42 replies to this topic

[Nexar]

Hey Folks,
first of all i want to apologise for my bad english.
I installed OSx86 on the Dell D420 and would like to share my experience and expand my knowledge. My goal is to get everything running properly....but this not realistic, i know. This is how far i came right now on this issue. If you got a solution for a problem, please post it here, that we can get a complete how to for the d420.
even if you got other dell notebooks, with identical hardware parts, feel free to share your knowledge.
I try to post the detailed hardware specifications of the D420 later on by updating this post.

Installation:

• i used the Kalyway 10.5.1 dvd
  
• deactivate one core of the processor in bios before installation
  
• partition your HDD with MBR partitiontables
  
• select the MBR Bootloader in Custom Installation and deselect the efi bootloader

I didn't tried efi, cause i dont have a clue about it, if you got chameleon running, or anything else, that allows you to use vanilla kernel, please post the way in this thread.

Things that worked out of the box:

• the processor Intel Core Duo U2500 with only one core acitvated
  
• the dell wireless adapter
  
• the trackpad, trackpoint and all 4 buttons
  
• the graphic chipset GMA950

I experienced slightly artifact problems in the upper left corner of the screen, just below the apple.

Things that need some tuning:

• sound: You need the AppleHDAPatcher 1.20 by Taruga(thank you!) and the 9200.txt. Start AppleHDAPatcher, drag the 9200.txt and drop it in the window of the patcher. follow the instructions on screen and reboot.

Helpfull links:
http://forum.insanel...showtopic=32859
http://wiki.taruga.net/tiki-index.php the link to download the stuff you need

The speakers should work now, i dont know about the microphone and earplug jacks but when someone tried them, he could report his experiences. You even get this nice "volume animation" from osx when you adjust the volume with your keyboard...only the mute button is not working.

• battery: You need the PowerManagement-137-1.bundle.tar.gz from Jaro(thank you!). Extract the archive and replace the PowerManagement.bundle in /System/Library/SystemConfiguration with the one you have just extraced....but don't forget to backup your old PowerManagement.bundle. Reboot your machine and go to System Prefernces>Energy Saver>Options and enable the checkbox "Show battery status in the menu bar".

Helpfull links:
http://forum.insanel...showtopic=80425 the link to download the stuff you need

The battery status indicator should work now, but it works only with percentage, not with the time remaining. If someone got a solution for this problem feel free to share it in this thread.

Things i didn't got to work properly:

• sleep: i didn't found any walkthrougs, etc for that problem, if you got one, please post it

Update:
I just found one, but didnt had the time to go throug it. If someone did that allready feel free to share your experiences.
Walkthrough:
http://forum.insanel...showtopic=42865

• dual core: i did a lot of research on this issue, it seems to be a problem with the dell bios which is not fixed at the moment.

• 2 finger scrolling: i tried it various times with various settings, but my mouse pointer was stuttering and the scrolling was pretty {censored}ed up....can't describe it, it was just wierd. I found a detailed walkthrough but i didnt got it working.

Walkthrough:
http://forum.insanel...showtopic=88811

• fan control: since my d420 becomes really hot, when running osx i did some research and found two solutions, but none of the worked for me.

Solution I:
http://potatosaladx....-with-dual.html
Some guy called nawcom said in the comments that he got it running on the D420, but i don't know how to contact him.

Solution II:
http://paulicat.free...-under-osx.html

• ethernet controller: i found a detailed walkthrough but nearly everybody experiences some errors with that controller. but im not really sure about that, cause most people dont use the detailed name of their controller in the thread. the dell d420 got a bcm5752 eithernet controller.

Walkthrough:
http://forum.insanel...?showtopic=4987

Update:
I got the fixed kext for the bcm5701 installed, and it is not failing loading at the systemstart, but there is no eithernet controller in system profiler?!

Update II:
I just found another hint, but i dont get what he means....when i change my setting like that, i have no wireless anymore i think.
http://www.hackint0s...ead.php?t=864#3

Things i didnt try to get working:

• modem
  
• onboard cardreader
  
• efi

Will be updated....

[vcrman]

Hey,
I have the D420 and all I can say is life is much easier if you choose 10.4 over 10.5
gma950 is natively supported without artifacts in 10.4
Also, you can use EFI v8 if I am not mistaken because you have a Core processor (I have the single core 1.06, it gets the job done)
The main problem is sleep. When you close the display it appears to go into sleep but when you open it nothing happens... you have to hold the power button to power it off then start it again.
There must be something we can do to fix sleep... I have seen D620 work with sleep and they both supposedly have similar bioses... we can hopefully find a solution!

[Nexar]

spotlight is more important for me than those artifacts. so i'll stick to 10.5. what benefits do i get from efi? i can update from apple but is there anyrthing else?
I installed 10.5.2 Combo Update from Kalyway + patched kernel.....there were no problems. and the battery clock is working too now, since i had to reinstall the powermanagement.bundle. i will update the startpost later
do ayou got a link to the thread, where some got the d620's sleep mode working?
did you got the eithernet working, or anything else i didnt?

[melman101]

What does PC EFI v8 get you? Would I be able to enable multi-core?


Also anyone fixed the jumpiness with the touchpad?

Lastly, I'm on 10.5.4 and everything else seemed to work out of the box?

[Slacker66]

 melman101, on Aug 31 2008, 10:26 AM, said:

What does PC EFI v8 get you? Would I be able to enable multi-core?


Also anyone fixed the jumpiness with the touchpad?

Lastly, I'm on 10.5.4 and everything else seemed to work out of the box?

Does sleep/wake work for you?

[Nexar]

i got both cores working now...thanks to oui
and eithernet is working too now....
i will update the first post soon
so only sleep/wake is missing....did anyone got any successs on this issue? i've read in another thread, that someone got a d620 working with sleep speedstep and both cores?!

[jabbaranks]

 Nexar, on Nov 18 2008, 03:18 PM, said:

i got both cores working now...thanks to oui
and eithernet is working too now....
i will update the first post soon
so only sleep/wake is missing....did anyone got any successs on this issue? i've read in another thread, that someone got a d620 working with sleep speedstep and both cores?!

if you use a password in bios this allowed the display to initialize and then wake sleep properly...... if u want the display to wake when u close the lid... then u must install the clamshell kext from the "Dell Laptops Post Installer" and now u will almost have a perfect working hackintosh.....except that u will have to enter the password when waking from sleep..... Thanks to Gujal..........


Jabbaranks
Dell Latitude D620
Processor: Intel T5500
Graphics: Intel GMA 950................................................Working with a little bit of artifacts
Wireless: Broadcom 4311 or Dell Wireless........................working OOTB
Ethernet: Broadcom 5752..............................................Working with 5751 kext
Sound: Sigmatel 9200...................................................working with "Dell Laptops Post Installer 1.3.1" headphones/microphone
Sleep:.........................................................................W
rking with System Password in Bios
Lid Sleep.....................................................................Workin
with System password in bios and Lid sleep from Dell Laptops Post installer 1.3.1
Two Finger Scrolling......................................................Not Working

[Nexar]

it works for the d420 too.....thank you very much.
i'm gonna try to get 2 finger scrolling working now...i got it workin once, but it was really buggy due to wrong settings.

[crenninger]

So is this bible still updated ?
I am considering putting OSX86 on a D420 - 1.2ghz

[ando calrissian]

i don't know if anyone is still updating this post, but i just installed leopard (kalyway 10.5.2) and most stuff works great, except i can't figure out how to get the audio working with the applehda kext, and i got the dual core working but it is really choppy... help please?

[johnhammonds]

 crenninger, on Dec 30 2008, 11:11 AM, said:

So is this bible still updated ?
I am considering putting OSX86 on a D420 - 1.2ghz

 ando calrissian, on Dec 31 2008, 01:31 AM, said:

i don't know if anyone is still updating this post, but i just installed leopard (kalyway 10.5.2) and most stuff works great, except i can't figure out how to get the audio working with the applehda kext, and i got the dual core working but it is really choppy... help please?

I'm a Hackintosh noob myself, but I'll give you what I know...

I have a Dell D420 with the Core Duo 1.2 Processor and I recently installed Kalyway 10.5.2 on it. I tried a few 10.5.5 versions (xXx, iDeneb and iAtkos v5i), but didn't have any luck with those.

Kalyway 10.5.2 worked for me no issues. I chose 950GMA graphics and the video was fine. My pc has the Intel Pro Wireless card so no wireless. I ordered a Dell 1390 Wireless card of Fleabay for $16 which from what I found should work without any modifications. Ethernet does not work either, but I haven't tried to fix it as I don't use Ethernet on the pc.

I downloaded the Dell Post Installer from this site and fixed my sound.

I chose the Vanilla Kernel on install, but changed it to a different Kernel with the post installer and it fixed my "tearing" or "choppiness". I haven't tried out the microphone or ear plug jacks so I don't know if that part of the sound works or not.

I never disabled the dual core nor have I done any of the "cpu=1" stuff.

Use the Dell Post Installer (v1.3 if I'm not mistaken) and it will fix your sound and choppiness.

I'm kind of hold up waiting on the Dell 1390 wireless card to come in, but from what little I've played with it, Kalyway seems to work fine. No internet = no interest, at least for me.

*ADDITION* Just checked the mail... My Wireless card got here quick! Plugged it in and even though Leopard was installed when it had the Intel Wireless Card in it, it automatically recognized the Dell 1390 card upon boot up, chose my wireless network and I'm surfing the web in Leopard with Safari at this very moment.

[vcrman]

Yo broz!

I have a nice fix for sound that will allow the onboard mic + the headphone jack to work with the built-in speakers! it's better than the fix included in sonotone's package (post-installer). I will provide a link for those who need it... also i have various kexts that help me make my install really nice...

I have a D420 but with the single core....
the only probs that made me go back to xp were....

-crappy alps touchpad is ok, but no multi-touch... tap to click and crappy scrolling works if you check the D630 touchpad in dell post-installer v1.3 or 1.3.1 not 1.4.... (it's made by zitounec)
crappy scrolling= press hard with one finger and it scrolls... anywhere...
(a fix would be to use the elantech touchpad found on the eeepc.... or a synaptics touchpad... I need your help here researching! plz...) the elantech touchpad would be fully compatible out of the box if we mod it... if someone can find a retailer and the dimensions i'm willing to try and put it together...

-gma950.... works but only with an older framebuffer causing artifacts in word 2008 and firefox 3....
(i tried newer frambuffers that i extracted myself from various mac packages.... no go, only image on external monitor; from what i was told there is no perfect fix for the dell dma950's yet... it's sort of a dead horse) (the framebuffers that are x.4.x.x work (tiger versions), the x.5.x.x (leopard versions) don't!

these were the deal breakers for me... especially the gma950, so annoying....

In addition, the sd card reader by ricoh is displayed as an 02 micro card reader but i can't find a good driver....

If you guys post back hopefully we can get this working 100% so i can ditch xp once again....

Oh and some people use natit and what not... i've never got natit+gma950kext+framebuffer to work with accelerated gphx...

anyways guys.. let's get cracking...

[PhotoPix]

Gooday All.
I have a d420 (2 core) running Kalyway 10.5.2. Have tried to upgrade to 10.5.6 in steps but with no luck. Does not really matter as 10.5.2.is OK.

Audio works - no headphone output
Video is good
Wireless works
Ethernet works

Sleep does not work even with all the hints and tips from above. Would really like to get sleep working.
Can I pls get your Audio fix
So if anyone can help with any  new kexts or fixes please post them.

Thanks, cheers

 vcrman, on Feb 5 2009, 10:55 AM, said:

Yo broz!

I have a nice fix for sound that will allow the onboard mic + the headphone jack to work with the built-in speakers! it's better than the fix included in sonotone's package (post-installer). I will provide a link for those who need it... also i have various kexts that help me make my install really nice...

I have a D420 but with the single core....
the only probs that made me go back to xp were....

-crappy alps touchpad is ok, but no multi-touch... tap to click and crappy scrolling works if you check the D630 touchpad in dell post-installer v1.3 or 1.3.1 not 1.4.... (it's made by zitounec)
crappy scrolling= press hard with one finger and it scrolls... anywhere...
(a fix would be to use the elantech touchpad found on the eeepc.... or a synaptics touchpad... I need your help here researching! plz...) the elantech touchpad would be fully compatible out of the box if we mod it... if someone can find a retailer and the dimensions i'm willing to try and put it together...

-gma950.... works but only with an older framebuffer causing artifacts in word 2008 and firefox 3....
(i tried newer frambuffers that i extracted myself from various mac packages.... no go, only image on external monitor; from what i was told there is no perfect fix for the dell dma950's yet... it's sort of a dead horse) (the framebuffers that are x.4.x.x work (tiger versions), the x.5.x.x (leopard versions) don't!

these were the deal breakers for me... especially the gma950, so annoying....

In addition, the sd card reader by ricoh is displayed as an 02 micro card reader but i can't find a good driver....

If you guys post back hopefully we can get this working 100% so i can ditch xp once again....

Oh and some people use natit and what not... i've never got natit+gma950kext+framebuffer to work with accelerated gphx...

anyways guys.. let's get cracking...

[wrsg]

I have installed Kalyway 10.5.2 on my D420 and after installing and rebooting, it comes to a grey screen with the black Apple logo, and with a progress icon, but then it goes to a blue screen and then the screen goes black. Why is this?

EDIT: solved this, but i have more problems now, no USB flash drives is the biggest problem. anyone know how to get USB drives working?

EDIT 2: USB problem solved by using the modbin kernel.

[dczech]

 wrsg, on Feb 28 2009, 08:38 AM, said:

I have installed Kalyway 10.5.2 on my D420 and after installing and rebooting, it comes to a grey screen with the black Apple logo, and with a progress icon, but then it goes to a blue screen and then the screen goes black. Why is this?

EDIT: solved this, but i have more problems now, no USB flash drives is the biggest problem. anyone know how to get USB drives working?


How did you solve this bootup issue?



EDIT 2: USB problem solved by using the modbin kernel.

[vcrman]

so sry been away for so long...awol if u like...

i'll get the audio fix.

Also, I believe the best blend for d420 involved installing using leo4all v.3 and then using a small package to save your key kexts. That way, once you update, all of your kexts will be restored... well in a nutshell...which translates to, that package + audio patch:

everything works except modem, sd card reader and super annoying artifacts. also didn't try the mic jack, but internal. if somebody gives me a hand and finds a driver that runs gma 950 w/ 0 artifacts then maybe we can get to unlocking that card reader. I'm sure the audio could be improved studying the codec dumps from a linux boot usb drive.

Gets tricky but then we can say we have 100% installs... well except for automatic updates...
in any case, let's do it. help me find some nice gma950 drivers for the d420. I'm sure if we all work together we'll find or build a treasure...

Oh and one last note, i think lots of your problems are due to the selection of the wrong kexts for the chipset. ICHx fix is the bad boy kext package, it makes disc access as fast as it can be with a 4200rpm 1.8 drive... and no yellow icons.. and it's nice and stable! Oh and the 9.5 Voodoo kernel is amazing, if you don't want that, i would recommend the sleep 9.2.0 kernel. don't click too much stuff when installing, three boxes max.

It's not impossible. If I did it so can you...
...use the gray matter

[real_sinjon]

 vcrman, on Mar 18 2009, 02:27 AM, said:

so sry been away for so long...awol if u like...

i'll get the audio fix.

Also, I believe the best blend for d420 involved installing using leo4all v.3 and then using a small package to save your key kexts. That way, once you update, all of your kexts will be restored... well in a nutshell...which translates to, that package + audio patch:

everything works except modem, sd card reader and super annoying artifacts. also didn't try the mic jack, but internal. if somebody gives me a hand and finds a driver that runs gma 950 w/ 0 artifacts then maybe we can get to unlocking that card reader. I'm sure the audio could be improved studying the codec dumps from a linux boot usb drive.

Gets tricky but then we can say we have 100% installs... well except for automatic updates...
in any case, let's do it. help me find some nice gma950 drivers for the d420. I'm sure if we all work together we'll find or build a treasure...

Oh and one last note, i think lots of your problems are due to the selection of the wrong kexts for the chipset. ICHx fix is the bad boy kext package, it makes disc access as fast as it can be with a 4200rpm 1.8 drive... and no yellow icons.. and it's nice and stable! Oh and the 9.5 Voodoo kernel is amazing, if you don't want that, i would recommend the sleep 9.2.0 kernel. don't click too much stuff when installing, three boxes max.

It's not impossible. If I did it so can you...
...use the gray matter

Hey vcrman good to hear you've had relative success with this nice little notebook. For some reason it seems to be the forgotten hero in most of the Dell laptop threads.

I have a D420, similar spec to yours. Core Duo 1.2, GMA945 IGPU, Sigmatel 9200 audio, Broadcom 57xx ethernet and Intel Pro WiFi.

I'm up to 10.5.6 using the Voodoo XNU 9.5.0 kernel from a Kalyway 10.5.2 install with both cores running nicely, sleep, wake & shutdown all ok including lid close and open, Graphics are fine with the GMA 500 package. No joy with the ethernet but not too bothered, (if it's good enough for a MacBook Air...), swapped out the WiFi for a genuine Apple Airport Extreme draft N mini PCI-E card bought on ebay for £20 - works flawlessly as expected. The PCMCIA and SD Card reader aren't working, but not bothered about those either. Just waiting for a bluetooth card again from ebay. I'm not even going to try the scrolling trackpad fix as so many people report problems.

The thing that would pretty much complete this for me is to get the headphone jack working and being really greedy the mute button. Apart from that audio is fine (accepting crappy speaker) with Taruga HDA Patcher Sigmatel 9200 txt dump. Even have the on screen graphics when changing volume.

You said you had a nice fix to get all the audio functions working. Any chance you could post some details or provide a link. I'll PM if you like.

Cheers.

RS

[real_sinjon]

Ok, I got my headphone jack working. I used the Sigmatel 9200 option from the Dell Laptops v1.3 package. This completely removed my audio device and I had no sound at all. I then ran the HDA patcher with Sigmatel 9200 txt dump and all was back including a now functioning headphone jack. (I tested this on an external USB clone before using my main system disk).

Still not perfect, no mute function and phones only have one volume level unless you turn up the speaker, which rather defeats the point of phones, however the sound quality is much better on the headphones and it does make the machine pretty well complete. It would be nice to get the rest of the audio functions working. If anyone has any ideas they would be most welcome.

[vcrman]

glad to hear you got so far. does the gma 500 package remove the artifacts in firefox 3 and office 2008?
The 9200.txt that you used is the same as mine. Mute does not work, the audio + and - show onscreen. The headphone jack does not turn off the built in speaker.... I assume there should be a fix similar to that of the NC10. For the NC10 you have to switch the output from the speaker to the phones everytime, it does not autodetect..... I'm sure if we investigate this more we could develop a similar solution for the D420. I heard that we have to boot into linux and get audio dumps...

In any case, it is sad that the D420 gets little attention... it is very similar to the D620 though and I have perused multiple posts regarding the D420 and D620 trying to get my system at 100%. I'm pretty confident that we can get PCMCIA, the sd slot is tougher, it's detected but does not have a driver.... The real deal breaker for me has been graphics artifacts and the phones jack. If we fix this I'll go back to OSX as it runs much better on this laptop than xp!

I'll try to keep up the research, I hope we can try to get the audio working together, it's possible. I'll try to learn more from the NC10 guide on biketown.

Cheers!

[real_sinjon]

@vcrman
I don't use Firefox 3 on this machine but I've installed it just to check out this artifacts issue. Just browsing through a few pages and I haven't noticed any artifacts at all. I don't use MS Office at home so don't have that to install, but as far as artifacts in general go, I very occasionally will see a small square, about a quarter inch, that "sticks" on the display until something overwrites it. These are very rare and don't detract from usability at all.

I agree, there must be a way to fix the audio functionality. Just a pity I don't have the tech savvy to do it myself. I must have trawled every post and google hit on this issue and it seems a lot of people have the same problem, not just with the 9200 chipset or just on the D420. You'd think with the Dell's being so popular there would be more activity on finding a fix. It's a pity because this notebook has to be one of the best designed for compactness, power and build quality in it's class and from the reviews I've read is much better than it's successor.

The PC Card slot is not such an issue for me as I have no use for it. I can buy the apple USB-Ethernet adaptor for £20 if I need it.
I think the SD card slot is connected to the USB bus. It shows up as a device in System Profiler on the USB tree with full vendor & device id info. From what I've read this should work but I popped my camera SD card in and nothing happens. Can't figure this if it's just USB PnP.

I'll keep looking on the audio as well. It MUST be possible to sort this.

For yours and anyone else who is following this info, here is a detailed breakdown on my system. I suppose I should post this on the wiki as well.

Dell D420 Centrino Duo 1.2 (both cores working but shows as 800mhz in SysProf, I think this was a bad choice of smbios, I chose MacBook instead of just the  bus speed, will get round to fixing this sometime)
Base install was Kalyway 10.5.2 updated to 10.5.6 using Mysticus pre/post update packages with Voodoo 9.5.0 kernel and seatbelt kext from 10.5.5 combo update pkg to fix dmg mounting and USB hot plugging. More details on how I did the updates if required.
1.5gb ram at 533Mhz, (on board 512mb with a 1gb stick I added - not ideal for DDR2 I know)
Sleep/Wake/Shutdown/Restart all work with keyboard function keys, power switch and lid close/open.
Graphics - Intel GMA 945 - working with Intel GMA 500 drivers. Very slight very occasional artifacts sometimes appear. CI - Harware Accelerated, QE - Supported.
Sound - Sigmatel 9200 C Major HD - working with Taruga's 9200txt dump and HDA patcher but limited functionality. Internal speaker works, headphone jack works, not tested mic. Volume up/down keys work. Mute does not work nor do headphones mute speaker, volume must be turned down manually. Speaker can still be heard very slightly.
Ethernet - Broadcom BCM5752 does not work.
Wireless - Swapped out Intel Pro 100 3945 card for Airport extreme N card - Works of course!
Battery Info - works both time & percentage with added PowerManagement bundle.
Bluetooth - Dell Trumobile - works.
PCMCIA slot - not working
SD Card reader - USB bus - not working

Any questions/comments/suggestions more than welcome to get this fine notebook nearer to perfect.