Toshiba Mini NB205
The Toshiba Mini NB205 was a netbook I bought thinking I would use it for school. I used it maybe...twice, if even. Anyway, when I first heard of "hackintoshing" netbooks, I was well aware that the NB205 wouldn't run OS X nearly as well as the Dell Mini 9 or the Dell Mini 10v, but it was all I had.
Before you begin, note that sound, wifi, and bluetooth do not work. However, wifi and bluetooth can be fixed by getting a wifi and bluetooth dongle (external) and plugging that in. Or for wifi, you can switch the wifi card from the existing Atheros card to a Broadcom card.
Materials List:
On your Mac
Yay! Your USB drive is now ready for hackintoshing!
On your Toshiba Mini NB205
Before you begin, note that sound, wifi, and bluetooth do not work. However, wifi and bluetooth can be fixed by getting a wifi and bluetooth dongle (external) and plugging that in. Or for wifi, you can switch the wifi card from the existing Atheros card to a Broadcom card.
Materials List:
- A Toshiba Mini NB205
- A USB drive 8 GB or more (I highly recommend 16 GB)
- A retail copy of Leopard, retail meaning one you would buy in the Apple Store, not an OEM copy, which is a gray Leopard disc that came with your Mac (Leopard, meaning 10.5.x, NOT snow leopard -- it will not work)
- A computer running OS X with a disc drive and application, Disk Utility, which should be installed (Sorry, people! If you don't have a Mac, look up other applications like Disk Utility for your PC)
- Netbook BootMaker: http://code.google.com/p/netbook-installer/downloads/list Install all of them. So if 0.8.4 doesn't work (which happened to me), then you can use 0.8.3 which works as well.
On your Mac
- Insert your USB drive and OS X retail disc.
- Launch Disk Utility
- In Disk Utility, click on the USB drive icon that shows the capacity, such as 16.1 GB or 8.3 GB.
- Click on the Partition tab.
- Set the name as "Mac OS X Install", or whatever you want it to be.
- Make sure the format is "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
- To the left from the dropdown menu, where it says "Current", select "1 Partition".
- Click "Options..." and then select "Master Boot Record" and then OK.
- Click Apply.
- Now, go to the "Restore" tab. You should still be in Disk Utility.
- See on the side how you have the list of items such as your Mac OS X Install DVD, your hard drive, and your USB drive? Into the white box next to "Source", drag the Mac OS X Install DVD, which has an icon of a DVD next to it.
- Below in the white box next to "Destination" with the USB drive icon next to it, drag in the "Mac OS X Install" partition. To describe it, as a sub underneath your USB drive. Your USB drive is named 15.09 GB and the name of the USB drive. The sub should be named Mac OS X Install, or whatever you named it in Step 5.
- Check "Erase Destination".
- Now, click "Restore". It will take quite a while for it to restore, so if you are worried about battery life in your Mac if it is a laptop, plug it in. Then, do whatever. It'll be a while, and a watched pot never boils!
- When it is done, open Netbook Bootmaker, preferably the 0.8.4 version.
- Select "Mac OS X Install". If it isn't there, try it in Netbook Bootmaker 0.8.3.
- Hit "Prepare Boot Drive".
Yay! Your USB drive is now ready for hackintoshing!
On your Toshiba Mini NB205
- First, plug your netbook in. This is important because if for any reason your battery dies, bye bye Dell Mini 9. Well, maybe not that drastic, but you might want to plug it in. If you're thinking, "But my battery's charged!" then don't say I didn't warn you.
- Okay, now, with the netbook off, insert the USB drive you made on your Mac.
- Press the power button, and when the Toshiba page comes up, press F12 to go to your BIOS settings. When you are there, go to the BIOS tab and press F6 until your USB drive is at the top of the list.
- Finally, press F10 and hit Enter.
- The apple should pop up. The computer will take a few minutes to boot.
- When it asks you to select your language, select English (or whatever your language is) and continue.
- On the Welcome screen, continue, and Agree on the next screen.
- On the top, go to Menu Bar, Disk Utility.
- Select the icon for your solid state drive or hard drive. Dell Mini 9's usually have solid state drives.
- Go to the partition tab. In Volume Scheme, 1 Partition, Name can be whatever you want. I suggest "Macintosh HD". Format should be "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
- Go to Options, select GUID Partition Table, and click OK.
- Press Apply, then Partition. When it's done, you can quit out of Disk Utility by holding down Alt and q.
- Mac OS X will take up 11.4 GB of your solid state drive, which is why you need a 16 GB solid state drive instead of an 8 or even a 4. Even if you do have a 16 GB SSD (solid state drive), because 11.4 GB will be taken up by OS X, and the fact that most hard drives and solid state drives are a little bit smaller than advertised, you won't have much extra space. To partially solve this, select your newly formatted drive as the installation destination, and then click "Customize".
- Deselect "Additional Fonts", which are only fonts in other languages like Korean, French, Chinese, etc. You may also deselect "Language Translations". You can deselect all of the language translations, including English because English is already installed as the default. In Printer Support, deselect all printers but the ones you might use. My suggestion is to deselect all but the printers whose names you recognize. You can get these back after installation if necessary. Everything else, you keep.
- Press OK. You have knocked off a good 2 GB from your installation.
- Finally, hit "Install". This will take a while, but not as long as it says it will take. Don't wait around. When it's done, it will automatically restart. (If it says that the installation failed, it probably didn't. Just keep going.)
- After that, you can pretty much go on as normal, except for when you get to the registration page, hold down alt+q to quit. You do not want to register, or else the second you are connected to the internet, Apple will go, "Hey, this isn't a mac!" and bye bye Hackintosh. After you have set everything, go into your finder and there should be something called "Send Registration". Put that into the trash and empty the trash.
- Keep in mind, you can not update your Apple software. You can install Microsoft Word and update that, but you can't update iTunes, Safari, etc. You can also not update OS X, for instance, upgrade from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7. To keep your computer from automatically updating, go to System Preferences, Software Update, and uncheck automatic updates and when to check for available updates.
