Hacking my Foxconn to a Foxconn MacNetbook

My Foxconn SZ-901 (from Newegg.com) was the cheapest Atom-based netbook I could find in late 2010 and I set about hackintoshing it to Snow Leopard (MacOSX 10.6).

Here is how I hacked this cheap barebones netbook to 10.6.8 (dated September 2011)

Ingredients

1. Install Media: start with a blank 8Gb USB thumbdrive

2. Distro: iATKOS Snow Leopard S3v2 (which has particularly good luck with my native keyboard and trackpad and the needed mach_kernel_atom for atom processors, all available as options, read on) This is a hacked version of Mac OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.3.

3. Updater file: MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.8.dmg I downloaded a torrent of it, rather than running the updater on the apple website

4. Netbook: Foxconn SZ901 barebone. I bought mine from Newegg. [update: their not stocking them anymore, Sep. 2011]

Installation

The USB thumbdrive boots the netbook into the standard Snow Leo installation screen. Uses a customized Chameleon bootloader called Aserebln v1.1.9 for the installation, as well as all subsequent boots when its workking. (Don't Panic! If you don't know what Chameleon is, don't worry its a pretty bulletproof Universal OS Bootloader.)

• FOR ADVANCED HAXORS I have a included a handy guide to the ins and outs of Chameleon right here.

1. If you haven't already, make a  partition to install Snow Leo onto. Once the installation screen shows up choose Disk Utility to 

   1. format a partition for HFS, journaled. Both MBR or GUID partition-types work (Choose MBR if you want to multiboot with Windows)

2. Close Disk Utility to get back to Installer

3. Choose kexts in the "Customize" iATKOS Snow Leopard installation menu as follows:

   1. Bootloader: Aserbln v1.1.9 (its the only  Aserbln-one amongst the 5 or 6 choices)

   2. Boot Options: Disabler (there are 6 or 7 other boot options, uncheck all of them. I found I didn't need any of them)

   3. Customized Kernel: mach_atom_kernel

   4. trackpad: VoodooPS2

   5. Audio and mic: VoodooHDA (The other choice is AppleHDA which doesn't work)

   6. Wifi: Atheros and Atheros compatible

   7. VGA: Intel GMA750 (0x27ae) (it will be one of three choices on the Video under the manufacturer Intel, the ones you don't need are the 0x27a2 version nor the GMA1300 kext)

   8. Laptop Hardware: VoodooBattery (it shows the battery icon next to the clock in the upper right corner and makes the energy saver preference panel (i.e. it knows whether its plugged in or on battery)

4. Install and get a cup of coffee. My install takes 16 +/- mins