Another, better display mirroring solution

http://www.fabiancanas.com/Projects/MirrorDisplays/

Put that in Utilities, use Spotlight to find it if the display gets garbled, you're away.

Potential help on 10.5.8 upgrade

http://www.hutsby.net/2009/09/msi-wind-updating-to-1058-on.html

Basically looks like video drivers get hosed, so need to reinstall the kernel extensions.

Projectors in os x on Advent

I found that when I connected a projector, display went all garbled. Found suggestions that this was the 'mirrored display' mode of OS X, which is known to be broken in the graphics drivers on the Wind/Advent 4211.

There was a suggestion to enable the "show display settings in menu bar" or somesuch, which I did, and then hover the mouse button over the icon when plugging a projector in, press down twice, then enter. That disables mirror mode, which seems to be enabled by default when a projector is plugged in.

Did that. It works.

Then had to use DisplayConfigX to remove the 100Hz settings that the monitor didn't like, reboot, mac says it's now at 1024x768 60 Hz, projector says 1280x768 (it is 1280x800 native), everything looks about right in terms of aspect ratio.

10.5.5 update woes

Now the Advent 4211 won't boot after accepting Apple's update patch from 10.5.4 to 10.5.5. It goes to a blue screen with a mouse cursor, but flashes back to a terminal window every 10s with sometimes an error message, mostly blank.

There is some info in this forum topic that suggests various kernel extensions (kexts) need to be reinstalled:

http://forums.msiwind.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3722&view=next

However, that is mainly for video display issues - seems that special MSI display kexts get nuked by the update. This one is for exactly my problem:

http://forums.msiwind.net/mac/blue-screen-after-update-t4018.html

I deleted AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext folder from /System/Library/Extensions because I found that it in this post, from Biohead (at the bottom of page):

http://forums.msiwind.net/mac/released-t3551.html

You have to make the disk writeable first:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /

The first one does a filesystem check, the second actually makes the disk writeable. I tried this several times but it didn't seem to work (using rm -r to remove the .kext directory) - turns out you need to 'exit' rather than just turn off the computer by holding down the power button for a long time. It must flush a cache then.

However, this didn't change anything.

Second post above seems to suggest downloading a pile of kernel extensions and installing over the ones that are there, after someone had the exact same problem as me. Also on this page, grantonstar also says to reinstall all kexts. Will track down what that means exactly!

The download is for a whole lot of kexts and other things required for a fresh install, and requires running kexthelper.app, which is clearly impossible. Looking for other ways, I figure I could just copy the kexts.

Need to mount the USB stick:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030714194313542

I am moving all the relevant kexts that are going to be replaced to /Users/michaelfielding/. Natit.kext and ACPIBattery.kext don't exist on the Advent yet.

Now I exit, and instead of going back to another terminal-like thing, it actually boots OS X! Hooray! And the right screen resolution too!

Display resolution problems

The screen keeps coming up as 800x600!

This post tries to solve this display resolution problem, which everyone seems to be having:

http://forums.msiwind.net/mac/help-nagging-800x600-screen-resolution-bug-cold-boot-t2383.html

Installing Leopard on Advent 4211

I got MSIWindOSX86.iso off bittorrent (searched on The Pirate Bay). Download took two days, much longer than it should have.

Youtube video by OneTrack who made it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS7yFH_I3NI&feature=related

And post about it:


This post for the alternative (but seemingly not as good) Kalyway version suggests that you need firmware 1.05+, which is available from thetechguys which is PC World's tech support site.

http://www.modaco.com/content/asus-eee-pc-http-www-eeeasy-com/270099/pauls-complete-guide-to-installing-osx-leopard-on-your-msi-wind-advent-4211/

Bios update 1.08:

http://support.thetechguys.com/4211bios

I got the ISO onto a DVD and it booted up, but the screen resolution wasn't what it should be according to the youtube vid (my install was running over to the LHS, whereas on the video it runs right across the screen.

Rather than proceed like that I thought it best to update the BIOS to 1.08 (it's 1.06) before proceeding. Ran it, interestingly the keyboard doesn't work after the reflash but you turn it off and unplug and wait 10s and then it goes again.

Now when I boot the same ISO it has a slightly different message. And when Windows had started it Found New Hardware (SMBUS stuff). So the BIOS update must have done something.

Then I also add 1Gb of RAM and put the 320 Gb HDD in :-) Couldn't get the HDD out so used this help:

http://www.laptopmag.com/Advice/how-to/msi-wind-hard-drive.aspx

Booted up, formatted whole 320Gb as HFS+ in Disc Utility.

During the install when you reach the Install Summary page (after selecting drive to install on) you have to select Customise -> Patches -> Kernel and uncheck it.

Install - everything works and it's nice!