Before I get started, I wanted to say special thanks go out to Dan Cohen, who stayed up with me until 3am Eastern/2am Central working on the Flash drive needed to get this all done. So… OSX 10.5.6 and the MSI Wind… Yah ok… maybe not so much.

Quick update – I’ve got OSX installed on my Wind (calling it miniMBP); and I’ve learned some interesting things as of this morning.

1. 1. I can still survive and be human on as little as 2.5 hours of sleep as long as there’s good, strong coffee around…somewhere.
2. 2. You have to find the right version of Chameleon in order to get the flash drive right so that you can get OSX installed on the Wind
3. 3. Deselecting the Kernel and installing a different wireless card are no longer required, as long as you use the right source and get the right driver for the Wind’s WiFi card, respectively
4. 4. Software Update runs and works!
5. 5. Installing OSX 10.5.6 “works” (the OS gets updated) but in the end, may not be the best way to go.
6. 6. Boot Camp apparently requires TRUE EFI in order to function, so THAT’S why is not in the build of OSX that was hacked for the Wind.  The Wind won’t run Boot Camp (but that doesn’t mean you can’t dual or even triple boot your Wind..!)

There appear to be keyboard and trackpad issues between the Wind and OSX 10.5.6.  Everything still works if you use an external keyboard and mouse, but not with the Wind’s keyboard and trackpad.  So once you buy the prize, its yours to keep… Meaning, once you hack it, you may not be able to go main stream for all updates. 

Thankfully, I know what I need to do to install Leopard on the Wind, so I have a Mac in my pocket whenever I want it.  I need to know if I can find the 10.5.5 update out there, download it and install it and see if my 10.5.6 theory is correct. I’m going to be trolling the Apple Support site and forums for this tonight and tomorrow.

Also, any MSI Wind fans out there need to check out forums.msiwind.net. This is a great resource and will help you if you run into any problems with your Wind whether it runs Windows XP, Vista , OSX, or whatever.

UPDATE: It looks as though ALL OS updates that are released MUST first be modified (by someone with a lot more development and programming skill than me) and be released as a hacked update before it can be installed on the Wind. 

The OS version that Dan and I both used was 10.5.4.  Installing updates for either 10.5.5 or 10.5.6 renders the internal keyboard and trackpad unusable.  There’s obviously some kind of a driver issue or conflict there, at the very least.  I’ll be looking around forums.msiwind.net for those updates as well.

Related posts:

1. Blowing in the Breeze Part 3 – Dual Booting the MSI Wind
2. The Breeze is Blowing…
3. How To: Dual Booting the MSI Wind
4. Update – Editing the Darwin Bootloader in a 2x/3x Booting Wind
5. MSI US Announces New Netbook – Wind U110 ECO