Zef and the chameleon team have been working hard to integrate all the patches and features produced by the community into one unified version of the Chameleon bootloader since the 64k barrier was broken. Let’s look at the customization features.

With the new limit of 383.5k some very nice and high resolution images can be contained in the bootloader and to be honest- the default images alone look great and really show the achievement of the Chameleon team.

The old command line version of the bootloader can still be specified in the Boot.plist however who could turn down the juicy looking images below?

If you’re wondering when you’ll be able to get your mitts on this then you’ll be waiting a little longer whilst the remaining issues are resolved but feature-wise the bootloader is now frozen. Keep an eye on the Chameleon Blog for updates and more previews.

Source

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I decided to have a look at the current status of the next iteration of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, 10.6 Snow Leopard on PCs. Snow Leopard is Apple’s response to Windows 7’s aims. That means you can expect a lot of under the hood changes to OS X to make it more efficient faster and fun however will visually be very similar to Leopard.

Currently there is a developer seed of 10.6 Build 10A222 leaked on the net and the OSx86 community have already begun work on it. A lot of Leopard kexts and patches still work under Snow Leopard so you can expect your device to still work, you can also expect full 64-bit mode if your system can support it. Let’s have a look at what you will need to experience Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on a PC.

Firstly a new EFI compatible bootloader is needed. Chameleon aren’t looking to support Snow Leopard until gold master currently as they are endeavouring to amalgamate the the present spread of patches into a single bootloader now the 64K barrier has been broken, an exciting prospect and congratulations to Zef. In the meantime, Netkas’ own EFI comaptible bootloader, PC_EFI, supports Snow Leopard as of version 9. You can find details of how to install this at Netkas’ blog. With this new bootloader you can try the 64-bit mode using the boot flag -x64.

Secondly if you can’t use a vanilla kernel then you will need a patched kernel. The 10.0.0d3 kernel is recommended for later systems however there is an AMD/Intel legacy kernel available from Dmitrik so have a look for this.

Although Snow Leopard is fairly stable I recommend waiting for something nearer to Gold Master before experimenting and when the whole community will be working on it including the notorious ToH.

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Apple have released the latest installment to Leopard with Mac OS X 10.5.6. This update includes mostly bug fixes but has an important change for OSx86 users however. Highlights as follows:

• Improves the reliability of AirPort connections, including improvements when roaming in large wireless networks with an Intel-based Mac.
• Improves reliability of Address Book syncing with iPhone and other devices and applications.
• Includes general improvements to gaming performance.
• Includes fixes for possible graphics distortion issues with certain ATI graphics cards.
• Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com.
• Improves Apple File Service performance, especially when using a home directory hosted on an AFP server.
• Improves reliability and performance for AT&T 3G cards.
• Improves printing for USB-based Brother and Canon printers.
• Fixes issues that could cause Time Machine to state the backup volume could not be found.
• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.
• Adds a Trackpad System Preference pane for portable Macs.
• Improves the reliability and performance of Chess.

OSx86 users need to make an important step prior to updating. Firstly the bootloader needs to be updated to one that supports DSDT patching (part of the ACPI system specific to your computer). Secondly a patched DSDT file needs to be generated.

Compatible bootloaders include Netkas’ PC_EFI v9 and mackerintel’s patched Chameleon bootloader. To update simply replace the ‘boot’ file of your previous boot-132 bootloader with the updated one or follow the relevant instructions to do a fresh install. To patch your DSDT use fassl’s DSDT patcher and dump the file in the root of your partition. Netkas’s instructions here.

Update: Contrary to the requirements of 10.5.6 betas, the final update does not require a DSDT patch. Feel free to update as normal. Some problems can still be solved with a DSDT patch however.

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If you’re a long term user of OS X you may be aware of the two main partition schemes available to you; MBR and GPT. MBR is the old method which relies on a partition table stored in the Master Boot Record, hence the name. This is the partition scheme used in PCs for a number of years and is compatible with BIOS based systems. Macs of course use EFI which (although capable of booting MBR partitions just as much as GPT through BIOS emulation etc) is used in conjunction with a GPT partitioning scheme.

What does this mean for an OSx86 user? Well, EFI emulation tends to work better on a GPT scheme. Thus when installing OS X it is recommended to use this scheme. However this poses a problems for dual boot scenarios such as Windows and OS X on a single disk. Windows can only be installed and booted from an MBR partitioned disk unless you are using Vista SP1 x64 or Server 2008 x64. But of course Macs are quite happy to install XP along side OS X, this is because Apple have implemented a hybrid MBR/GPT scheme which in essence allows both to coexist simultaneously by syncing the partition tables. XP will see the disk as a normal MBR based disk, Vista as a GPT and OS X as the hybrid it is. The downside of this implementation is you are constrained to 4 partitions, the same as a normal MBR disk leaving a maximum of three simultaneous operating systems to be installed as one is used as an EFI partition.

I wanted to be able to triple boot OS X Vanilla, XP 32-bit and Vista 64-bit on my laptop. The obvious constraint being only one disk is available to me so naturally I went with a hybrid scheme. However this is when the problems start. I leave this here as an aid to those aiming to achieve a similar setup.

In my first attempt I partitioned the disk like so:

Then installed OS X to the 4th partiton, Vista to the 2nd and XP to the 3rd (EFI being the first). All was fine except the NTLDR couldn’t boot XP from the 3rd partition. I attempted to move partition 3 to the 4th space using GParted on Ubuntu. This was a big mistake, it flagged my Windows partitions as ‘msftres’ – Microsoft Reserved which rendered it unbootable and me unable to remove the flag. Never use GParted with a GPT disk and Vista!

After hosing everything I attempted again with a scheme that worked:

I repeated the above procedure except with XP installed onto the final partition rather than third. I can now boot all of my partitions from the BCD bootloader using chain0. Some manual editing of the boot.ini on the XP partition may be needed from Vista to fix the partition number. And remember XP will overwrite the MBR so use the Vista DVD to restore it. As for that spare 128MB, I think that is a result ofrounding to cylinders but I’m unsure, I couldn’t rid it.

Hopefully this will aid some people. My next aim is to be able to use boot-132 to load kexts from the EFI partition so as not to waste that 200MB and have a ‘true’ vanilla install. This can’t currently be done as the bootloader here doesn’t support dual booting on the same partition.

Partitions – Wikipedia

Netkas’ forum for GPT multibooting

Apple’s implementation of GPT/MBR hybrid

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Yes I admit this blog has been dead for some time now.

What happened you may wonder (who am I kidding…)? To be honest life distracted me.

The future?

I now intend to start posting again. With a new more (and less in some ways) compatible laptop I have started playing with OSx86 again so I’ll aim to keep this updated now.

Thanks.

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