Do you have 10.5.8 installed on your Dell Mac Mini and want to cleanly upgrade to Snow Leopard, but you don't have a USB DVD drive? If you want to use the Netbookmaker and Netbookinstaller method but don't have access to a Mac, here's how you do it without resorting to DellEFI.

You need a Dell Mac Mini with Leopard on it, a Windows PC and a 16gb USB stick. (An 8gb USB might just be enough, but I'm not sure).

1) Insert Snow Leopard retail disc into your PC. SL will come up with a window on autorun, but close that.
2) Download, install and run Transmac trial
3) In Transmac, right click on the drive with DVD in
4) Choose "Save Image As.." and call it SLRetail.dmg, and proceed.

For me this process took about 10 minutes, but YMMV.

5) When finished, insert 16gb USB stick on Windows then format with NFTS as this guide explains:

How To Format USB Drive With NTFS File System | Technize - Be Techdated

6) When finished, copy SLRetail.dmg to USB - this also takes about 10 minutes

7) Remove USB from PC and insert into 10v

8) Copy SLRetail.dmg from USB to 10v into a spare directory. This also takes about 10 minutes.

9) Remove USB from 10v and insert into your PC.

10) Now format it for FAT32 - My Computer > right click > Format > Choose FAT32

11) Remove USB and insert into 10v

12) Then join in with the Mechdrew guide here:

NetbookInstaller 1: USB Installation via Mac | Guides | OS X | mechdrew

..at step no. 2 at "On Mac" section. Except with this method of install, at step 9, use the image you copied over earlier instead of the DVD.

Then proceed as the rest of the guide says. In my case, instead of using the 10.5.7/8 combo update, I've gone for 10.6.1 and it seems to be working fine.

Note: I found when you're about to enter your password at step 8 of "Installing the Combo Update" there was a minute or two delay in being able to enter anything into the box, but after that it worked fine.

[Down8]

Did you have any issues with sound after this upgrade method?

-bZj

[schnide]

Sound wasn't working, so I applied the fix found in this thread:

Question about BIOS beeping sound

[tchariya]

I'm looking to upgrade from 10.5.8 to SL without doing a fresh install.
I can't tell for sure with your steps, but did your 10.5.8 get wiped in the process of restoring from the SL .dmg file you landed on the Leopard HD?

I want to avoid having to do a fresh install of SL since I don't have immediate access to a real Mac.

In other words, if you treated the SL retail DVD as say.... a Windows Service Pack, is there a real way to run the upgrade without destroying how the current Leopard build on the netbook is setup?

[tchariya]

I was able to follow the instructions and get a fresh install of SL installed on my 10v.

I couldn't see an upgrade path, but I was prepared for that. It gave me a chance to repartition my HD and give myself a 60gb space.

Unfortunately my xbench ran and gave an initial result 10 points lower than my previous benchmarking of installation of Leopard on the exact same 10v.

[schnide]

Yes, this method wipes 10.5.8 you have installed.

I've also found that 10.6.1 boots slower than 10.5.8, noticeably so, but it boots every time whereas 10.5.8 was getting to be very, very unreliable in that respect.

[debaire]

Is there anything special I have to do to go from 10.5.6 to SL? I never upgraded because my mini was stable and I didn't want to upset anything.

[johnhab]

So I put 10.5.8 on a 10v ironically about 2-3 weeks before Snow Leopard came out, but because it's stable I haven't messed with it, but have recently considered upgrading.

My question is (and I have a Mac mini as well), why can't I just take the SL DVD image, put it on a USB drive, and run it with the 10v's existing 10.5.8 OS active, like it was a non-hacked Mac? Put another way, why do I have to go the whole NetbookBookMaker route like when I did the install from scratch?

Notwithstanding the above, if I do the upgrade, will all the workarounds/fixes I've done so far (e.g., fixing sound so it works after sleep, installing an improved trackpad driver) remain intact, or will I have to redo them? Thx.