First...let me thank all here. Been reading a while and not contributing that much. Here is a first attempt to contribute a little.
This is a small HOWTO-guide for how to use a USB Flash memory to install OS X onto the AA1. This is very useful if you do not have an external DVD player for use on the AA1.
There are several steps you need to execute, and keep extreme caution to the ordering of the steps to fully make this work.
All in all what you do is:
- Create a MBR on the USB drive
- Copy the ISO to the USB drive
- Change the "ID" of the USB drive-partition to "AF"
Step 1:
Make sure you have all that is needed..
- One Vista (or possibly XP) computer...but I have only tested on Vista.
- One ISO of OSX, in my case iAtkos v5i
- USB Flash drive LARGER than the intended OSX-ISO you are using. In my case a 4GB is enough for iAtkos v5i.
- Download the "Leopard hd install helper v0.3". Google is your friend here...
- Download "unetbootin-windows-282.exe"...google is your best pal yet again...
Step 2:
Format your USB Flash to FAT32 in Vista. I.e. right-click and format.
Step 3:
Start unetbootin and select "Distribution" to "FreeDOS", version "1.0". Make sure to select your newly formated flash drive, in my case "G:". Hit "OK" to have unetbootin do its thing.
This step is purely done to have a "Mater Boot Record" to be written on your USB drive...
Step 4:
Using Vista explorer, delete all files from your drive, in my case "G:". Doing this will remove the "FreeDOS", but keeping the MBR...which is what we want.
Step 5:
Use the "ddmac.exe" in the "Leopard hd install helper v0.3" tool to "copy all iso stuff" to the new drive. This tool is not in english an a little buggy...but keep "clicking & selecting" until you get the "Start" button to be enabled and you have the correct disk selected.
The following text is taken from an MSI Wind blog (http://blog.binaryfactory.ca/2008/12/installing-os-x-on-the-msi-wind-u90x-without-another-mac-from-a-usb-stick/):
In the first field, browse to your previously downloaded OS X Iso.
Select the USB drive as the destination. You will get a warning about the driver, ignore it.
In my case, I unchecked boot.ini – you would leave it if you were running the tool directly on the Wind to install from another partition.
Leave the other checkboxes checked, then click Start (the only button).
Sometimes, start is grayed out. Browse to the ISO, check and uncheck a bunch of stuff and it usually becomes available. Browsing to the ISO, unchecking the “write” box (between the destination pull-down menu and the start button’), choosing the destination and checking Write again seems to be a good combination most of the time.
Once you click start, it will take around 10 minutes, and the progress bar isn’t a big help. It helps if your USB Stick has a LED, because the app does not take much CPU and you could think it has died. Be patient, grab a cup of coffee..
Step 6:
When the ddmac.exe has done its thing...now start a command prompt from Vista and start the "diskpart.exe":
- Execute a "list disk" to find your USB drive, then select it with "select disk 2" where "2" was my USB drive...make sure this is correct for your case!
- Then do a "select partition 1" to select the first (and only!) partition on this disk.
- Then do the magic stuff: "set id=af" to make it have correct ID (else it will not work...)
Exit "diskpart" with an "exit".
Step 7:
No insert your USB into your AA1 and reboot it, make sure to hit "F12" at boot and have it boot from your USB...install OS X...but this is another story!
Have fun and hope it works for you as well!
/Gruffy
