My Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Notes

Some notes from my experience with a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v, so I don’t forget.

• Base checklist, also taking hints from here specifically the use of Netbook Maker and Netbook Installer.
• BIOS change to A04 worked as described. Lots of LOUD beeping involved.
• Don’t have a large capacity flash drive so using an older 20 GB external USB drive to store the Snow Leopard installation files.
• Takes about 3 hours to build install drive.
• Netbook Maker versus Netbook Installer. Use Netbook Maker to prep the Snow Leopard install drive. Use Netbook Installer after Snow Leopard is installed.
• Use Netbook Maker 0.8.2. When I used version 0.8.3 RC4 to prep the Snow Leopard drive, the Snow Leopard install wouldn’t even start, reporting an unsupported CPU during a kernel panic. With version 0.8.2, installation goes as expected.
• While booting up from the Netbook Maker-ed Snow Leopard installation drive, don’t view the (Chameleon??) options. Whenever I did this, it messed up my Snow Leopard installation drive. Not sure why, but end result is I had to build the drive again and wait 3 hours.
• In the BIOS, leave USB BIOS Legacy support enabled. When I disabled it, the 10v bootup sequence changed and didn’t want to boot off the external Snow Leopard installation drive.
• After installation of Snow Leopard, be sure to remove the drive while the machine is rebooting (or change the startup sequence).  Otherwise, the Snow Leopard install will startup again.

More notes later…