So I’ve had my Mac Pro hooked up to my Sharp LC-47SB57UT 47” LCD and have loved it since the first volts of current passed through its wires to turn both it and me on. But there was always something that bothered me, the black border around the desktop that isn’t quite filling up the entire screen!

Sure I’ve overlooked it this far, but I think its come time to tackle this problem once and for all. I’ve tried a couple different applications out there for the Mac OSX that helps resolve issues of scaling the resolution correctly to fit your flatscreen pixel to pixel, but have found that SwitchResX is the best out of them all, considering it has a lot of fluid options to control both the entire desktop when loading at startup as well as individual applications when launched.

For many of you that have experienced this problem with your Mac’s, you know that it can be a very aggravating experience to fix the timing and resolution settings to be in perfect sync for your monitor to recognize correctly. I had a Powerbook G4 that was quite often hooked up to my Sharp Aquos model LCD that with a few hours of tinkering with SwitchResX, was able to get it going — with the help of Sharps menu within the its control panel to “fit” and “scale” the picture to be either “dot by dot” or “letterbox”, etc. etc.

With the Sharp (non-Aquos) LC-47SB57UT model I have, it lacks that same menu to choose a “dot by dot” setting which makes things much more difficult because usually, that along with checking “Overscan” within the System Preferences > Display > Options pane does the trick. Not so this time around!

So in I dove with SwitchResX and reading all the tutorials, posts, and blogs out there about others frustrations with getting their custom resolution settings correct. Im just going to come out and say it, I need help! To those who know their way around SwitchResX and timing definitions I would be most appreciative if you could send a little help my way. The following is my EDID info for my Sharp LC-47SB57UT I have:

(Download the full EDID here)

Monitor Description blocks:

—————————

Descriptor #0 – Timing definition:

Mode = 1920 x 1080 @ 60.000Hz

Pixel Clock…………. 148.50 MHz            Non-Interlaced

	Horizontal	Vertical
Active………………	1920 pixels	1080 lines
Front Porch………….	88 pixels	5 lines
Sync Width…………..	44 pixels	36 lines
Back Porch…………..	148 pixels	36 lines
Blanking…………….	280 pixels	45 lines
Total……………….	2200 pixels	1125 lines
Scan Rate……………	67.500 kHz	60.000 Hz
Image Size…………..	1039 mm	584 mm
Border………………	0 pixels	0 lines

Sync: Digital separate with

* Positive vertical polarity

* Positive horizontal polarity

My Display Settings when going to System Preferences are as follows:

And finally, when I open SwitchResX and add a Custom Resolution setting, the defaulted settings that are currently in use are pre-loaded as seen below:

But after days, and now weeks of trying to tinker with the right timing settings and (probably) doing incorrect math to make sure I don’t blank out my monitor, I cant avoid the fact that I need help. So if you’ve read this and can understand my frustrations send me a little help in the comments. Or tweet me, Im going to solve this one way or another but I really don’t see why I should go it alone. Any and all help is GREATLY appreciated and will be properly honored.

UPDATE: In case you also, have a similar problem like myself I found SwitchResX’s User Guide floating around online, its not the current version but it may help some of you grasp the concept of how/why SwitchResX works, as well as some tips on what to do in certain situations.

SwitchResX User Guide

Apple, Netbook. Two things that have yet to be put together. Of course, if you want sleek and thin you have the Macbook Air. But really, who has $1800 laying around for the luxury of having a compact laptop? And by the way, I want a compact laptop Apple, not a thinner one. What is the point of having a laptop that although only 3/4th’s of an inch thick but is still the same size as a macbook width/length wise?

On to other means of obtaining a compact laptop. In comes – netbooks. Yes, the portable, small, compact laptop that can do everything a regular laptop can except one thing: CD/DVD drives. Sure, its not going to be a powerhouse computer but if you want something to take with you and still be able to do 80-90% of the stuff you were probably going to do on your other main laptop/computer then a netbook is right up your alley.

I did a good couple months of research on the perfect netbook. I needed something small of course, along with a decent amount of space for my programs like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Office, etc. As well as all the usual stuff I would be needing like multiple USB ports, VGA out, SD card slot, and a good battery life. Most importantly was the ability to be able to hackintosh it so I can run Mac OSX Leopard on it. I had quite a hard time pinpointing a right netbook that would not give me any real issues when hackintoshing it. That’s when my eyes came across a BoingBoing article that had a chart as if it was created just for me.

Great! A list of netbooks that had the ranges of compatibility with a Hackintosh install by order of part. My eyes immediately went after the one that had the fewest “red marks”. I struck gold, the Dell Mini 9 hit one out of the park. It was fully compatible with a hackintosh install. So off to Dell I went to order one. I soon realized that the standard 16GB Solid State Drive it comes with won’t accomidate my needs so I ordered a RunCore 64 GB SSD online for $200 off MyDigitalDiscount.com. I also came across another small snafu, it only came with 1GB of RAM! This was actually not Dell’s fault but Microsoft’s. Yes, thats right. Im blaming Microsoft. See, they have issues with manufacturers selling computers and laptops with Windows XP installed with more than enough hardware specs it needs. I suppose they just want Vista to sell, but I think its a pretty crappy move on their part. Either way, I was able to purchase a 2GB RAM stick from Dell for a miesly $20 extra. After all that was done, it was time to watch the calendar and clock until the UPS truck came by.

3 weeks pass by, and I have all the things I need to get my Hackintosh project started.

1 Dell Mini 9 netbook, check.
1 2GB RAM stick, check.
1 64GB RunCore SSD, check.
1 official Mac OSX Leopard Install DVD, check.
1 USB 8GB Flash Drive Stick, check.
1 USB External CD-R/DVD-R Drive, check.
1 Free Day to dedicate to complete the project, check.

Before I got started I opened up my Dell Mini 9 and did a bit of surgery. I took out Dell’s stock 16GB SSD and 1 GB RAM stick. I then installed the 2GB RAM stick and 64GB SSD from RunCore. Popped that lid closed again, screwed it up and booted up. There are a few YouTube videos floating around on how to properly install RAM and upgrade your SSD.

I begun with following one of many hackintosh guides for the Mini 9 online and have everything handy on my desk. I ultimately chose Gizmodo’s guide because they had always served me well in the past. I followed the instructions to the T and much to my suprise I did not have as many problems as I had anticipated. A few errors that I did encounter were fixable (such as starting the bootloader from a USB stick other than a CD). Sometimes my Mini 9 would freeze during a BIOS or DOS prompt but after a reboot everything was fine and it continued to install OSX.

Later that night, once all was done I finally booted up into Leopard! Joy! I was really impressed with the speed and usability of Leopard on such a small machine. I started to wonder why Apple dislikes them so much. Leopard only took about 8GB of my 64GB so I had plenty of room to put all my programs and even some music and movies on as well. But thats where Flash drives and portable external hard drives come in.

So there you have it, another successful story of a hackintosh netbook project. If Apple had only sold one of these babies to me maybe I wouldnt have had to go through all this trouble but in the end I think its better this way. After all, its the thrill of the hunt (or project) that makes me happy. Oh and I took the following snapshot on my Dell Mini 9 netbook just to spite Apple. Get on the ball people! There’s a HUGE market for this!

(click to enlarge)