Bootable Leopard USB from Windows

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Tandyman1000

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Oct 6, 2012, 12:43:10 AM10/6/12
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Here is the situation: I have a Windows computer, an iPC image, and a netbook that I want to hackintosh. The netbook, in lieu of me buying an expensive mini PCI-E SSD, is using a 16gb Micro SD card.

1. Is it possible for me to make a bootable USB drive from windows (unetbootin and powerISO didn't work for me)
2. Can I install OS X to an SD card once I get the installer booted on my netbook?

Thanks.

Kris Tilford

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Oct 6, 2012, 1:27:34 AM10/6/12
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Not enough info. What model of NetBook? No HD? What about the PC? DVD
burner?

Here are some ideas:

1) if the iPC image is the 10.5.6 LIVE DVD, you might be able to burn
the image to DVD on your Windows computer, then boot the DVD into a
LIVE OS X System. Even if it's not a LIVE DVD, you could possibly boot
the Windows PC with the iPC DVD into the OS X Installer. If the
Windows PC boots from an iPC DVD, then go to Disk Utility to reformat
the USB stick as Mac HFS+ file system and then restore the installer
image to the USB stick using Disk Utility>Restore. This should create
a bootable USB stick from the iPC image.

2) if you have MacDrive on the Windows PC you can reformat the USB
stick to Mac HFS+ without needing OS X, but after you do this, you'll
still need a way to clone the iPC image, which I believe the normal
way is PowerISO, which may have failed because your USB stick was
formatted MBR/FAT instead of MBR/HFS+.

3) you can install OS X onto any mounted volume, but that won't make
it bootable unless the BIOS of your NetBook supports booting from SD
cards. If the BIOS supports SD card booting, then you'll need to
reformat the card to HFS+ file system, and you may or may not want to
change the partition format (will be MBR, might want GUID, might not?).

As a note, sometimes it's not obvious how to boot the iPC 10.5.6 LIVE
DVD into a live OS X System. You have to press F8 in Chameleon, and
then type in the boot argument "config=live.plist" without quotes, and
then hit Return <Enter>. The boot will be in verbose mode
automatically, and will stop, where you'll need to type: "bootlive;
exit" without the quotes, and then hit Return<Enter>. It will stop
again, asking for default RAM Disk size, which is 1GB by default, and
booting the LIVE DVD will require a MINIMUM of 1.1 GB actual RAM, and
1.0 GB will NOT boot in my experience. You will either hit
Return<Enter> to select the default 1GB RAM Disk size, or enter a
custom size in 512KB blocks (2 = 1MB; 2048=1GB; etc.) I've tried
smaller than 1GB and not completed a successful boot, I believe you
actually need more than 1.1GB physical RAM to boot.

There is another OS X LIVE DVD called Kismus Hackintosh Tools LIVE DVD
which doesn't boot to Finder, it boots to a file browser/launcher
program, but can boot with small amounts of RAM, and might be useful?



mosslack

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Oct 6, 2012, 11:36:51 AM10/6/12
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On Oct 6, 2012, at 12:43 AM, Tandyman1000 wrote:

Here is the situation: I have a Windows computer, an iPC image, and a netbook that I want to hackintosh. The netbook, in lieu of me buying an expensive mini PCI-E SSD, is using a 16gb Micro SD card.

1. Is it possible for me to make a bootable USB drive from windows (unetbootin and powerISO didn't work for me)

This is an older article, but should still apply, on how to run OS X in a VM on Windows: http://lifehacker.com/5583650/run-mac-os-x-in-virtualbox-on-windows

2. Can I install OS X to an SD card once I get the installer booted on my netbook?

Thanks.

Yes. Don't expect SSD speeds though as most mem card readers used on netbooks work via USB. 

As Kris mentioned, more info would be helpful.



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Christian Wacker

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Oct 6, 2012, 11:45:06 AM10/6/12
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Can your current Windows PC run virtulixation software? And can it accept the sd card? If so, you might be able to use the virtualbox method of booting osx on VB, but point the installation path to the sd card. Or you could use a virtualbox virtual disk image, and then expand it to a physical disk post install using the sd card as the physical disc.
What are the netbook specs, and the desktop specs? Do you have an external hdd or dvd drive available? (that would make the install a snap.



From: Tandyman1000 <jbic...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 23:43
To: hq...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [HQ-A] Bootable Leopard USB from Windows


Here is the situation: I have a Windows computer, an iPC image, and a netbook that I want to hackintosh. The netbook, in lieu of me buying an expensive mini PCI-E SSD, is using a 16gb Micro SD card.

1. Is it possible for me to make a bootable USB drive from windows (unetbootin and powerISO didn't work for me)
2. Can I install OS X to an SD card once I get the installer booted on my netbook?

Thanks.

Tandyman1000

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Oct 6, 2012, 6:51:55 PM10/6/12
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My PC runs Windows 7, and has no OS X partition. I have no CD drive for the netbook, which has a crappy 4GB internal PCI-E SSD which I can't afford to upgrade, so I do everything from the SD card which gets decent enough speed.

The PC has an sd card reader, yes, so the best method is to install the iPC distro in VBox the way I want it, then somehow write the .vhd to my SD card and hope it works?

Christopher Satterfield

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Oct 6, 2012, 7:31:41 PM10/6/12
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I'm just guessing, original eeePC?

Tandyman1000

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Oct 6, 2012, 8:26:41 PM10/6/12
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Close. A 900 model with 512mb of RAM and 4GB internal SSD.

Kris Tilford

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Oct 7, 2012, 12:39:09 AM10/7/12
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On Oct 6, 2012, at 7:26 PM, Tandyman1000 wrote:

> Close. A 900 model with 512mb of RAM and 4GB internal SSD.


This won't work well. Leopard 10.5 needs a MINIMUM recommended
FREESPACE of 4GB for temp files, virtual memory, and cache files. With
only 512MB RAM you're going to be creating a lot of virtual memory,
which can really bog down fast. You need more RAM, together with a
bigger SSD, or HD, or an external USB HD to boot from.
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