Adding ESATA To An Acer Aspire 1

March 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

esata

In another installment of her ongoing efforts to mod the Acer Aspire 1, [tnkgrl] has added eSATA capabilities. During the hard drive upgrade she did, she used the spare PATA connection, leaving an SATA connection free. This time she has gone in and extended it to be accessible outside the case. To do that, she scavenged an eSATA connector from a desktop and simply wired it into the connections on the motherboard. She then mounted it flush as seen in the picture above. In the past she’s covered adding RAM, internal Bluetooth and the hard drive upgrade.

Dell Mini 9 OSX Install

February 21, 2009 by Eliot 36 Comments

dellosx

Installing OSX on commodity PC hardware has advanced a lot since the early days of OSx86 when Apple switched to Intel. With the advent of netbooks, a new target platform has emerged; one that doesn’t have an official Apple equivalent. The small subset of models means that it’s easy to find someone else that has the same machine as you, but it still takes some forum walking to bring all the pieces together. Gizmodo has done this and compiled a comprehensive guide for the Dell Mini 9. The Mini 9 is a very nice machine and according to Boing Boing Gadgets’ chart, one of the most compatible with OSX. Earlier this week you could purchase a new one for just $200.

For Gizmodo’s install, they used a Leopard retail DVD with [Type11]’s bootloader. They’re breaking the EULA, but at least it’s not piracy. They had to use both a DVD drive and a USB hard drive because device recognition was flakey. Despite this, the actual install process doesn’t appear to be too difficult. They say all the hardware works, “The Mini 9 is a beautiful OS X machine.” Check out this Hackit to learn about netbook OSX experiences from other Hack a Day readers.

Vaio P HSDPA Mod

February 13, 2009 by Eliot 4 Comments

sim

[tnkgrl] has concluded her Sony Vaio P by adding GSM support. We covered the switch to XP earlier, but this should work on Vista too. The Vaio P is sold in the US with support for Verizon’s EVDO wireless broadband, but it uses the same hardware as the European model that uses GSM. This is possible because of the the Qualcomm Gobi radio module. To get GSM support, you trick the VZAccess Manager into loading a different firmware than the stock EVDO. The difficult part is that the Vaio P doesn’t come with a SIM card slot, so you’ll have to solder in your own. When you’ve got the computer reassembled, just change VZAccess Manager to use your carrier.

UPDATE: Wired has an article on the Gobi chipset.

VAIO P XP Install

February 10, 2009 by Eliot 31 Comments

vaio_p

Sony recently started to shipping the VAIO P don’t-call-it-a-netbook netbook. It comes stock with 2GB of RAM, which means it’s not eligible for Microsoft’s XP ultra low cost pc licensing. Hackers wanting to exorcise Vista have run into a few issues. After doing her unboxing photoshoot, [tnkgrl] wrote a guide for replacing Vista with XP on the Vaio P. She used the Universal Extractor to pop open the driver downloads and remove the Vista check. This got the WWAN radio and GPS working in XP. The only casualty was the volume and mute buttons are no longer working. You can see an annotated image verifying all the components here.

Hackit: Are You Running OSX On Your Netbook?

February 3, 2009 by Eliot 32 Comments

osx

AppleDifferent decided to run some benchmarks on their MSI Wind hackintosh to see how it stacked up to real Apple hardware. It comes in under the MacBook Air in most cases and they conclude that it performs about as well as a four year old G4. Being so small and inexpensive, you can’t really expect much better. As a counterpoint, Obsessable posted a video demoing just how slow a first generation Eee PC can be (embedded below). Boing Boing Gadgets is maintaining an OSX netbook compatibility chart. It shows that the MSI Wind is probably the best case for OSX usability. If we were buying today, we’d probably pick up a Dell Mini 9 even though it requires an SSD upgrade before it will sleep properly.

Are any of you running OSX as the primary OS on your netbooks? What has your experience been?

Continue reading “Hackit: Are You Running OSX On Your Netbook?” →

Adding Right Click To A Macbook Pro

January 23, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 50 Comments

mbp_rc

Surprisingly, one of the most common complaints we hear from people trying out macs are the fact that there isn’t a right click. The latest version, the unibody, has an option that remedies this, but older versions are stuck without. While you could always plug a USB mouse in, that is hardly a hacker’s solution. [spiritplumber] sent us this mod he did, adding right click functionality to his Macbook Pro. It is worth noting that this is meant for the 2006 to 2008 version of the Macbook Pro. You’re on your own for different ones.

[spiritplumber] points out that there are test points on the back of the track pad that emulate certain events. One of wich, just happens to be a right click. He shows us how to wire this, to a home made contact button under the right corner of the track pad. This can be potentially hazardous to your macbook, so be careful and follow his tips for soldering. If you want, you can do the same to the opposite side for your left click, or just leave it the way it is. You can see a video of it in action after the break.

Continue reading “Adding Right Click To A Macbook Pro” →

External Antenna On Panasonic CF-R1

January 21, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

ext_ant

[Steven] managed to get his hands on a Panasonic CF-R1 for pretty cheap. Though it is a decently powerful machine, it was built in 2002 and didn’t come with an internal wireless card. It did, however have a mini-PCI slot. [Steven] promptly installed a wireless card, but found the internal antenna lacking. The solution was to custom mount an external antenna. Mounting it was fairly easy, he removed the phone jack and epoxied the connector in its place. The reception was greatly improved. He says he went from seeing 6 access points to 31 as soon as he installed it. Similar things have been done to the Eee PC 900.