Mac OS X

How to use Huawei E1550 on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6)

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I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard and wanted to download iPhone SDK, since Dialog GSM has really cheap bandwidth, I got a 2 hours on my Kit Broadband package. I’m using a Huawei E1550 but unfortunately the Mobile partner that came with the dongle didn’t work on Snow Leopard. With a bit of Googling I came across Huwaei Device site and downloaded Dashboard for Mac OS X 10.6 and unzipped it and then unzipped MAC-V100R001B301D11SP00C03.zip (only zip file in the downloaded zip file). The ISO file needs to be mounted with Disk Utility and not the Disk Image mounter.

Then the familiar Mobile partner will open up, and follow the instructions on the screen.

Hope this helped someone in a similar situation 🙂

Install Mac OS X 10.5.6 – Step 2 – Installing Mac OS X 10.5.8 on AMD Athlon X2

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This is step is slightly easier than step 1. You need to boot with the the DVD burned in step 1 and install Mac OS X 10.5.6.

Was waiting for 5 minutes still stuck in the grey screen

If it doesn’t boot in reasonable amount of time, please boot in verbose mode. Press F8 to enter start up options and provide the option -v to boot in verbose mode. If you get a no entry sign or ask you to reboot, you are probably out of luck, still reboot and see whether your luck changes 🙂

Customize the installation

It’s important to select the correct drivers and other patches for the installation to work properly. In my case I had to select the following:

  • Video Driver: NVInject 512MB
  • OSx386 tools

If you are using PS/2 keyboard and mouse you will have to install the PS/2 patch. I’m not sure how well this will work as I have USB keyboard and mouse.

Here are some “screen shots” while installing. Please bear with the quality, I’m a horrible photographer 🙂

Patch the iPC DVD image – Step 1 – Installing Mac OS X 10.5.8 on AMD Athlon X2

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When booting the DVD it was always stuck at “Still waiting for root device…”, this was because there was no kext for SATA chip for my motherboard (nForce 405 chip). It was simple has adding the required kext to the DVD and rebuilding the Extensions.mkext. Unfortunately you will need a working Mac OS X installation to do this. Follow the instructions bellow.

Mount the image in read write mode

$ hdiutil mount iPC_OSx86_10.5.6.iso -readwrite

Extract kexts from mkext

$ mkdir /tmp/Extensions
$ mkextunpack -d /tmp/Extensions Extensions.mkext

Copy kexts and remove unwanted kexts

$ cp -R nForceLan.kext /tmp/Extesions/
$ cp -R AppleNForceATA.kext /tmp/Extensions/
$ find /tmp/Extensions/ -name "*Intel*" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -R

Cache kext into mkext

$ sudo chown -R root:wheel /tmp/Extensions/
$ sudo chmod -R 755 /tmp/Extensions/
$ kextcache -a i386 -m /tmp/Extensions.mkext /tmp/Extensions

Copy Extenions.mkext to /System/Library on the ISO

$ cp /tmp/Extensions.mkext .

That’s it, now unmount the ISO and burn it to a DVD. Now we are ready to move on to the next step. I’ll be posting the details for actual installation Mac OS X 10.5.6 tomorrow.

/tmp/Extensions

Installing Mac OS X 10.5.8 on AMD Athlon X2

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Mac OS X 10.5.8I managed to install Mac OS X 10.5.8 on an AMD Athlon X2 system after little trouble. I’ll post the procedure to make sure if I have to do it again I can easily refer and someone trying to do the same can save the trouble. This will be composed of a series of posts, a post per step.

In the mean time find out the specifications of your box. I’m using GIGABYTE GAPM61SME-S2 motherboard with AMD Athlon X2 CPU. If your specifications are just like mine go ahead and download all the files listed bellow, otherwise download 1-3 and then look for kexts for your motherboard.

System specification

  • AMD Athlon X2 2800
  • nVidia GeForce 6100/nForce 405 chipset
  • 1 x 2 GB of DDR2 DIMM
  • On board ethernet (nForce 10/1oo Mbit)
  • Realtek ALC883 CODEC chip
  • SATA HDD (nForce sata controller)
  • USB Mouse
  • USB Keyboard
  • DVD Drive

Downloads

  1. iPC OSx86 Leopard 10.5.6 Intel AMD SSE2 SSE3 DVD (Google and find out, you will have to download via Bit torrent)
  2. Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update (http://keti.ws/95282)
  3. Mac OS X 10.5.8 Combo Update (http://keti.ws/95283)
  4. nForceLAN (http://keti.ws/94281)
  5. AppleNForceATA (http://keti.ws/95281)

Steps

  1. Patch the iPC DVD image (Otherwise the DVD will never boot)
  2. Install Mac OS X 10.5.6
  3. Remove all Intel kexts (Improves the boot time)
  4. Install Mac OS X 10.5.7 update
  5. Install Mac OS X 10.5.8 update

Await step 1, Patching the iPC DVD image tomorrow.