Hackintosh’ing the NEC Versa E2000 laptop

busbymitch Cloud Computing, Mac OS X, Software

The other day I set out to Hackintosh, that is run Mac OS X on a Windows machine, my NEC VERSA E2000 laptop, which, as you may know, is always between different operating systems. I did it mainly because I was bored, but I also thought about how laptops work quite well with the ideals of Mac OS X.

Anyway, no one on the internet (apart from an Indonesian forum) spoke about the NEC Versa E2000 in regards to Hackintosh, so I thought I might do a little tutorial on getting it to work. Anyway, here it is, keeping in mind that this is specifically for this laptop, and I don’t offer support for any other laptop.

Limitations of running Hackintosh on this laptop:

  • You won’t ever have a properly working WiFi connection built in; there is a driver but it only works with unprotected WiFi networks
  • There are no graphics acceleration drivers, so that means you’ll be limited to slow graphical enhancements, iWork won’t work, nor will DVD Player, most games or iMovie and iWeb
  • Modern versions of OS X are really made with more than 1GB of RAM in mind, so the system will be universally slow, but still an acceptable performance for web browsing
  • Strictly speaking, it’s illegal. It is against the OS X EULA to run OS X on a non-Apple machine, and unless you already have a copy of Leopard, you’re going to basically be pirating the OS. I suggest you go out and buy a copy of Snow Leopard anyway, just for morality’s sake.

Things you will need:

  • iAtkos v7 image, from the internet (I can’t link to any illegal or copyright-breaking sites)
  • A blank DVD
  • AC’97 codec sound kext http://www.mediafire.com/?wxjbzb982joxert
  • Airport kext for Intel 2200BG Pro http://projectcamphor.mercurysquad.com/downloads/
  • A lot of patience. It may take one try, two tries, five tries, ten. It took me a day to get it working on my laptop, but six months on my desktop!

Now that you have all of the components, lets start.

  1. Burn the iAtkos v7 image to the blank DVD, either using ImgBurn, Windows 7 or OS X’s built in tools. iAtkos will be used to boot and install Mac OS X on your computer.
  2. Boot from the DVD, and click through the prompts that appear until you come up with the screen which has “Customize” and “Install”. Click “Customize”.
  3. Some options will be already preselected. Leave them all, and additionally tick these ones:
  • 1.5 Voodoo Kernel
  • APIC Driver
  • VIA, Intel and Jmicron IDE/SATA drivers
  • Apple PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard driver – you must use this driver, because with either of the other two input drivers, it will freeze the laptop

4. Wait for it to complete installation. This will take about 15-20 minutes, much speedier than a regular OS X install, and even a Snow Leopard install in my experience. Anyway, now we have to get it to boot.

5. Press F8 at the boot up screen with the little countdown timer and a chameleon. Then type in -s -v and press Enter. It will now load up OS X in “single-user mode” or just a really basic terminal. The problem with this laptop is that when you boot up in single user mode, it repeatedly errors with some HCA error, presumably talking about a FireWire port which doesn’t exist. Don’t worry about these errors, you can type through them and it won’t make a difference. You just need to be careful not to have typos in what you type. When it has begun flashing up with these errors, it is time to start typing. First type this: (note that in the commands where “_” appears, it just means put a space here)

/sbin/mount_-uw_/

Then press enter. It’ll work through that, and when its ready to start again, it’ll pop up another message about root. Type this:

passwd_root

It will then ask you to enter a new password, so choose something simple but difficult for someone else to guess, and press enter. It will ask you to confirm your choice, so type the same password in and press enter again. Keep in mind that as you type the password, it won’t show your typing at all so be careful when you’re typing it. This is just for administrator purposes, so it doesn’t really matter too much.

Finally type this:

touch_/var/db/.applesetupdone

And then press enter. Once it has indicated its finished, simply type “reboot” and press enter. It will then reboot, and go into the glorious Mac login screen after it boots up!

6. Type in “root” for the username, and then the password you designated for the password to root. It will then login as root, or most basic user level. Create a new account that will be your account from now on in System Preferences> Accounts. Once you’ve finished creating your account, click Log Out, and then log back in using your new account.

7. Extract OSX86Tools and install the AC’97 audio kext using it, as well as the Airport kext for your WiFi. Restart once you’re done, and you’re pretty much ready to do anything you want apart from the limitations as stated above. All you’ll need to do is configure the WiFi driver to your wireless network. Luckily for us, there’s an actual driver that uses the Airport client built into OS X, which is slick and integrated. Enjoy the comforts of OS X Leopard for 1/10th the cost!

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