Gear

Samsung NC10 Hacked to Run OS X

While my Hackintosh netbook was on display at Gizmodo Gallery last week, I had a chance to tinker around with the 10.2-inch Samsung NC10 on loan from Samsung. Much to our surprise, Samsung sent Wired.com an e-mail giving us permission to hack the NC10 however we wished. Two words: Hell yeah! Of course, the first […]

Nc10

While my Hackintosh netbook was on display at Gizmodo Gallery last week, I had a chance to tinker around with the 10.2-inch Samsung NC10 on loan from Samsung. Much to our surprise, Samsung sent
Wired.com an e-mail giving us permission to hack the NC10 however we wished. Two words: Hell yeah!

Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was beautify the NC10 with an install of Mac OS X. After reading some forums, I discovered the OS X
installation process for the NC10 was almost exactly the same as the steps Charlie Sorrel and I followed to hack our MSI Wind netbooks. So I gave it a whirl, and presto -- the NC10 is now running OS X.

How did I do it? You can follow the same video guide we provided a few weeks ago to hack the MSI Wind; you'd just change one step: Don't uncheck
"Kernel" in the OS X install options. If you're going to turn your
NC10 into a Hackintosh, make sure to scroll down to the bottom of this post to read about the known issues: Not many in the blogosphere have done this, and this hack is far from perfect.

Here are the steps again with that "Kernel" part left out:

(Disclaimer: The following process potentially violates
Apple's End User License Agreement for Mac OS X. Please ensure you own a copy of Mac OS X Leopard if you wish to follow the procedure.)

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You'll need to download the following:
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1. Launch the Disk Utility app in your Utilities folder. Select your
USB drive, and under the Erase tab choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Select the Partition tab, then click Options and select Master Boot
Record. Select OK and then hit Apply.

2. With the USB drive selected in Disk Utility, select the Restore tab.
For Source, choose the image file of the hacked OS X
(MSIWindosx86.iso). For Destination, choose your USB drive. Then click
Restore.

  1. Launch OSX86 Tools. Click Install EFI/Run FDISK.
    Install the tools, then select "Run Script." A Terminal window will open. Type in your administrator password. Then enter 4 to run
    Chameleon EFI. Then follow the directions listed in the Terminal window to install the code onto your USB drive.

  2. Eject your USB drive. Now insert it into the NC10. Hold down F2 when booting up the NC10 and choose your USB drive as the startup disk.

5. Run the install, then reboot and you've got OS X on your NC10!

Known issues:

  • The USB ports no longer work post-OSX-install.
  • Included Wi-Fi card is not compatible with Apple's Airport utility -- meaning you can't connect to wireless internet. Swapping out the Wi-Fi card will likely do the trick.
  • Dead headphone port (Charlie's fix might work; we'll check soon).

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See Also:__

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com
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*(Thanks, Greg, for giving us permission to hack the netbook!)
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