[geeks] Macbook probably KIA, now what?

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 02:39:32PM -0500, William Barnett-Lewis wrote:
>Oh, joy. My 7 year old just dumped a nearly full coke on top of my
>Macbook. I've got all the bits opened up and have been drying it with
>the aid of a hair drier, but odds are I'm either toast or a short
>timer. And being a spill, so much for the extended warranty...
>
>So, what is the cheapest usable netbook/laptop that I can shoehorn
>MacOS X with one of the hacked up installers out there? Will any of
>them take the 2 & 1 gb sticks from my Macbook (1st gen core2 dual) or
>the 300gb sata drive I just put into it? I haven't look at them much
>at all as I'd hoped to get several more years out of my Macbook &
>can't really afford new right now anyway...
>

MSI Wind U100. You can already get it with 2g RAM, a 160g hd and 6 cell battery.

You download a file called MSIWINDOSX which is a single layer DVD image.
You either install it on a USB memory stick or use an external USB DVD drive.

Lots of support at http://forums.msiwind.net/mac/

The trick is to install the DVD which is 10.5.4 and then add the Wifi drivers.

Then download the patches for 10.5.6 which are for the display, mouse and
keyboard. 

You install the 10.5.6 combo update, and using a USB keyboard install the
patches. Then everything works. Then install the 10.5.7 combo update and
reinstall the display drivers.

If you use it, there is a shell script to go from built in speakers to
headphones. Since the regular headphone jacks are flimsy, I suggest that
you avoid the whole issue with USB or bluetooth headphones.

You may be able to go directly to 10.5.7, but I did not.

The only real problem I have with it is that the X windows is not really 
compatible with Ubuntu GNOME, I had a simple fix for 10.5.6 but it does not
work in 10.5.7, so when I connect to a remote system running Ubuntu with
X, I have to use KDE. :-(

BTW, if the onboard 802.11G Wifi is not fast enough for you, I have read
that you can get a replacment for the internal card that is 802.11N and
is directly supported by OSX for $35 on eBay.

Oh, and if your old drive is a laptop size SATA drive, you should be able
to put it in. I don't know about the RAM. 

With the 1024x600 screen I use spaces a lot.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM