Mac OSX Lion Golden Master on Fujitsu S6410

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Update Mac OS X Lion 10.7 GM to 10.7.2

Curious with latest beta update of Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 from iMZDL. Thanks to virgin media, even with lowest packages I have, but can get stable 10Mbps download speed. First try http download without any luck only get 1Mbps and will take 1 hour to download 363MB. Switch to torrent with excellent speed, it only takes less than 10 minute to download the update.

This update is requirement to be able run iCloud which will be coming this fall.

Mount the images, and run the installation files.

After restart the notebook

Friday, 22 July 2011

Mac OS X Lion Golden Master 11A511 = Retail ?

A few weeks ago I have installed Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Golden Master 11A511 on my notebook Fujitsu S6410. It was nice to have a decent OS from Apple even it was still beta version due to Final / Retail version not release yet.

On 20th July 2011 Apple announce that Mac OS X Lion has been available for download on Apple Store. I search on many forums tell that the final version of Mac OS X Lion 10.7 was 11A494. But when your computer connected to the internet during installation process, It will be automatically update to 11A511 which is the Golden Master version.

So there's no point for me to install retail version of Mac OS X on my notebook, since it was installed the latest version of the OS.

Here's the screen shoot when I try to visit Apple Store

When I click Download

Hooray.... My notebook was installed Mac OS X Lion :)

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Mac OS X Lion 10.7 GM Installation Video

USB Flash Disk Preparation

Installation Process

Thank you for watching

Saturday, 16 July 2011

32bit or 64bit ?

The Mac OS X Lion 10.7 is believed as pure 64bit operating system. It is nice to run application in 64bit mode as we manage to use the full feature of Intel core2 duo processor which is build based on 64bit hardware architecture.

64bit OS can use more than 4GB memory since 32bit can only use less than 4GB. Fortunately there was a PAE (Physical Address Extension) method to address bigger than 4GB memory using 32bit OS.

Mac OS X can run into 32bit or 64bit mode with supplying kernel flags "arch=i386"for 32bit and "arch=x_64" for 64bit in boot loader while bootup process. The only limitation to run the OS is availability of kext (drivers in windows wolrd). There are wide variety of choice in desktop pc to swap the component with the other which has suitable kext. Since i only have notebook capable to run Mac OS X and the upgrade is very limited. I can't swap my integrated graphics adapter while i can change my wifi card into airport friendly.

Here is my experience running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on Fujitsu S6410 pros and cons.

32Bit Mode:

Display adapter run OOB running using AppleIntelX3100 with full hardware acceleration QE/CI.
Display can operate on native resolution on my LCD 1280x800x32 @60hz
Keyboard and Touchpad running using VoodooPS2 and two finger scrolling feature was working flawlessly.
Benchmark result slightly lower @3099 using 32bit geekbench.

64Bit Mode:

Display only run on 1024x768 resolution.
Display has no QE/CI hardware acceleration didn't working.
Keyboard and Touchpad didn't work since VoodooPS2 only operate in 32bit mode, I change to ApplePS2Controller.kext which can run on 64bit, but I loose a nice two finger scrolling feature :)
Benchmark result higher @3430 using 64bit geekbench.

Since my notebook mainly using for video related with IMovie, I need full hardware QE/CI but I still can't find suitable kext for my Intel X3100 video adapter running on 64bit. So there is no point for me to run in 64bit mode, and I will stick on 32bit with slightly less performance but richer compatibility to my old notebook.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Installing Mac OS X Lion GM on Fujitsu S6410

On 1st July 2011 apple has seed Mac OS X Lion Golden Master to the Developers as this release is believe as Release to Manufacture version of the OS. Now we can easily find the OS on many torrent website to try the brand new version of Mac OS X.

I will show how to install Mac OS X Lion Golden Master (11A511) on Generic Core2Duo Notebook using USB Flash disk method.

The notebook specifications are below:

Intel T7500 Core2Duo @2.2Ghz
4 GB DDR2 Memory
Intel GMA X3100 Display
320 GB HDD
Broadcom BCM4311 802.11 Wireless Controller

Hardware and software needed:

Mac OS X Lion GM Build 11A511
Hide and Seek
Chimera 1.4.1
Some Kext and OSInstall.mpkg
MultiBeast 3.7.3
SwitchResX 4.2.3
USB Flash Disk with 8GB Capacity
PC/Notebook Running Snow Leopard

Preparation USB Flash

Run hide and seek, small utility to show hidden files on Mac OS X. Since there is a file BaseSystem.dmg which is hidden by default and can't be seen by Finder.

Download the Mac OS X Lion Golden Master from your favorite torrent site. Usually the installation file is in DMG (Compressed Image), but now since apple wan't to distribute Mac OS X Lion via Apple Store and Installation method is upgrade from existing Snow Leopard 10.6.8 now The file is on Application Format.

We want to install Mac OS X Lion from scratch (fresh install) instead of upgrading from Snow Leopard, so we need to open the contents of Installation Image.

Right Click on Install Mac OS Lion, and Click Sow Packages Contents

Double Click on InstallESD.dmg files to mount the images.

Find the files BaseSystem.dmg and double click the file to mount the images.

Plug-in the USB Flash drive ( I use Transcend 8GB)

Run Disk Utility from Applications -> Utilities - > Disk Utility

Click on USB Flash and Select Partition 1, Option GUID, and Apply

Click Restore tab next to the partition tab

Drag Mac OS X Base System to the Source Image and Drag Untitled1 to the destination and click restore. Type in your supervisor password when asked and begin restoring process. This restore will take approximately 5 minute depend on your USB Flash drive speed.

After finish restore the based system image the USB Flash drive will filled around 1.13GB of data. Next step is open the USB Flash drive and find Symbolic Link Packages in folder System -> Installation Packages and Drag into Trash.

Open Mac OS X Install ESD and drag folder Packages to Folder System -> Installation. This process will copy the whole folder Packages to USB Flash drive. It will take some times, approx 5 minutes and again depend on the speed of your USB Flash drive.

After finish it will be look like this on USB Flash folder System -> Installation and the drive will filled 4.4GB with data.

Open Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

Copy match_kernel from Mac OS X Install ESD Volume to Mac OS X Base System on Restored USB Flash drive

Create directory /Extra and /Extra/Extensions on UFD

Put necessary Kext to USB Flash drive. I use FakeSMC and NullCPUPowerManagement

Repair permission on USB

Replace OSInstall.mpkg to prevent Mac OS X Can't be Installed on this Computer message when bootup with original one. Find the files on USB Flash drive folder /System/Installation/Packages

The new files will be 672KB

The original files 479KB

Now to make the USB Flash bootable we need to install Chimera 1.4.1 to the UFD. Open up the files and install Chimera 1.4.1 to the USB Flash Drive.

Now the preparation of USB Flash drive has been done.

Next we boot up the notebook with USB as first boot priority

Install From USB

Install OS X Lion until finish, and reboot.

Post Installation

Boot from USB Flash drive, after chimera welcome screen, select Hard Disk drive with Lion installed.

Add user, password and location to the system.

At this point, we will encounter problem with the keyboard. Because integrated keyboard on the notebook will not detected since using PS/2 interface instead of USB. To fix this problem we install VoodooPS2 Controller and VoodooPS2 Trackpad from Multibeast. So we have to plug external usb keyboard and mouse during troubleshooting.