[underhill]

SOLUTION - ditched the DVD, bought a USB stick and followed mechdrew's guide.

Greetings,

I have a mini9 with 8GB SSD and I'm trying to do a fresh install of 10.6.3 with an external DVD. Unfortunately, I don't have large USB stick to use.

So far, everything in the guides have failed. Using mechdrew's guides hasn't worked. I'm using NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC4 to boot and then switching to the retail DVD. Once switched, the DVD whirls, screen goes blank, and the mini reboots. The DVD is store bought and worked fine on upgrading my other mac.

Is there a newer bootable NetbookCD for 0.8.4 RC1? Couldn't find one on the web.

Is the BIOS at the wrong rev (A04)?

The mini9 currently has 10.5.6 installed. I tried running the installer straight from the DVD but the installer complains there isn't enough space on the SSD.

I have also tried modding the DVD with the NetbookMaker 0.8.4 RC1 and then burned the DVD. No joy. One reason I modded the DVD is to allow custom installation of s/w since my SSD isn't large enough to hold a real install.

Any help is appreciated.

TIA

[Horatio]

I think you're struggling there mate. Can't you bite the bullet and get a 16Gb USB stick? They're cheap as chips and (assuming you're in the UK), you can get them in Argos or somewhere like that. If you're in the US, I imagine they'd be even cheaper.

[jamesbarnhill]

Originally Posted by underhill

Greetings,

I have a mini9 with 8GB SSD and I'm trying to do a fresh install of 10.6.3 with an external DVD. Unfortunately, I don't have large USB stick to use.

So far, everything in the guides have failed. Using mechdrew's guides hasn't worked. I'm using NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC4 to boot and then switching to the retail DVD. Once switched, the DVD whirls, screen goes blank, and the mini reboots. The DVD is store bought and worked fine on upgrading my other mac.

Is there a newer bootable NetbookCD for 0.8.4 RC1? Couldn't find one on the web.

Is the BIOS at the wrong rev (A04)?

The mini9 currently has 10.5.6 installed. I tried running the installer straight from the DVD but the installer complains there isn't enough space on the SSD.

I have also tried modding the DVD with the NetbookMaker 0.8.4 RC1 and then burned the DVD. No joy. One reason I modded the DVD is to allow custom installation of s/w since my SSD isn't large enough to hold a real install.

Any help is appreciated.

TIA

Hello, Underhill, try using this file. extract it then write the image to a small flash drive, or write it to a cd. I haven't tested it directly with the DVD, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
If for some reason it doesn't, though, just post, and I'll try to create a different one. Thanks, James.

[underhill]

jamesbarnhill

No joy. I can see it start booting off the stick and then the apple logo shows up from my current osx installed on the mini. Looks like the boot off the stick is failing.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[BoaZ2020]

This might sound like a stupid question... But. Are you pressing a key when the OSX DVD starts to boot, I believe you have to press a key to boot off the DVD, otherwise, it will attempt to boot your SSD. Also, if that isn't the problem, maybe you could try blowing away your existing OSX partitions using an XP install disc, or something like that. Of course, backup your data first.

Also, if you've already burnt the patched OSX installer, you don't need a thumb drive at all.

[underhill]

What I'm doing:
Power up mini9
Press 0
Select USB device

I can see the twirling prompt as the mini9 is booting off the USB stick. Then the screen flashes and the mini9 starts booting off the SSD. Not the DVD. So do I
need to press a key during the USB stick boot?

Yes, I burned a patched OSX installer but that didn't work either. The way I did that was:
Rip the OSX DVD to the harddrive using Disk Utility as a read/write dmg.
Mounted DMG and mucked with the installer options as per mechdrew's guide.
Ran the NetbookBootMaker 0.8.4 RC1 and pointed it to the dmg.
Burned the DMG back to a DVD.

Is that right? Should that DVD now boot off the mini9 with no other CD/USB?

Thanks for your help.

[jamesbarnhill]

You've done it right, it should work, at the whirling prompt just press and hold 'shift' until you see the devices then select 'Mac OS X Install DVD'.

[BoaZ2020]

Originally Posted by underhill

I can see the twirling prompt as the mini9 is booting off the USB stick. Then the screen flashes and the mini9 starts booting off the SSD. Not the DVD. So do I
need to press a key during the USB stick boot?

If you have a patched OSX Installer DVD, you don't need the USB stick, remove that, and try booting from USB DVD drive again, with the patched disc in the drive.

[underhill]

@jamesbarnhill
Doh! Ok, I now get the icon showing my mini9. I pressed F5 and get an error. Something about unable to patch 64bit kernel. Use arch=i386. Something like that. It flashed on the screen for a sec and then gives me a memory error.

@BoaZ2020
That is what I thought but it doesn't want to boot off the DVD. I found an Ubuntu ISO laying around and tried it to make sure the drive is working which it did. Only thing I can think of is that I didn't burn the DVD right.

[jamesbarnhill]

I also got that error, this might be why they created an IMG just for booting from DVD in the first place... I'll look into it. ~James