My Dell Mini Forum

JJDriVeR · **How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-04-2009, 03:12 PM

Hello All,

I am running OSX on my dell mini 9 and I had the bluetooth disabled while it was running XP, so I ran into the problem of not having the bluetooth available in OSX. Reading on various forums I found that the only option I had was to reinstall XP, enable the bluetooth and reinstall OSX, so I found an option (that need to be refined) that let you enable bluetooth without resintallation.

What I used was the following
- Ubuntu 8.10 CD (available for free at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download)
- 1 Gb USB stick
- Dell Aircraft Manager (available at http://dell-mini.archive.canonical.com/ ... 11_all.deb)
- an SD card
- an USB - SD card reader

First of all I boot with the Ubuntu CD on other computer, then I plugged the 1 Gb USB stick and created a bootable USB stick from Ubuntu (this is the same you have on the CD but on the USB on a read/write device)

Now, on the same PC I downloaded Dell Aircraft Manager and copied it to the SD using the USB SD reader.

With these two things ready, I plugged the 1 Gb USB stick into one of the left side USB ports of the Mini 9 and the SD on the SD card reader of the Mini.

Turn on your Mini and boot from the USB drive, it will boot Ubuntu in the same fashion it did it from the CD, when it is ready you will see the SD icon on the desktop, double click on it, then double click aircraft-manager_belmont11_all.deb, you will be asked if you want to install the package, say yes and wait for the package to be installed.

When the packages is installed, you will find it on the Applications menu. Open it and enable the bluetooth device.

After this point, you can reboot your Mini 9 unplug the USB stick and now you will get the Bluetooth device available on your OSX.

Hopefully this will help some people that run into the same problem I had.

Enjoy your Dell Mini OSX!

JJDriVeR

PS: Sorry if I am missing some details, I am not good writing tutorials, hope this provide a good overview for the ones with the right skills to create a real How-TO.

PS 2: Hopefully someone will find the way to prevent downloading the 600 Mb of the Ubuntu CD just tu run this application. Any correction/improvement to this is always welcome!

ian · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-04-2009, 03:38 PM

This can be simplified slightly, removing the need for a USB SD card reader.

Instead of using your PC to download the Aircraft Manager, just use your Mini running OSX. Put the SD card in the MIni's internal reader and use Safari (or whatever) to download Aircraft Manager, then copy it from your Downloads folder to the SD card. Then it's ready for use when you boot from the Ubuntu live stick.

That's how I did it, anyway.

randyman · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-04-2009, 04:00 PM

You guys are brilliant; thanks so much. This is all I lack at this point; I'll give it a go tonight. Cheers!

guyincognito · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-04-2009, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ian

This can be simplified slightly, removing the need for a USB SD card reader.

The process can be simplified even farther, actually. You can boot into Ubuntu from the USB drive, and then download the .deb using Firefox. This will produce a prompt asking you if you want to install it.

randyman · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-05-2009, 01:11 AM

All right, I'm stuck.

When I'm in Ubuntu, and I've found the "Airplane Mode" menu item under System/Preferences/ , do I want to check the buttons for WiFi and Bluetooth "on"?

If I do, and look under the Bluetooth Device Wizard, it doesn't see my Apple Wireless Keyboard.

If I look under "Bluetooth Preferences", the Power Switch button is dimmed out. I'm starting to wonder if I even have a Bluetooth card. Any advice on how I can check? Bluetooth is enabled under Bios...

And when I boot back into OS X, there's no sign of it. If I look under System Profiler, and Bluetooth I get "No Information Found". Grrr... Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

guyincognito · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-05-2009, 01:19 AM

Did you order the bluetooth module when you ordered your Mini? Does bluetooth work in Ubuntu? You could try a USB bluetooth module in OS X.

randyman · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-05-2009, 01:33 AM

Bluetooth shows no sign of working in Ubuntu... I'm really thinking I may not have it at all. I ordered a refurb, and thought it was included but maybe not. I'll look for my manifest, and see if it's listed... sorry if I've been wasting your time.

If I'm lacking it, I may get a card to install instead of relying on a dongle... more elegant.

mitchell · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 03-05-2009, 03:14 PM

I'm having same issue here.
Installed Ubuntu on USB stick and installed this app but no luck.
any more ideas?
thanks

notolly · **Re: How-To Enable Bluetooth on OSX (without XP) -** 04-04-2009, 11:53 PM

worked a treat! thanks and great site, i ended up using http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ to create a usb boot ubuntu directly from the downloaded iso saved needing another computer thought might b of sum use to any1 else trying, nway all good now works a dream osx is definitely the only os for the mini9 running runcore.

Timmy G · **Worked perfectly -** 04-05-2009, 08:48 PM

Hi guys,

Thanks very much, this was so simple and it fixed my bluetooth so now my cool dongle-free Logitech V470 works on my Dell Mini

I downloaded the Windows version of http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ which was straight fwd (apart from the overnight download

) and then followed the instructions on the first post.

I did however use a USB key for the deb file (so I had 2 USB flash drives in at once) and it didn't install into my Applications menu so I just found it via the terminal in "/usr/bin/aircraft-manager" (or was it /usr/local/bin or /usr/share/bin?) or similar (if you try to reinstall the deb, one of the tabs will tell you where it was installed).

Cheers,
Tim