[MiniMacGuy]

Hi,

New to the forum so hello! I have recently taken the plunge and purchased a Dell Mini 10v off ebay so that i can try out OSX on a small laptop and get a little more mobile. So far it has been pretty easy and i am delighted with it. My main goal was to get 10.6.6 on as i wanted to use the app store and any other new apps within OSX.

So how did i go about it? Here is my procedure as follows:

1. Downgrade Firmware from A06 to A04, i have heard nightmare stories about trying to get 10.6.6 with an A06 BIOS so it had to be downgraded straight away. I used an old usb stick, prepped that with the HP USB BOOT application and then downloaded / placed the A04 installer onto the USB stick. Next was to connect that to the laptop, change the boot priority to USB first and then let it startup. The 10v booted straight into dos, i then ran the installer with the force command as it will moan that the firmware currently on the machine is newer than the update i`m trying apply. Once that was done the machine beeped alot and eventually rebooted with the older A04 firmware on. Job done!

2. Next up was to place an external hard disk on a real intel based mac and also the original snow leopard dvd into the dvd drive. I then ran through disk utility getting the
osx dvd restored to the external hard disk. This step took about 1:30 to complete and when done i then ran the NetbookInstaller 0.8.5pre.app.zip and applied that to the external hard disk so it could boot and start the OSX installation process on the Dell mini 10v.

3. Next started the 10v up with the external hard disk plugged in, ran disk utility and prepared my internal hard disk as a single partiton with a GUID scheme. ran through
the osx installation and waited for it to boot changing of course the boot order within the Dell Mini 10v back to internal hard disk. Once booted i ran through main setup / user / location etc and then went into OSX for the first time.

4. Once in i ran the NetbookInstaller 0.8.5pre.app.zip again, waited a little while for the extention cache to rebuild and once complete rebooted the Dell Mini 10v. Once this was back up everything worked apart from sleep, it would not resume once the lid was lifted but i could live with that for now.

5. Next was to get 10.6.6 on, i was at this point on 10.6.3 and i have a couple of apps that need 10.6.5 or above plus i wanted the app store which is 10.6.6. So i downloaded the combo 10.6.6 update which is over 1gb in size. Ran that and waited for about an hour for it to run through but did NOT reboot straight away, immediately i re-ran NetbookInstaller 0.8.5pre.app.zip, waited for the cache build and then rebooted.

6. Once up everything still worked, boot times seemed quicker, the interface was quicker in fact it was running a lot better than with 10.6.3 on so i was rather pleased! And i have also found out that sleep is now working ??? I`m not going to argue about that!

7. Made some changes to the trackpad settings, the trackpad is awefull when it`s first installed so i enabled the finger gesures and click on trackpad saving me from having to use the buttons on the trackpad itself. Once done i turned up the sensitivity a bit and this made things a whole lot better.

8. Installed all the additional Apple updates, installed ilife-11 and plugged my Cannon camera in so i could check iPhoto. Performance is not great but then i only have 1gb ram at this stage. I have a 2gb stick and a 128GB G.Skill SSD 2.5" SATA disk to install so i expect it to be a little better once installed.


So all in all, a good experience with a fully working Dell Mini 10v with OSX 10.6.6. If i have missed anything i will update this thread but i hope that it works out for you!


Cheers,

[djtex]

Good steps. Just finished moving to 10.6.6.

[MiniMacGuy]

Thx

I`ll get some screenshots / tidy up the steps a bit when i can.

Cheers,

[livn4metal]

Awesome steps, thank you! I'm still using 10.6 pre updates because I never did lower my bios below A06. Every time I see the 10.6.6 update pop up I get scared and close the window. :P

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by livn4metal

Awesome steps, thank you! I'm still using 10.6 pre updates because I never did lower my bios below A06. Every time I see the 10.6.6 update pop up I get scared and close the window. :P

10.6.6 A06 -- no issues here.

[wigwoman]

I cant get my mini 10v to upgrade to 10.6.6 and I am thinking the A06 BIOS is to blame. I get a kernel panic on startup every time.

How did you downgrade the BIOS?

My research is hitting brick walls since lots of the mydellmini links are dead.

[underwhelmed]

It's not the BIOS. Are you using this version of NBI-
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/863180/Netbo...212351.app.zip

[wigwoman]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Sadly I have been using exactly that version. Been updating since 10.6.3 no problems but 10.6.6 does not work. Even with a total clean install.

Problem I'm having is that the biggest resource, this site, seems to have deleted all its old pages. I hope this gets fixed.

---------- Post added at 09:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 PM ----------

Is this the sort of thing you did?

Dell Mini 10v Dual Boot Review and Guide | Rampant Speculation

Looks very tricky.

[MKvw]

Ya those old valuable posts are killing me right now, I was following on yesterday and now the bookmark link that I was using is not available. Totally lost now!

[moshymoshy]

The correct steps are as follows:

1) It doesn't matter what BIOS version you have. A06 is 100% fine.
2) Follow mechdrew's guide.
3) Install the newest version of NBI 0.8.4.
4) Run Software Update.