How to install on LG x130 Netbook?

[dtr2]

How can I install OSX on my LG X130?
its an Atom processor (SS3), but otherwise, I'm not sure about hardware components.
Also, as a netbook it doesn't have a DVD. Can I install from a disk-on-key into my HD ?

TIA,

[SlimJim]

Hi,

Your laptop seems to have similar specs as my Samsung N120... confirm that, N270, Intel GMA950 etc. then take a look at my post and the guides for some clues...

Take care!

[dtr2]

thanks for the info. I downloaded iATKOS, and used DDMAC to put it on its partition.
I have a boot menu with "Windows XP" and "Mac OSX".

However, if I select the Mac, it returns to the menu in less than a second. I tried many times to press "enter" and then "F8", but it doesn't help - it gets into the Windows' "Advanced boot menu" (with Safe Mode, etc)

any idea ?

dror

[SlimJim]

Try also F8 with the WinXP choice in the menu. I know F8 brings the Advanced boot menu but somehow I was always able to find the submenu somewhere... seems ridiculous to point out but you may not be pressing F8 fast enough so it's intercepted when you're back to the 2 choices so you go to the advanced menu instead of a submenu... F8 has to be pressed a fraction of a second after pressing enter, before you loop back to the initial menu.

When I first read about dumping Iatkos to a hdd partition, there was also talk of using a logical partition instead of a primary one... so that can be tried also...

I hope you find a way!

[dtr2]

Ok, now I managed to start the iAKTOS installer (the F8 had to be REALLY QUICK after the Enter...), and install the OSX.
however, when booting into the OSX (again, using the above fast F8, and then selecting the OSX instead of iAKTOS), it starts to load, but reboots itself after ~10 seconds of loading. when I add "-v" to the boot, it dumps a lot of messages on the screen, but I can't stop it, so I can't tell what was the last thing that caused the failure...

[SlimJim]

Well, you're getting closer!

After installing, when you reboot there is no need for F8, you should have the cameleon bootloader and it should load OSX by default! What happens when you let it load without F8?

Try -s at boot for single user mode and see if you reach a command prompt!

I'm not very good with unix messages and I don't know much about it but try posting the boot log.... maybe typing 'dmesg' at the command prompt with some switch can show it to you page by page... try posting some of it here...

Also, what did you check in the installer when you did 'Customize'...

I don't think you're far from booting...

Good luck!

p.s. I thought... when you boot, if you don't have a bootloader, graphical, with the cameleon image and the bar that load backward, that means the bootloader wasn't installed or can't be found... maybe in your BIOS there's an option that protects the boot - I have that option... 'boot write protection' or sth... this has to be disabled maybe for the bootloader to be installed, because when you check 'customize' when you install, one of the first thing that is checked by default is the cameleon boot loader... so it should be there when you reboot... check it!

[SlimJim]

It will look like this or something : http://louise.hu/poet/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Chameleon-v2-osx86.png

If I do F8 myself at the boot loader where there is XP and Iatkos, I don't think it will boot... I tried once...

You must have the bootloader and it should be there after you install OSX. If it's not, then maybe you have something in the bios that prohibits the boot loader from installing.

Also, me I erased the whole drive before installing XP etc.. I removed the restore partition created by samsung etc. But again, as I said, it's the chameleon bootloader that will load OSX and not the little bootloader used before install!

Hope this helps!

[dtr2]

I tried installing any of the 3 bootloaders, but after reboot, I always get the Windows boot menu, and selecting "Mac OS X System" (with fast F8).
then I get "Darwin/x86 boot v5.0.132", and a menu of partitions. I select to boot my OSX partition. After few seconds, I see a white screen with an "apple" sign in the middle. few seconds later the machine reboots.

if instead I give a "-s" boot option, I see a lot of drives load up, with Mac paths (e.g. /System/Library/Extensions/ xxx)

After few seconds of loading many things (its runs extra-fast, so I can't really tell specific drivers), the screen clears, and I see about 10-20 lines in smaller font, and less than a second later, the machine reboots.

my understanding, is that it really starts to load the OSX, but then there is some problem with some driver, and it crashes -
do you think Chameleon would get me better? anyway, LG bios doesn't have any "bootloader" option.

the problem is that I don't have any boot.log, to understand where it failed. I don't know what boot options will force it to create a log.
scanning the OSX drive after such crash, I see that the install.log is the last file written - nothing is written during the boot sequence.

BTW - the XP is the original LG-created partition. my harddisk has the LG install partition, my XP partition, a backup partition, iACKTOS partition and OSX (iACTOS and backup are logical, all other are primary partitions)

[SlimJim]

I just tried now... when I boot, I have the chameleon bootloader, then I chose my NTFS drive, then I have the same menu you have, then I choose MacOsX and F8, then OSX, hd0,4... this won't boot for me... it loads stuff, then freezes. Yet, when I use the bootloader, it boots everytime. I'm sure if I did -s, it would freeze too. The fact it reboots with -s is weird... i'm not sure it's driver related in this case... your hardware is simple, like mine, and I can't see what would make the LG so different...

I'm not a great tech, but I think we can conclude that the chameleon boot loader is essential for you and me to boot OSX in the way we installed it. I can boot and not you, and this is the same hardware almost. So what's different between you and me? You kept the initial partition install from LG, and I erased everything before reinstalling XP. I can only speculate, but I think this has to do with the master boot record and partition table. I'm pretty sure the LG and Samsung install are made to insure nothing will overwrite the mbr, that's why they have a hidden partition etc. Maybe chameleon can't be written on that partition... I don't know how to solve this technically, I knew something like that would happen for me that's why I erased everything to make sure it's a clean slate. I'm sure someone somewhere knows the quick fix for you but it's not me. Most likely it involves installing chameleon manually and modifying some config file for it.

I can tell you one thing. But here I can't emphasize enough to be CAREFUL. When you start the Iatkos installer, you know in the GUI there is a menu Utilities, with Diskutil etc.. also, there is an item Chameleon... I think it can be installed manually from there... I've tried once, and after playing with it I COULD NOT LOAD ANY PARTITION - 'ntldr is missing' or 'no boot device' - so I warn you. But I think we can assume that the bootloader gets installed by default when you install so there must be something preventing it from installing... so maybe installing manually wouldn't make a difference after all. If you ever play with it, backup your data to an external drive before. If you ever play with it, it asks the id of the drive etc... so before using it, use Terminal in the utilities and do a 'diskutil list' to figure it out... I don't know where the boot loader should be installed, I guess on the LG partition in this case? or the root of the OSX install? that's also why playing with it will ruin your partition table... I'm not familiar enough with this stuff...

So aside from finding a quick fix, I think only 2 things remain:
1- I would try upgrading my bios to the latest, then rebooting and doing 'load setup defaults' in the bios, then fix one or 2 things maybe (look at the settings before flashing). Or maybe just leave the settings to default after flashing and trying to reinstall OSX and see if you you have the chameleon bootloader. Flashing is easy nowadays, me on my samsung I install a program in XP from the samsung site and it checks to see if there is a new bios and flashes it if so. Be careful when you do this, close programs and never shut down, make sure you're on AC etc. Honestly, I don't think this will work, unless you had an option boot protection that was enabled but you say you don't have that. I conclude the issue is the LG rescue partition.
2- Back your data elsewhere, erase all partitions and data, and make a new partition scheme.

You may be right, it may be a driver issue, but I think it must be related to the bootloader.

This is the best I can do.

Search google, when I found out you could install iatkos to a partition etc, i read some comments someone did it preserving the manufacturer partition... but because I couldn't be sure I erased everything. Anyway I can reinstall xp by myself using a usb key now, even though I don't have a dvd drive. Yeah, that means I don't have the original copy of XP running. But hey, I have an oem license lollll.

Good luck!

[SlimJim]

Also if you think it's driver related, you don't need to reinstall iatkos everytime to ADD a driver... read the help before you press Agree in the installer...:

You have to UNCHECK everything
Then only check the driver you want to install
Then start installation
After a few seconds there's an error msg
Click on reboot.

But you cannot REMOVE using this technique, if I understand properly.

Take care!

[dtr2]

It runs

Apparently, the Chameleon boot loader is not a must - the simple Darwin bootloader works ok. the trick is to put "cpus=1" in the boot options.
Now I just have to figure out why it doesn't recognize neither ethernet nor wireless.

thanks for the help!

[SlimJim]

Great!

I'm happy to see it works!! Also surprised to see you can do it without chameleon!! The darwin bootloader won't do it for me, as I can boot under chameleon with or without cpus=1. I added cpus=1 to my *boot.plist in order to not have to type it everytime...

As far as wifi and ethernet, lots of stock wifi on the netbooks don't work on OSX, mine was an Atheros 5007 I think, works great in XP but you can't make that work right under OSX, what will work in OSX is something based around the broadcom chip, so I bought exactly this one from this seller for 20$ :
http://cgi.ebay.com/Wifi-wireless-BCM94321MC-Mini-pcie-802-11n-card-270mbps_W0QQitemZ390103087608QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH _DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5ad3f4b9f8

Works without drivers on OSX and works in XP too, although I had a hard time finding an xp driver.

I would really appreciate you'd post something about temperature during usage as I find my Samsung to be quite warm under OSX compared to XP... let me know. And did you use speedstep or not?

Thanks in advance and enjoy!

[dtr2]

Strangely, it stopped working.
I probably added some conflicting driver, while trying to make the network work, and it stopped booting.
No problem- I started the installation from scratch.
Still, it always freezes some 20 into the boot, even plain vanilla installation.

[SlimJim]

This is quite unusual. Make sure you're not installing on top of OSX i.e. make sure the partition is reformatted. You say it freezes 20 seconds into the boot?

Maybe redump iatkos to the partition with ddmac to make sure the source hasn't been altered or anything.

Did you change something in the BIOS?

I have to admit installation didn't yield always the same exact result i.e. as I've explained in my other posts, the trackpad thing, working oob sometimes and some other times needing more configuration but I installed many many times Iatkos v7 with different kexts and it would boot to the GUI almost everytime.

I don't know how to help...

Hope you find why it does that!

[dtr2]

Ok, got it to work again...
not sure what caused the problem - I even re-installed iAKTOS, and reformatted the OCX partition several times. at one point I noticed the OSX partition is OVERLAPPED with some another (backup) partition on the disk...

Anyway, I have OSX running, with display driver at 1280x600 (thanks for the instructions!)

My problem is now networking: it recognizes my wireless chipset (Ralink RT2860), but keep thinking it is "disconnected". statistics shows that the only traffic is received packets (1 per second) but all are CRC errors.
the Wired network (Realtek 8102) is not recognized at all.

Minor problems:

1. sleep mode: it goes into sleep, but doesn't wake up... I have to reboot to exit the sleep mode.
2. Trackpad: click on it doesn't trigger mouse. the System Preferences says I don't have a mouse, so it doesn't show the mouse tab, only keyboard and bluetooth...

[SlimJim]

Hi,

Well, great!

The overlapping of partitions is scary. I had that issue when I played with installing chameleon manually. There was overlapping and the partitions became unacessible, couldn't be mounted. That was the case of my ntfs partition and even the XP setup repair mode (fixboot, fixmbr, bootcfg /scan) couldn't repair it. I erased all partitions. Be careful with this. If you do the XP setup and use repair and end up at the command prompt and try a 'dir' on the drive and you have ascii code in the listing (garbage), then that's bad.

Sleep: yeah, same here, I disabled going to sleep in the options, so that it only shuts down the screen.

Trackpad: Reinstall VoodooPS2 0.98.pkg(you'll find it easily), then reboot and in the mouse/trackpad options, make sure to enable 'clicking' which was my issue and explained why the trackpad worked but not the clicking. You should have a trackpad icon and the VoodooPS2 pref pane in the system configuration. Me, when I install with Iatkos, I now only check 'Voodoo with trackpad plugin' (make sure the Voodoo(alone) is NOT checked).

Network: I spent lots of time on that. My opinion is, if it's not a chip that's compatible with the OSX hardware list, then it won't work. And if it does work, you need to play with a tool to scan networks and it's all very funky ( like this http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=138351), well that tool is a hacking wifi network scanner (Kismac), to kickstart or hook the network, then use the airport config to 'grab' it... this is too much playing around for me. Even when I got kismac to see networks I couldn't 'grab' one. Swapping the card for the one I suggested did the trick: I installed and airport was there, no need to check the driver bcm43xx, no config whatsoever.

...

[dtr2]

Trackpad:
I installed the Voodoo drivers, and they work, but tend to block mouse movement every few seconds. - is this normal behaviour of this driver? besides that, it works great (tap for mouse click, scrolling)

[SlimJim]

No, this is not the normal behavior but I had that exact same symptom at some point... I don't have that now, I was doing 'circles' with the trackpad for 10 secs + no jerk.

I don't know exactly what causes it. Is it that you need to boot with -s, remove the voodoo kext with rm- r (a bit like what you do to install the GMA) then reinstall the driver with the pkg or use the update procedure in iatkos to upgrade only that? (you'll need an external mouse at reboot if you try to go in the gui after removal).

I also though when that happened to remove speedstep, or use cpus=1. But at this point I use speedstep with cpus=1 and I don't have the problem. The voodoo.pkg installs the same thing as checking 'Voodoo with trackpad' during install but sometimes it yields different results. My intuition is that it's related to installing a driver on top of another one...

Seems you solved almost all your problems!

[dtr2]

didn't try speedstep yet... what will it do? improve performance? (and more importantly, what kext to remove from terminal in case it cause boot problem?!?!

Anyway, my main issue is network: my Realtek network adapter is not recognized at all. The wireless IS recognized (rt2860), but it receives "bad CRC" on all packets.
maybe I'll order the BC eventually (its usu 3-4 weeks delivery time from HK...) - BTW, there are eBay sellers which sell it for $15..

[SlimJim]

Speedstep just throttles down the CPU under certain circumstances, to reduce power consumption etc... could help battery life, I seem to get around 4 hrs under OSX and 5-6 under XP, with no tweaks. No I thought you had that installed that already with the installer, so it thought DISABLING it might change the trackpad behavior, but I doubt enabling it would help. I don't really know what kexts are involved. I know there's 2 elements about speedstep in the installer... one adds a little program to see CPU temperature. But it shows 2 cpus, even though Atom is a single core. So I put cpus=1 and now the little app still sees 2 cpus, but one has ridiculous values and one lists the real values. I think maybe even I did a cpus=1 at boot before installing Iatkos and the behavior in the app remains the same. Whatever.

I can't help about the realtek really. I know the wired ethernet may work but is not so stable, depending on the chip. I don't use it. My wifi was also detected properly in the System profiler, mine is Atheros 5007 if I remember, but it just wouldn't work. I know some chips do work, and if you make it work post your method. I know my atheros is useless for this, even though it worked great under xp. The replacement wifi, great if you can find it cheaper, and yes it took about 20 days from HK, i just wanted to state the bcm94321mc works out of the box for me without driver. Other chips work too, I think one can refer to this, in the hardware compatibility section :

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

or on the Iatkos for recommended netbooks infos...

http://iatkos.wikidot.com/recommended-osx86-netbooks

[dtr2]

With latest driver from Realtek here (http://www.realtek.com/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=7&PFid=7&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#RTL8100E/RTL8101E/RTL8102E-GR/RTL8103E(L)<br>RTL8102E(L)/RTL8101E/RTL8103T<br>RTL8401/RTL8401P)

I have a fully working mac... I just wish the wireless worked too...

[SlimJim]

Great! I'm looking forward to IKaros i.e Snow Leopard... http://uphuck.ggrn.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7276 I hope we can install that now that we have a little experience... Enjoy!

[darktbone]

I installed Mac OSx (10.5.6) on my LG x130, but he didn't reconize all stuff, only USB, I had to connect a external keyboard and mouse because his keyboard and trackpad didn't accept for Mac Os.

And I looking for drivers to fix him.. here I found the drive for realtek, if i found some drive i will bring for you.



thanks

Bruno Roberto