Why the 901 is Bad… Go with the Eee PC 1000H for Mac OS X
It has been two weeks, and many of you that have jumped the gun are complaining of low boot times. Well, we held off on posting our process until we could confirm the bad news. And, here it is: The 8 / 16 GB secondary SSD storage on the Eee PC 901 is just too slow to support Mac OS X.
As you may know, the Eee PC 901 uses two SSD storage arrays to achieve its 12 GB or 20 GB storage. It uses the speedy “true” 4 GB of SSD for the operating system, and then another 8 or 16 GB of flash memory-grade storage.
Unfortunately, the 8 / 16 GB storage is simply too slow to run Mac OS X properly. It causes boot times in excess of seven minutes.
So, what do we suggest? We suggest going with the Eee PC 1000H. The only differences are a slightly larger case (to support the 10-inch display), as well as an 80 GB hard drive. And, you can then partition that hard drive to dual-boot Windows XP and Mac OS X.
Our turbo-charged guide is just about done. So please, don’t go with install discs created for another nettop system. You wind up losing audio and Wi-Fi needlessly. Have patience, we’ll have a complete guide in just a few more days, if not sooner.
I am looking forward to your guide. I, like others, have attempted to install either Kalyway or the MSI Wind distro with moderate success. Over at the MSI Wind forums, the 1000h guys in the OS X subforums have not figured out the sound problem yet. Strangely, when I first installed the MSI distro I had sound, but upon reboot it went away….
We don’t have audio working yet, but Azalia appears to be part of the problem. If you use the MSI distribution, the Azalia driver adds to the problem. We’re still working on it, but we’ll release a guide with no sound. Once that gets taken care of, we’ll update the guide.
[...] problema, da quanto riporta la community MacEee.com, è nel secondo disco SSD montato sui modelli di EeePC 901, troppo lento per supportare al meglio [...]
Nope the SSD isn’t the cause of slow boot problems on the 901, it is problems with the DSDT in the BIOS that are causing it. Flashing with a hacked firmware fixes the problems – http://osrom.net/biosmod/ The 901 boots in 34seconds with the MSIWindosx86 install, with a Geekbench score of 900, with a download of the wireless drivers, the only problem is no sound. The 2nd SSD is slower, but surprisingly usable, may be speeded up if move the virtual memory/page file to the faster drive. However I am very interested if there is any progress with sound though!
Yes, the BIOS seems to be root cause for OSX install and boot problems on the 901/1000H. I am also running the modded BIOS and have no issues with install or boot. I am disappointed to hear that Mr. X and team have not figured out the sound problem. That is what I believe we are all most interested in. As I mentioned previously, my sound actually worked upon first boot in the welcome screen, but hasn’t since. That being said, the sound obviously can work under OSX, but something is creating interference. Let’s hope this problem can be solved.
We will have the BIOS process in our guide, which is finished… just going through it once more to make sure everything works.
However, both the lack of reasonable space and sluggish SSD speed… still leave us suggesting the 1000H. It’s cheaper in most stores, gives you a larger display, and a speedy hard drive.
Some of us don’t *want* a larger display (and larger, heavier notebook). Also, having lost a couple drives to head crashes, SSD is *very* important to me. That said, am I to assume OS X won’t fit on the 4GB SSD (even slimmed down with no printers or languages)? It’s very fast, and should be more than up to the task.
I would also hope that the guide takes into account the modified BIOS, the latest initrd-based technique to use an unmodified Leopard DVD (if possible), and some allowance for a USB stick install. At least, that’s my wishlist. =D
Heh, beat me to it. :) Shame to see we do have to use a DVD drive and (at least for the initial install) the second, slower SSD.
I noticed you’re using a vanilla kernel in the install, so you should be able to set up an initrd-based install and bypass any need for downloading hacked DVD’s and such – a standard Leopard DVD could then be used. See here: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=113288.
It is actually the opposite in the UK, the 1000H (and the MSI Wind) are more expensive than the 901 by 30-50 pounds ($60-100) so the 901 is cheapest as well as smellest and solid (in terms of data storage)
Is the ssd soldered on the eee PC 901? I’ve just read that on the 900A, the ssd is on a minipcie slot – like the wifi – so it can be changed quite easily.
Also, there are 16go and 32go ssd minipcie arriving on the market – made by Buffalo – which could replace the secondary one and be fast enough for OSX.
Care to retract this, since it’s been shown to be completely wrong?
I agree with Joshua Ochs: a completely non-sense article about the SSD being slow, and it hasn’t been removed or at least amended. We need commendable information in the OSX86 scene, not a lot of tripe scaring users away from trying. Those of us who try are the ones who make it happen. =]
I know you’re on our team, but take the last step! =D
By the way, my comment wasn’t meant as disparaging in any way – I just don’t want to worry the many people who are coming here to see your guide. :)
I’ve read somewhere that the 901 allows to connect a 1.8″ ZIF mechanical hard drive. That would allow for at least 30 more gigs, affordable, and whenever 4200 rpm is not so fast (I had a 80GB 4200rpm in my first G4 mac mini). Of course, this would drain even more current, and it’s quite fragile as any other harddrive. But if this allows to build that oh-so-long-waited hackbook mini, I’d be quite ready to pay that price :-)
[...] disco SSD secondario dell’Eee PC 901 è più lento di quello primario I ragazzi di maceee.com, dopo aver provato ad installare Mac OS X sull’Eee PC 901, hanno constatato che l’hard [...]
[...] : maceee.com Author: Walter Time: Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 22:43 Category: 1000H, Modifications, OS X [...]
[...] enter tekla handia duela, irudiotako ingelesezko teklatuak ez bezala. Orain soilik falta zait leopardizatzea, ubuntizatzea eta mugikorra 3G modem moduan erabiltzea, Simyo bidez [...]
The claims about the speed of the SSD in this post are completely incorrect. The boot speed issue is strictly a BIOS bug — ACPI related. Reflashing the BIOS with the unsupported bugfix version will resolve the issue. It is really a matter of opinion which Eee is the better choice for OS X — larger size, more storage and larger keyboard, or smaller size, greater durability and better battery life, it depends on what you want to do with the PC, much more than the performance of the OS on that particular model. The 901 is in no way “Bad”, but neither is the 1000H. Of course now, there’s the 904HA, S101, 1000HA, and 900HA adding new options for those who can’t decide…
Well as someone with a 901, I can say this is false. 26 seconds from power on to password prompt.
This is not slow.
-GRegory Cohen
I was just searching around about this when I stumbled on your blog post. I’m just stopping by to say that I definitely liked seeing this post, it’s really well written. Are you thinking of posting more about this? It seems like there’s more material here for future posts.