I got myself an HP mini 1035NR off of Craigslist last week. Hyperthreading Intel Atom 1.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB HDD. It's a nice little machine.
I decided I wanted to put Snow Leopard on it. Why? Because I can! Here is what I did.
I got my retail Snow Leopard DVD, an 8 GB flash drive, and booted the Snow Leopard install I have on my desktop.
Step 1 (Prepare USB installer):
1. Insert Snow Leopard DVD into Drive
2. Insert USB drive into USB port
3. Open Disk Utility
4. Select the flash drive on the left (not the partiton, the drive itself)
5. Select the partition tab, and change 'current' to '1 partition'
6. Enter a name (ie: OSX Install USB) and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as the format
7. Click options and make sure it's set to 'Master Boot Record' then click OK
8. Click apply and wait a moment
9. Select the restore tab
10. Drag 'Mac OS X Install DVD' to the source box
11. Drag 'OSX Install USB' (or whatever you named it) the destination box
12. Click restore and prepare to wait (about an hour)
Once this is done, you need to make the flash drive bootable.
1. Download NetbookMaker 0.8.4 RC1 from here: http://code.google.com/p/netbook-installer
2. Open it up
3. Select the USB drive
4. Click the button
Voila, you are now able to boot from your USB drive (which may be renamed to 'Mac OS X Install DVD').
Step 2 (Install OS X):
Now take your USB and put it in your HP mini, and mash F9 to tell it to boot from USB. It will boot into the OS X installer (it may take some time to boot).
Now that the installer is running, before we install, we must prepare our internal HDD. I want OS X as the only OS, so I am reformatting the entire drive.
1. From the utilities menu, open disk utility
2. Select your hard drive from the left (not any of its partitions, the drive itself)
3. Select the partition tab, and change 'current' to '1 partition'
4. Enter a name (ie: Snow Leopard) and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as the format
5. Click options, select 'GUID Partition Table' then click OK
6. Click apply and wait a moment
Close disk utility to return to the OS X installer. Continue to where it asks what hard drive to install on. Select your hard drive, then click customize. This is up to you, but I like to have Rosetta installed. I also uncheck translations and printer drivers to save space. When ready, click ok, then install.
The install shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. There is a bug in NetbookMaker that makes the install hang with 8 minutes left. From the window menu, select installer log and set the detail level to show all logs. When you see the message './postinstall: cp: /Volumes/ramdisk/dsdt/latest_dsdl.dsl: No such file or directory', it is safe to power down your machine, as it will hang here and not continue. It's ok, because the install has completed by this point.
From the 'Mac OS X Installer' menu, select quit, then reboot. Keep the USB drive plugged in, and press F9 to boot from it. Select your hard drive (named 'Snow Leopard' or whatever) and press enter. It may take some time to boot; when it's done you will be presented with the OS X first time setup. Run through this to get to your desktop.
Step 3 (Make the HP mini boot OS X on its own):
1. Download this version of NetbookInstaller: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/863180/NetbookInstaller%2020100616212351.app.zip
2. Load it up on your HP mini
3. Select the options to install a bootloader and General Extensions, nothing else
4. After it's done, open Finder and go to /Extra (Command+Shift+G)
5. Replace the GeneralExtensions folder with this one: http://www.mediafire.com/?izztmccyyt2 (BACK UP ORIGINAL FIRST!)
6. Run /Extra/UpdateExtra (The New Balance shoe icon)
Reboot and the HP mini should be boot OS X on its own.
Step 4 (Create a DSDT):
I would get into how to make this, but I think this forum post did a good job. So, read this: http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2454&start=0
You can get a Generic SleepEnabler.kext from here (place in /Extra/GeneralExtensions, then run UpdateExtra): http://code.google.com/p/xnu-sleep-enabler/ (You need to set pmVersion in /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist under Kernel Flags)
The version of NetbookInstaller we installed will enable Intel Atom support in Snow Leopard (yes, even in 10.6.5), so yeah, it's safe to update to 10.6.5.
P.S. To fix the About this Mac window to show the correct CPU type, install this: http://www.mediafire.com/?ymzmtdozzjn
