Installing Apple’s operating system Mac OS X on a standard PC is no longer a secret.
Asus Laptop Battery, Cheap Asus Laptop Batteries from ub2c. Netbooklive EN DE If you re on your eBay Feed. Asus Eee PC X101CH netbook review Quelle, Liliputing EN DE The Eee PC X101CH is a great little notebook for a great little price. ASUS is attempting to breathe new life into the netbook market with the $199 ASUS Eee PC X101 netbook. This page contains the list of device drivers for the asus eee pc x101ch notebook. Windows 7 computers such as it all computers not just. This page provides reviews and other infos about the asus eee pc r11cx of the series eee pc r11 laptop. Install windows xp on your asus. Are you looking driver or manual for a Asus Eee PC X101CH Laptop? Do you have the latest drivers for your Asus Eee PC X101CH Laptop? You can see device drivers for a Asus Laptops below on this page. If you want to install Windows 7 operating system to your ASUS Notebook X101CH-EU17-BK, then you have to own these drivers. With the email protected store, clearance lot. The listed ASUS X101CH model has the Intel Atom N2600 processor, 1024 x 600 display, 0.3MP Camera, Wifi, and a HDMI Port.
The OSx86 scene has gone a long path providing help and support, in a way that no company is prepared (or willing) to do.
Legalities aside, the time has come when it is possible to run Mac OS X on more powerful hardware than those sold by Apple.
The purpose of this post is to help other users to overcome the problems that arise while trying to install this OS on one of the coolest netbooks out there now, the 11-inch Asus Eee PC 1101HA… (which happens to be the one I own ;-)).
The hardware is exactly the same as for the 12-inch 1201HA, so everything here is applicable to this model too.
The hardware is exactly the same as for the 12-inch 1201HA, so everything here is applicable to this model too.
The beauty of all this, apart from the challenge itself, is the price of these nice netbooks (around 340 in Europe!).
There are thousands of really great articles and howtos on how to undertake the installation of Mac OS X on a PC, so I won’t reinvent the wheel here.
I personally find very complete the guide written by Prasys on his blog: Installing Snow Leo (retail) for OSx86.
I claim absolutely no merit on this, apart from spending an indecent amount of hours in front of my netbook, relentlessly rebooting and trying all sort of combinations, until I found the right combination of things for these relatively undocumented machines.
What makes the installation on the 1101HA different?
Asus X101ch Display Driver
The main showstoppers here are two:
- The video adapter, the relatively new Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500 (GMA500).
- The IDE chipset that comes with it (Intel SCH Family).
For the video card, the applause goes to user ryuu123 at InsanelyMac, who provided the VAIOPEnabler kernel extension, that allows Mac OS X to use the framebuffer mode of the GMA500.
Once you’ve got the graphic installer of Snow Leopard booting successfully thanks to VAIOPenabler, the next issue most people encounter is that no internal hard disks get detected. I’m positively sure that you can get the 1101HA’s SATA disk recognized by tweaking some other driver, like the AppleIntelPIISATA.kext, but I’ve ran into many problems using it.
Eventually, I found a kext that actually did its job very well. I would love to thank the guy who made AppleGenericPCATA.kext but unfortunately, I have no idea where I got this kext from for I was trying different extensions compulsively for months and I’ve totally forgot where I got this one from :(.
What’s working?
In short, not much (yet). Hopefully, YOU will also be capable of helping the OSx86 community to improve the hardware support for this hardware.
Video | Intel GMA500 | OK – In framebuffer mode |
Audio | High Definition Audio compatible | OK – Using VoodooHDA. Quite buggy and so far I’m still getting some noise. |
SATA Hard Disk | Intel SCH Family | OK. I have got the feeling that the kext I’m using is not the most appropriate. Disks gets recognized as IDE ATA, but otherwise, performance seems to be fine. |
Webcam | USB UVC 1.3M | OK |
Built-in SD card reader | N/A | OK – It does works out of the box, without needing extra extensions. It actually works as another USB storage device. |
Bluetooth | N/A | ?? – I haven’t test this yet. I believe it gets recognized and would work fine using the appropiate kext. I’m not too much into bluetooth. |
What does not work.
These does not work for me at the moment of this writing. Particularly, I read that the WLAN chip is rather new and still totally unsupported. But hey, don’t give up. It was also said that OSX would NEVER work on our 1101HAs or any other netbook with a GMA500 chip, and here we are :).
LAN | Atheros AR8132 | NO |
WLAN | Atheros AR9285 | NO |
My girlfriend bought me a D-Link WA-110 Wifi USB stick, for just 12 on sales that works nicely in Mac OS X, thanks to which, I’m now writing this post from my OSX Asus. There are many other inexpensive USB WiFi adapters.
Requirements
- An Asus Eee PC 1101HA netbook ?
- Snow Leopard Retail DVD. BUY IT!. Get your own retail DVD for just 29, at any store. It is still illegal to install Mac OS X on a non Apple machine, but at least you won’t be stealing. Mac OS X is an excellent operating system, with a top-notch user interface. And honestly, with this price, you really want to play fair. The Snow Leopard disks bundled with Apple computers will not do, since they are specially trimmed for an specific combination of hardware.
- 1 USB memory of 8GB (at least). I like to use 2 separate pendrives. One for the Snow Leopard Install DVD and another one just for the boot files (less than 5MB). Note that you can also use the SD reader of your Asus netbook. However you can also fit the boot files and Snow Leopard files in the same USB stick.
- This package 1101HA SL Boot (1.67MB). I’ve packed the following things:
- Chameleon Boot Loader RC2 NBI. For reasons unknown, the standard Chameleon distribution does not provide the native 1366×768 resolution, rendering the system to just 1024×768. This is the only one I’ve found to work well, but you may be able to get it working with other versions.
- DSDT.aml Don’t worry if you know nothing about this. In a nutshell is a file that Chameleon uses to patch on-the-fly the Asus BIOS, correcting some stuff so Mac OS X can boot properly.
- com.apple.Boot.plist to enable verbose logging at boot time as well as 32-bit mode by default.
- smbios.plist to emulate a MacBook Air machine.
- My cocktail of different kernel extensions ? Again, these might not be the most adequate, but they worked for me. I thank you for all your suggestions and improvements.
- ACPIPS2Nub.kext
- AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext
- AppleGenericPCATA.kext
- ApplePS2Controller.kext
- AppleSMBIOS.kext
- fakesmc.kext
- NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
- OSXRestart.kext
- PlatformUUID.kext
- VAIOPEnabler.kext
- VoodooHDA.kext
- A patched version of OSInstall.mpkg, the Snow Leopard installer, for disks partitioned the old style (with a Master Boot Record)This will allow you to install Mac OS X and Windows easily on different partitions, otherwise you’ll have to partition you hard disk in GUID format from Disk Utility, as required by Snow Leopard, before being able to select it as a target drive.
- A working Mac OS X installation. It can either be an original Apple computer, or another hackintosh. This is just for dumping the Snow Leopard DVD into the USB memory, and preparing the USB boot drive.
Highly recommended
Alternatively, if you are a bit creative, you could find different methods to do this task. I finally ended up booting my Macbook Pro, but if you don’t own a Mac, you could get anywhere with a handy linux distribution with HFS+ support. I would recommend RIP (Rescue Is Possible) linux distro, less than 100MB in size, and bootable from a pendrive.
Asus X101ch Driver
Hands on
Right, enough talking. Let’s jump straight into the funny part. I have tried to simplify things as much as possible. I TAKE ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY IF THIS DOES NOT WORK FOR YOU.
However, it did work fine for me, and if you are not completely new to the OSx86 scene, you will realise the hardest part is getting all the extra extensions and config files together. Once you have read a bit about all this (elsewhere) and figure out how to put things together, you should get everything working straight away.
For simplicity, this post does not cover partitioning your hard disk, or setting up the dual boot.
Preparation
- Format a USB drive as HFS+ (I’d recommend using NOT journaled HFS+).
- Dump the Snow Leopard DVD into a USB drive, formatted as HFS+. The easiest way is to do it from Mac OS X using Disk Utility. Check online how to do this, for example, at Prasys’s howto.
- Copy the contents of my package into another HFS+ pendrive, or even the same USB drive used for Snow Leopard Installation files.
- Make the boot pendrive bootable. Once you’ve copied the files, you just need to make the USB stick bootable by installing Chameleon boot loader onto it. I have included a simple but effective script to do this. Check the file at Chameleon-2-NBI/install.sh. Edit it, review it’s values, and execute it.
- Boot your netbook from USB using the boot contents of above, and you should get right into the graphical installation window.
- Once you have completed the installation process, you still need to make OSX bootable directly from the hard disk, without the booting pendrive. The easiest thing is to boot again using your boot pendrive, but this time, press TAB or another key as soon as you see the Chameleon logo, so you can select which device to boot. In this case, you want to select the hard disk’s partition that you choose to install Mac OS X.
- Now that you are totally logged on Mac OS X, open Terminal to get a comand line that we’ll use to install Chameleon on your hard disk. You can just use the same Chameleon-2-NBI/install.sh script, but editing its values to point accordingly to your hard disk instead of the USB drive.
- Copy the Extra extensions (the same ones included in my package that you used for booting the installation) to your Mac OS partition so they are present as well when you boot directly from your hard disk. This is nothing new, and you should also be able to find details on this in any Snow Leopard guide for standard PCs.
… and this is it! If you’ve reached to this point, you should now be able to boot Snow Leopard directly from the hard disk. There are some simple guides to make Mac OS X and Windows to coexist (a.k.a Dual Boot); but the point is that you’ve now got SL on your 1101HA and can read further information targeted to mainstream PCs.
Links & resources
As said, the beauty of the OSx86 scene is the broad and excellent support from all the community members around the globe, from the savvy geeks to the most recent newcomers that throw themselves into forums to share knowledge and experiences. We can’t thank them all enough.
Here are some really good links you’ll need if you need to learn more. Remember this is still very experimental, so be really patient, take your time to get things working, and read a lot ? Apart from this, there’s no other secret or magic.
- Prasys’ blog, Installing Snow Leo (retail) for OSx86
- InsanelyMac, personally, the best OSx86 forums.
- Kexts.com, a really nice, user-friendly, repository of kernel extensions, and other tools.
Posted 04-18-2013 at 04:40 AM bymarkyd
Updated 12-03-2013 at 05:47 AM bymarkyd
Updated 12-03-2013 at 05:47 AM bymarkyd
Friday 6th September 2013
First of all I must thank the lovely wife Emma who hit the 'Google Jackpot' with this one, as anyone with the patience to read the rest of this blog below will know I was 'most peeved' with ASUS and their X101CH. I wish I had all the Google articles to support this post but I did not make notes sorry but here is a summary as I see it. It appears that Intel 'outsourced' the drivers for the Cedar Trail chipset and they are only available in DRM format and were part of a very limit Linux Kernal (3.2) and was removed from later versions!
Linux Mint 13 (Maya) is based on the 3.2 Kernal (http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=18) ... think I used the default Mate but will redo with the xfce build later.
After installing and activating the proprietary drivers the X101 went from most hated to most loved of my devices, performance greatly improved and plays videos great (full HD just a touch stuttery but normal AVI's perfect) runs a lot cooler and battery life is 4 - 5 hours, suspending to RAM works so good mine can last days or a week now depending on use (must point out I am using a SSD not a mechanical HD so don't know how much that is effecting it) waking from suspend is awesome, open lid .. use!
Was a battle getting here and don't know what the future is for the GMA / Cedar Trail driver set in Linux but being stuck with Linux 13 does not scare me.
Friday 19th April 2013
Fitting the SSD upgrade was not to difficult, 11 screws on the underside including 4 in the battery bay and thankfully no sneaky hidden ones under rubber feet! Separating the two halves of the base section requires some confidence, thin knife blade and an old credit card ... there seems to be 'snap' fixings ever inch of the way but once started it unzips nicely, look out for two locking lugs on the inside of the hinges.
Once apart there are two ribbon cables that need released in the usual manner of pulling forward the tiny plastic clamps. The entire top half of the base section & keyboard can now be removed exposing the the standard 7mm 320GB hard drive, remove it swap over mounting lugs to the SSD and reassemble.
Reloading Lubuntu 13.04 and it now flies, lots quicker, totally silent and battery life better too (too early to say how much) the fast recovery from sleep is almost instant now, close lid ... sleep ... open lid awake ... massive improvement.
Thursday 18th April 2013
I came across my Asus X101CH by accident, I work in IT so tend to have quite a 'fleet' of machines including 2 Asus EEE-PC 901's which have been my stalwart of Linux 'hacking' ... anyway to the X101CH, I got it as a hotel reward after spending 6 months as their guest .. I thank you!
The keyboard, actually I like it the extra inch over the 901's makes typing easier and not had any issues with accuracy, its certainly easier to use that the keyboard on my Transformer Prime! Not up to a full size keyboard maybe but still I like it.
In the 4 years since my Asus EEE-PC 901's there has been some stagnation / cost cutting and even steps backwards. Ye ancient spinning disk thing (Hard Disk) instead of a new fangled SSD (solid state disk, faster draws less power)... come on Asus ... progress please even the 901's were SSD only and helped with their mighty battery life of 6 hours plus ... oh talking of battery life, the X101CH battery life down to 3 - 4 hours another step backwards ... grief! Now ... to the biggest crime Asus has committed ... the messily 1GB of RAM is soldered to the motherboard and totally not upgradeable, Asus you total scum tight wads! The EEE-PC range was always darling of the 'hacker' community as it was easy to upgrade but that is a total step toward the 'locked in Apple world' (more Asus ranting on that subject when I write my blog on my Asus Transformer Prime ho ho ho).
Screen may be an inch bigger than the 901 but at 1024x600 its the same spec and very ordinary no progress there then.
But the CPU is a dual core Atom running at 1.6Ghz, the cpu is of the 'Cedar Trail' variety, no more pwerful than the old Atoms but a lot more frugal on electric hence no fan ... makes me laugh when Asus say the fan less design makes it silent ... er how about that ancient noisy hard disk then? ;-) Oh aparantly it has a 1080P decoder in it so watching videos should be easier on the eye.
Asus have always had a funny relationship with Microsoft, the 901 initially launched with Linux and made Microsoft mess their pants, drop the price of XP and extend its life for several years just so that Asus and the netbook revolution would be XP based and not Linux. Shame on Asus for not offering both side by side, they sort of did for a half hearted while but Linux line never saw much love or development and died out or at least became unavailable in the UK, but no odds it was still a Linux hackers dream netbook. Googling about I see that the X101 had a MeeGo (Linux derivative) offering, not that I ever saw it ... what's so wrong with a 'Buntu based standard offering? Anyhow Windows 7 ran like a dog on the X101 so I binned it for my Linux distribution of choice, Lubuntu (being a simple chap with simple tastes ... speed over style any day baby .... I have a life to lead!)
Linux on the X101CH .... Lubuntu 12.10 was not happy, the screen was so dark ... think there were some issues with the uber new graphics on the X101CH and the Linux kernal of that date ... so I loaded the 13.04 Beta and all is well usual issues with some of the keys and its not fully tested but getting there ..... will update this as and when.
The X101's future? Keep or sell? For the moment keep, my son will get the 901 as its more his size and I like the extra go from the dual core processor but it is getting an SSD as fast as I can sort it out! Its an ok bit of kit if you get it cheap enough £150 here in the UK tops.
Some independant reviews here:
http://mobilityupdate.com/netbooks/a...-disk-upgrade/
http://liliputing.com/2012/03/asus-e...ok-review.html
Toshiba 60GB 2.5' SSD on order, make sure its a 7mm slim drive though! Note, total disassembly of your X101 will be required to install ... Asus ... ahhhhhh!
I still have a lot of 'love' for the Asus brand but the X101 & Transformer Prime has tested it somewhat!
First of all I must thank the lovely wife Emma who hit the 'Google Jackpot' with this one, as anyone with the patience to read the rest of this blog below will know I was 'most peeved' with ASUS and their X101CH. I wish I had all the Google articles to support this post but I did not make notes sorry but here is a summary as I see it. It appears that Intel 'outsourced' the drivers for the Cedar Trail chipset and they are only available in DRM format and were part of a very limit Linux Kernal (3.2) and was removed from later versions!
Linux Mint 13 (Maya) is based on the 3.2 Kernal (http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=18) ... think I used the default Mate but will redo with the xfce build later.
After installing and activating the proprietary drivers the X101 went from most hated to most loved of my devices, performance greatly improved and plays videos great (full HD just a touch stuttery but normal AVI's perfect) runs a lot cooler and battery life is 4 - 5 hours, suspending to RAM works so good mine can last days or a week now depending on use (must point out I am using a SSD not a mechanical HD so don't know how much that is effecting it) waking from suspend is awesome, open lid .. use!
Was a battle getting here and don't know what the future is for the GMA / Cedar Trail driver set in Linux but being stuck with Linux 13 does not scare me.
Friday 19th April 2013
Fitting the SSD upgrade was not to difficult, 11 screws on the underside including 4 in the battery bay and thankfully no sneaky hidden ones under rubber feet! Separating the two halves of the base section requires some confidence, thin knife blade and an old credit card ... there seems to be 'snap' fixings ever inch of the way but once started it unzips nicely, look out for two locking lugs on the inside of the hinges.
Once apart there are two ribbon cables that need released in the usual manner of pulling forward the tiny plastic clamps. The entire top half of the base section & keyboard can now be removed exposing the the standard 7mm 320GB hard drive, remove it swap over mounting lugs to the SSD and reassemble.
Reloading Lubuntu 13.04 and it now flies, lots quicker, totally silent and battery life better too (too early to say how much) the fast recovery from sleep is almost instant now, close lid ... sleep ... open lid awake ... massive improvement.
Thursday 18th April 2013
I came across my Asus X101CH by accident, I work in IT so tend to have quite a 'fleet' of machines including 2 Asus EEE-PC 901's which have been my stalwart of Linux 'hacking' ... anyway to the X101CH, I got it as a hotel reward after spending 6 months as their guest .. I thank you!
The keyboard, actually I like it the extra inch over the 901's makes typing easier and not had any issues with accuracy, its certainly easier to use that the keyboard on my Transformer Prime! Not up to a full size keyboard maybe but still I like it.
In the 4 years since my Asus EEE-PC 901's there has been some stagnation / cost cutting and even steps backwards. Ye ancient spinning disk thing (Hard Disk) instead of a new fangled SSD (solid state disk, faster draws less power)... come on Asus ... progress please even the 901's were SSD only and helped with their mighty battery life of 6 hours plus ... oh talking of battery life, the X101CH battery life down to 3 - 4 hours another step backwards ... grief! Now ... to the biggest crime Asus has committed ... the messily 1GB of RAM is soldered to the motherboard and totally not upgradeable, Asus you total scum tight wads! The EEE-PC range was always darling of the 'hacker' community as it was easy to upgrade but that is a total step toward the 'locked in Apple world' (more Asus ranting on that subject when I write my blog on my Asus Transformer Prime ho ho ho).
Screen may be an inch bigger than the 901 but at 1024x600 its the same spec and very ordinary no progress there then.
But the CPU is a dual core Atom running at 1.6Ghz, the cpu is of the 'Cedar Trail' variety, no more pwerful than the old Atoms but a lot more frugal on electric hence no fan ... makes me laugh when Asus say the fan less design makes it silent ... er how about that ancient noisy hard disk then? ;-) Oh aparantly it has a 1080P decoder in it so watching videos should be easier on the eye.
Asus have always had a funny relationship with Microsoft, the 901 initially launched with Linux and made Microsoft mess their pants, drop the price of XP and extend its life for several years just so that Asus and the netbook revolution would be XP based and not Linux. Shame on Asus for not offering both side by side, they sort of did for a half hearted while but Linux line never saw much love or development and died out or at least became unavailable in the UK, but no odds it was still a Linux hackers dream netbook. Googling about I see that the X101 had a MeeGo (Linux derivative) offering, not that I ever saw it ... what's so wrong with a 'Buntu based standard offering? Anyhow Windows 7 ran like a dog on the X101 so I binned it for my Linux distribution of choice, Lubuntu (being a simple chap with simple tastes ... speed over style any day baby .... I have a life to lead!)
Linux on the X101CH .... Lubuntu 12.10 was not happy, the screen was so dark ... think there were some issues with the uber new graphics on the X101CH and the Linux kernal of that date ... so I loaded the 13.04 Beta and all is well usual issues with some of the keys and its not fully tested but getting there ..... will update this as and when.
The X101's future? Keep or sell? For the moment keep, my son will get the 901 as its more his size and I like the extra go from the dual core processor but it is getting an SSD as fast as I can sort it out! Its an ok bit of kit if you get it cheap enough £150 here in the UK tops.
Some independant reviews here:
http://mobilityupdate.com/netbooks/a...-disk-upgrade/
http://liliputing.com/2012/03/asus-e...ok-review.html
Toshiba 60GB 2.5' SSD on order, make sure its a 7mm slim drive though! Note, total disassembly of your X101 will be required to install ... Asus ... ahhhhhh!
I still have a lot of 'love' for the Asus brand but the X101 & Transformer Prime has tested it somewhat!
Views 21405Comments4
Asus Eee Pc X101ch Drivers
- Hi MarkyD. I am Jim Kelsh from Guelph Ontario and I have an Asus X101CH.
I am running Ubuntu 12.04.2, dual booting with the stock Windows 7 Starter the machine came with.
You mentioned you might be trying to upgrade the RAM to 2 gigabytes, but Asus's product spec site says the RAM is not upgradable as it is soldered to the motherboard with no SO-DIMM. Have you investigated this further? Just curious.
Thanks, Jim.Posted 07-15-2013 at 08:52 AM byfreshmeadow - Hiya Jim, so sorry that it took so long to reply to your post its not excusable. Sad fact of the day is that the X101CH is 1 GB of RAM and it is soldered and that's your lot! Have transformed the netbook by the use on Mint 13 (Maya) will write a post on that soon.
Posted 09-05-2013 at 04:27 AM bymarkyd Posted 09-05-2013 at 08:35 AM byfreshmeadow - Mint 13 'fix' posted above, mail me if I can be of any help.
Posted 09-06-2013 at 03:06 AM bymarkyd