UPGRADING THE MSI MCWINDTOSH

My hands are getting itchy for the last few weeks. Really satisified with the Leopard installation in my MSI Wind, even though it is only version 10.5.4. Browsing ebay Malaysia to look for a mini PCI Dell 1390 which should work for both Windows and Mac OSX. I am not very keen on using the Realtek driver for the stock mini PCI card in MSI Wind, since you don't get the wifi icon when you are using Leopard. Found from a few sellers from Hong Kong which gives free shipping to Malaysia. One of the seller is selling here. I got it at around RM65 from a different seller. The package arrived within less than 2 weeks. Since I will be opening the MSI Wind to change the mini PCI card, why not upgrade the Hard Disk too. So, for this upgrading, I bought myself a 500GB Western Digital Scorpio SATA hard disk at Digital Mall PJ. The price is the same with my current portable Western Digital Passport 320GB Hard Disk which I bought 6 months ago.

The surgery is quite simple. I just need to remove 9 screws from the bottom of the MSI Wind. Then remove the screw from the mini PCI wireless card. Then remove the Wifi miniPCI card first. Then remove the screw under the Wifi miniPCI card. Then lift up the hard disk and pull it out of the socket. Turn the Hard Disk over, and remove the bracket which is attached by 2 screws. Put the bracket back onto the new hard disk. Put it back into the socket. To insert the new Dell 1390 miniPCI wifi card, i had to remove the extra bracket from the motherboard. This is because the Realtek Wifi miniPCI card has a flat back, whereas the Dell 1390 miniPCI card has a slightly elevated back. The extra bracket can be removed using a plier easily. Then put the new Dell 1390 miniPCI card into the wifi slot and screw it. Make sure you put back the 2 wires for the antennae, which are grey and black in colour. After finishing all these, you can put back the back cover and put in all the 9 screws back in.

Restart your computer and pres DEL a few times to go to the setup menu. Check the IDE part to confirm that your new Hard Disk is detected. Mine was detected immediately, as a 500GB hard disk.

Before installing the hard disk, i managed to copy the Windows XP partition and both my Data and Backup partition into the new hard disk using Norton Ghost 14. It was so easy, much easier than using Acronis software. I didn't copy the OSX partition since I don't think Norton Ghost can do it well. With a 500GB Hard Disk, I have a lot of space. I gave OSX a 265GB partition, since I want to keep all my patient datas for Osirix in the hard disk. Windows gets 50GB, Data gets 60GB, Backup gets 60GB. I also reserved a 40GB partition for movies, music and etc.

Upon installation of the hard disk, I immediately start using Windows XP. Norton Ghost 14 did a good job of completely copying all the Win XP partition into the new hard disk. The new Dell 1390 miniPCI wifi card was detected immediately. However it cannot find the driver. So I downloaded the driver using my 3G line. It took around 15 minutes to finish downloading the driver since it is a 52MB file. After unzipping the file, using device manager, I reinstalled the driver from the folder and the card was detected as a Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini Card. However the only disadvantage of this Dell 1390 as compared to the stock Realtek mini card is the absence of 802.11n. Dell 1390 card only support B and G only. This is not a major problem for me now.

Next step is to do a new installation of Leopard using the MSIWindOSX86.iso using the Leopard HD install method. Since I have already done a last backup using Time Machine, I hope I can do a fast restoration after the installation. This is for the next writeup.