There has yet to be any real proof that the framework is the issue.
Mr. X, thx a lot for the guide..
Btw, sound is not working for me :( any suggestion?
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Did someone try The orange drivers for Mac? These drivers support Atheros PCI wifi cards, and may be it works.
The software is a 10 minute trial, but for only US$ 15,00, its cheaper than spend hours on foruns to find a solution!
http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/wirelessformac.html
Download link: http://www.orangeware.com/Bin/OWC_Wireless_Setup_v3_3t.sit
I hope it help.
Thanks for all!
Has anyone gotten proper network support going with OS X tiger on the EEE PC?
Connecting via USB wifi adaptor and UMTS/3G over bluetooth, I am having constant drop packets resulting in slow network speed. Possibly related to the kernel timing bug.
Anyone else experience this issue?
You can’t install this to a SD card using an eee 701, i tried. The read/write times are just way too slow and the installer hangs at writing receipts and never moves on. Shame, i really wanted a dual boot linux/osx puter but a 4gb SSD is just not big enough!
@Bira…
tried to go to Orange driver page to download the Athenos PCI…and I really dont know how it works…is it possible to help me please
Many many thanks
Sly
Sly,
Sorry, I can’t help. I got OSX Tiger working, but did not try these drivers. It’s just a suggestion.
They have no support or new versions.
Good luck!
Hi- Has anyone tried this on a PC900-20GB yet? Are the clock problems resolved? Do I still have to get the Dell 1390 PCI-E? One thread says Linux sees the 4+16GB as one drive; how does Tiger see the 4+16? Would replacing the 16GB SSD with a 1.8″ iPod drive be a pull & plug-in operation or more involved? Has ethernet problem been solved yet? I would like Tiger and iPhoto ‘06 mainly for checking e-mail and backing up photos. Even the 12″ Powerbook and a 120GB HDD were a hassle on a 2 week trip to Alaska. I would love this to be a mini-Macbook. I was going to wait and see if more issues were resolved, but $299 OTD at CompUSA this week was too good to pass up. Thanks
Mr.X, thanks a lot for that guide. It’s really useful. However, can you suggest any free solutions for WiFi? Secondly, sound isn’t working for me. Any suggestions for that? In addition, the clock is not working properly. 1 sec in that clock is 10 real secs!!! Is it because of the GMA 900? Can you help me with this? Please!
Hello everybody
just wondering do all those steps will work for the eee700?
Thanks
Sly
Followed the guide and after it boots up in OS X after install I just get a blue screen, can’t see anything.
I have both a 701 and a 900 running Uphuck 10.4.9. Both have the Dell cards fitted and Wi-Fi works great
The 701 is FASTER than the 900, even though it is underclocked. This seems to be down to the FSB/timing problem which is worse on the 900. Another thing missing from the 900 the sound!(obviously the sound card is not supported under OS X.
However the good thing about the 900 is that the apps work very well, but on the 701, MS Office is a problem, as i cannot save a Word document – strange! And of course limited SSD size
I am currently working with a friend to try to adjust the FSB down to 70, or maybe keep the FSB at 100 and try to overclock.
I also plan to try to fit a slave SSD to my 701, as is done on the 900 and see if it works.
Finally, I hear that the 701 will drive the larger screen of the 900, so I might try a bit of surgery, if I can’t solve the FSB problem
Just wondering ”again”
I saw Jezza’s comment regarding the SD card.he or she saying that it doesn’t work with a SD…what do you think if I use a ”high speed 4g SD card” could it work???
thanks again
First of all thanks for this guide. I just picked up a 4G off of craigslist and want to get OSX installed and working this weekend.
It seems to install without a problem but when it restarts things don’t go so well. I get the spinning gear and it finishes loading but then the screen displays blue and black shapes (this is when the setup assistant should be coming up). Anyone else experience this… did I do something wrong in the installation process?
Problem solved. Was looking around and found that you need to install both GMA 900 and 950.
this site has been a big help.
A few things to add:
getting the dell chip to work takes a little tinkering with the plst files.
as greg says before me
It is important to install both gma 900 and 950 to get the video to display properly.
my eee is working great, much faster then I expected. Barely any issues either.
SOUND doesn’t work at all!.
i remember the installer playing the tiger sound on the first boot up but it doesn’t recognize the internal speakers now.
I wonder If I have installed it wrong on this final attempt.
thanks,
Sam
Sam, could you tell me what you did with the plst files for the dell card? I’m going to be installing it tonight and am trying to run into as little problems as possible. Thanks.
If your card is plugged in but the light isn’t on, than it wont be recognised. easy thing to do is to press the function key on the keyboard, this really upset the system but when I turned it back on it showed up as an airport card installed, and the light was on.
Once your light is on, it will tell you that it is not configured
do this:
Listen carefully greg, Ill only write this once…
go into your system->library->extentions->(show package contents of)”IO80211family.kext”. Inside you will go to the core:
Contents->PlugIns->(show package contents of)”appleairportbrcm4311.kext”
then
Contents->”Info.plist”
(it is easiest to drag this to your desktop, edit it, and drag it back. this is admin access level)
edit this in Text edit, make sure that it remains a plist file when you are done.
in the file you will need to add these two lines of code, you will know where they fit. I put them on the top of the list. Its up to you.
pci14e4,4320
pci14e4,4306
Then you need to go to another file
/library->Preferences->systemConfiguration->”NetworkInterfaces.plist”
open this and edit two things.
Change the number near the top that says “en0″ to -> “en1″
Next change the Interger from “0″ to “1″
Now run disk permission repair, restart and test it out.
good luck to you buddy, I wish you the best of luck!
GREG,
I forgot to ask if you got sound working?
mine is not even recognized.
I just want the speakers, I heard thats all we can get?
thanks
Sam,
Before I did any of your suggestions, it showed that the card was recognized in the system profiler but just that it wasn’t configured. (it showed a empty wireless signal in the taskbar)
I tried the suggestions you gave and now under the system profiler it is not picking up the wireless card and therefore no wireless signal. (it does not show up in the taskbar as well)
And now sound for me either, speaker or headphone.
Any additional help would be great. Thanks.
pci14e4 part… should those be put in the pciXXXX section of the plist?
Hi everyone. The sounds will work if you install the Azalia sound driver ;)
I’m installing Tiger at this moment, i’ll tell you when it finish :)
Took the whole thing apart again and reinstalled the card. Redid the modifying of the plsts and got it to work. Thanks for the help Sam.
DAVIDS
is there a way to install the azalia driver without installing the entire system again?
thanks
I have tried installing the audio driver but it says that it doesn’t find any compatible sound device.
The problem that I am running into now is that the screen is just so small that I can’t run some programs. On some programs that I installed, before being able to run them you must accept the user agreement, but the accept part is off the screen, and it must be clicked with a mouse not ’space’ or ‘enter’ Is there any way to work around this?
In response to Jezza’s comment on 28 August 2008:
“You can’t install this to a SD card using an eee 701, i tried. The read/write times are just way too slow and the installer hangs at writing receipts and never moves on. Shame, i really wanted a dual boot linux/osx puter but a 4gb SSD is just not big enough!”
I only just recently got my EeePC 701, and tried exactly the same thing (installing directly to a class 6 8GB SDHC card) and got a similar hang when writing receipts during the install.
However, after installing OSX to the 4GB SSD, I used SuperDuper to clone it to the SDHC card. I couldn’t make the Eee boot directly off that, but if you hit F8 when your SSD’s OSX install boots up you’ll get into the Darwin bootloader. Typing “rd=disk1d1″ followed by the return key booted the copy of OSX off the SDHC card.
Performance was actually pretty good with my card, a little slower than my SSD but perfectly usable IMHO. I do have 1GB RAM though which may help too. I installed Xcode 2.5 to this copy of OSX and it all seemed to work.
Just thought I’d post about it, in case others find it useful too. I have to say I’m really loving my little Eee, and am so glad there is a ton of information out there from people doing crazy things with it :)
Hi BigFatGingerCat and “Folks”,
I don’t know if it’s possible to install OSX on a SDHC card, but I did it on a 4Gb pendrive, and it works fine. Of course, it’s a bit slow, but I have windows XP on my hd and sometimes I boot my OSX via pendrive.
I’m not a mac user, only curious, but it worked for me on the first time.
It’s a good option for those who wish only to try ths system, or to know how it works on EEE701.
I’d like to upload somewhere an image of the pendrive where I installed it, but I don’t know how to do this.
Any sugestions?
Bira,
If you want to make an image of a disk in OSX, you can use the Disk Utility application (it’s in /Applications/Utilities). Choose the disk/partition that represents your pendrive, then choose “File->New->Disk Image from diskXsY” (X and Y will be numbers, you might find it’s disk1s1 if you booted from the pendrive). This will save a .DMG image file of the disk/partition.
By default the image is compressed, although you’ll have to save it to a different volume than the one you are imaging , so you’ll need another USB pendrive or HDD or something you can plug in to save the image file to.
Hope that helps.
Hi!
i managed to install tiger on my tiny little eee once. i liked it a lot, but didnt manage to install it on sd yet.
however, heard about peole with working RJ45 connectors on their eee701’s! is that true? how can this be made possible?
and are the maceeedotcompatches.zip the right choice for me to bring my eee some new capabilities?
thanks for your informations on that page, maybe you could a new article about what has been made passible on the 701 so far. there’s some real information overload, i have no idea whats the latest news. ;)
Bira,
How did you get OSX on a pendrive? I use XP on my eee pc and would only need OS X for a few programs. Having it on a pendrive or SDHC card seems the best route.
Hello everybody
I finally made it….so happy … My only problem it’s the wifi of course and the Ethernet connection… any suggestion?
Thanks
Hi, eeepchack,
I just disabled my “hd” and directed installation to pendrive. I used a 4Gb device, but I think it would be better to have a bigger one. It’s a bit slow, but works fine.
I also have an XP on my machine, and eventually use OSX Tiger.
I will try to get an image of my pendrive and make it available on the net, but I must have some time to try this.
I believe you will installl it on your pendrive very easy… It takes a long time, the computer looks to freeze, but be patient and you will get it working in about 1:30 hours.
Good luck!
Hey do you think this driver will work for the eeepc wifi? http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/wirelessformac.html
@Daryl
I tried….the installation goes and at the end.. It never goes through the last part of the process it stay there for ever… Try it… And let me know… Probably something went wrong on the burning process.
Have a great evening
Sylvie
I also saw exactly the same issue as Sylvie when I tried that Orangeware driver.
I know not everyone likes to open their computers, but replacing the WiFi card with the Dell 1390 is really the only viable option. The cards are so cheap to buy, and easy to fit if you have any experience of messing around inside a PC. If you don’t, find a friend who does. And if you’re going to open it up, I’d also suggest buying a 1GB or 2GB memory stick from Crucial or somewhere. It takes 10 seconds to install if you’ve already got the device open, and will make a difference to performance.
The Eee 701 with Tiger and WiFi really is an awesome little netbook. My Xcode and TextMate even run reasonably well on it, making a super portable little development machine :)
@bigfatgingercat
Thanks feel less silly lol … Dell don’t sell the 1390 wifi card anymore only the 1490 and I don’t know if it will make the job as well as the old model..
Let me know if you have an idea
Thanks
Sylvie
@Sylvie,
I bought mine off eBay – there are lots for sale on there. I paid around £12 here in the UK so they’re not very expensive.
To anyone who’s going to fit one of these cards, I also advise you to add some insulating tape to the side of the card which faces down onto the main motherboard. The card is thicker than the standard Eee WiFi card and sits closer to the main circuit board, in fact on mine I found it just about touched. Without insulation, I found the system would not even power on, but there was no actual permanent damage.
So ive tried to put tiger on my little beauty however i dont seem to have any options button so how do i change the format to MBR?
//M
Oh well – it might be due to something on my dvd, cause the option button is there when i choose the dvd – but it’s not when i choose the SSD :(
//M
So does anybody have a touch screen app that works under Tiger btw?
//M
Hi everyone – nice page, I like the paperclip trick.
I’m a long-time Linux user, and I thought that I should mention that as of Linux 2.6.27 the ath5k driver supports the atheros chipset (WiFi) in the EEE 700 series. This is because Luis R. Rodriguez was hired to head up their open-source driver development. AFAIK, there was no BSD driver for the atheros chip. However, it shouldn’t be too hard to port it, given that the sources are right there.
Which brings me to my next point – if drivers exist for Linux for all of the EEE’s hardware, including optimizations for the SSD, then why is it so difficult to port them to Mac OS X, given that the Darwin kernel is just a BSD fork ??
Please educate me, as I am very new to Mac. I’ve run tiger on my EEE once, but found it particularly constraining. Right now I have a pretty tweaked Gentoo Linux install on my EEE that I would be open to sharing as a disk image via Torrent.
Chris
I found a couple of interesting links for more information about the Mac OS X kernel, probably aimed more at hackers than the general public.
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/attachments/986_inside_the_mac_osx_kernel.pdf
The OS X kernel (XNU) is basically a hypervisor, with a fairly evolved Mach sub-kernel and a BSD-like sub-kernel running underneath. There’s also the IOKit section, written in objective C, that actually comprises the device drivers. Kernel modules (KEXTs or NKEs for network components) can be loaded at runtime, which allows them to be linked both the BSD subsystem and the Mach subsystem. The /dev directory is moderated by the BSD subsystem translating calls to IOKit as necessary.
I would have to disagree with some points of the CCC article. Specifically, they say that a lot of code is redundantly copied in the Linux kernel, i.e. for CDROM VendorA just copy CDROM VendorB and make necessary modifications. On the contrary, there is quite a lot of code sharing in the Linux kernel already, and they’ve done so without resorting to an object-oriented language.
In any event, Mac OS X is an interesting architecture that differs substantially from BSD or Linux … whether it makes porting a Linux driver to Mac OS X easier or harder is quite a different story.
@Chris
Do you mean that the driver ath5k can make the Atheros wifi card in eee700 works with mac OS?
Thanks
Well… it’s not as simple as copying a couple of binary files and saying ‘Go EEE !!’ Some kernel hacking would be required.
Specifically, if someone were to transpose the relevent parts of the Linux ath5k kernel module (and wifi subsystem) over to IOKit (written in ObjectiveC) and BSD (written in C) then yes, the Linux kernel module would ‘make it work’.
Of course, all derived parts of the source code would legally need to be released under the GPLv2 to avoid a lawsuit :)
@Chris
Oh my God…it’s chinese for me…the easiest way is to change the wifi card I presume…?
that thing driving nuts….
thanks
@Sly
Changing the WiFi card is pretty straightforward. Fairly cheap and easy to install. Highly recommended.
“Please note that Wi-Fi is not working currently. To date, nobody has created a driver for the Atheros wireless networking card inside of the Eee PC.”
iDeneb 1.3 (Mac OS X 10.5.5) has an Atheros wireless driver.
While that’s correct… this guide is very, very old. It really no longer is useful except for historical reference. Modern OSx86 installation discs and processes make installing pretty straightforward, and there are many updated netbook compatibility matrices on the web.