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Bought the Dell Inspiron E1505, need help


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Well. I've had all weekend to 'perfect' my E1505 setup.

 

Synopsis:

Dual Boot. XP/OS X 10.4.5. Common Users Partition.

 

6 GB hfs+ OSX Partition

5 GB NTFS Windows XP Partition

25 GB FAT32 Users Partition

4 GB of marketing fluff

--------------------------

40 GB HD

1.5GB RAM.

1.66 gHz duo Processor (reports as 1.8 gHz)

 

Dual Booting using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10. I attemted 3 times to uninstall it and use the Darwin boot loader, each time it left my XP partition unuseable. I even attemted a recovery 'fixmbr' which just screwed up my entire drive. (This is the 5th or so time I installed XP and 4 or 5 on OS X, experimentation is fun!)

 

I used the piratebay 10.4.5 install DVD: "osx86 10.4.4, 10.4.5 prepatched Install DVD"

10.4.5 update selected, AMD disabled.

 

XBench comparing Native and Rosetta:

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=163815&doc2=163817

 

By playing with the registry and symbolic links, the XP and OSX installations share the same Desktop, Documents Folder, and Firefox profile (this is pretty cool).

-

Working:

Video Card

Airport

Ethernet most of the time

 

Not Working:

Sleep (even just closing the screen)

Ethernet sometimes

Sound

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Interestingly enough, I did a CPU test with Xbench with Dual Core on and then off, and the scores were both in the mid 60s. Seems odd. Either something is wrong with Xbench
Anyone tried Cinebench? It has Single/Dual Core comparison. http://www.cinebench.com/ available in WinXP and OSX Uni.
Dual Booting using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10. I attemted 3 times to uninstall it and use the Darwin boot loader, each time it left my XP partition unuseable. I even attemted a recovery 'fixmbr' which just screwed up my entire drive. (This is the 5th or so time I installed XP and 4 or 5 on OS X, experimentation is fun!)
You shouldn't have to reinstall. Try Ghost or Acronis True Image to backup both the WinXP and OSX partitions individually or in entirety. Acronis Disk Director 9.0.554 seems to be more stable than other versions when it comes to the Acronis OS Selector which comes with it. Create the recovery CD or floppy just in case the OS Selector malfunctions.
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Anyone tried Cinebench? It has Single/Dual Core comparison. http://www.cinebench.com/ available in WinXP and OSX Uni.

You shouldn't have to reinstall. Try Ghost or Acronis True Image to backup both the WinXP and OSX partitions individually or in entirety. Acronis Disk Director 9.0.554 seems to be more stable than other versions when it comes to the Acronis OS Selector which comes with it. Create the recovery CD or floppy just in case the OS Selector malfunctions.

 

All the different installs weren't due just to my bootloader problems. I wasn't thinking and ran the security update, which made it lock up on boot, plus some other small things.

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Well. I've had all weekend to 'perfect' my E1505 setup.

 

Synopsis:

Dual Boot. XP/OS X 10.4.5. Common Users Partition.

 

6 GB hfs+ OSX Partition

5 GB NTFS Windows XP Partition

25 GB FAT32 Users Partition

4 GB of marketing fluff

--------------------------

40 GB HD

1.5GB RAM.

1.66 gHz duo Processor (reports as 1.8 gHz)

 

Dual Booting using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10. I attemted 3 times to uninstall it and use the Darwin boot loader, each time it left my XP partition unuseable. I even attemted a recovery 'fixmbr' which just screwed up my entire drive. (This is the 5th or so time I installed XP and 4 or 5 on OS X, experimentation is fun!)

 

I used the piratebay 10.4.5 install DVD: "osx86 10.4.4, 10.4.5 prepatched Install DVD"

10.4.5 update selected, AMD disabled.

 

XBench comparing Native and Rosetta:

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=163815&doc2=163817

 

By playing with the registry and symbolic links, the XP and OSX installations share the same Desktop, Documents Folder, and Firefox profile (this is pretty cool).

-

Working:

Video Card

Airport

Ethernet most of the time

 

Not Working:

Sleep (even just closing the screen)

Ethernet sometimes

Sound

 

Man, that sounds like a sweet setup! My main concern is if it's stable though. Do you have many problems that someone who wants to use osx86 for professional work should be worried about?

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Man, that sounds like a sweet setup! My main concern is if it's stable though. Do you have many problems that someone who wants to use osx86 for professional work should be worried about?

 

Not a single crash yet. I spend most of my time in OS X too with Apache, MySQL and TextMate.

 

Only 'problem' is hard drive space. You can never guess how much you'll need. After Dev tools, I have 500 MB left. I've been cheating aready too. I installed fink and darwinports moved both of the /sw and /opt directories to /Volumes/USERS/opt etc, then did a symbolic link.

 

 

Only problems:

No sound, Can't close the lid, can't do any updates (atleast the 1 security update I tried caused boot problems).

 

You do have to give a little and disable the duo core.

 

And on the windows sides of things, I can't hibernate because I didn't leave enough hard drive space.

 

Alas I only have a 40 gig, ideally I might buy a 60 gig, give OS X 10, windows 10 and then have a 35GB users partition.

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Did you do anything special to get the "Airport" working?

 

As my Dell Inspiron 6400 (should be identicle to the E1505) won't pickup the wireless card (intel pro).

 

Other than that i've also got no sound.

 

But USB works a treat, so does the screen, ethernet is either working or not at boot up.

 

Also did some tweaks to my install to get a xbench score of 86 with just the one core turned on. Definetly fast and zippy, if the sound and network issues were resolved this would definetly be a good semi pro setup.

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None of you guys mind about the fact that you have to disable a feature you paid great $$$$ money for? I'm happy to have a dual core notebook, and I'm not going to dumb it down by turning off one core just to run an OSX...

 

There has to be something we can do to fix this! I sent back my 6400 and am expecting a 9400 this week. From what I read, it will have all the same problems so I'll start working on this again when I get it.

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I'm sure there is a way to fix the dual core issure, but I'm nto concerned liek you as running osx on it is a hack so anything is better than nothing.

 

The kernel used in the installer disc doesn't seem to spaz when both cores are turned on - maybe it's just a matter of finding the correctly patched/unpatched kernel combo.

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yeah i'd love to have dual core on the mac side (mainly so i dont have to change the bios settings whenever i want to use the laptop in windows), but i dont have the slightest clue how to fix it. I'm much more interested in getting the laptop so si can close the screen without having to shutdown first.

 

To the person with the wifi issue, you need a dell 1390 or 1370 mini pci card. intel wireless wont work.

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None of you guys mind about the fact that you have to disable a feature you paid great $$$$ money for? I'm happy to have a dual core notebook, and I'm not going to dumb it down by turning off one core just to run an OSX...

 

That's not how I see it. I enable both cores when I use windows. But as I see it right now I can either use OSX or not. If that means disabling a core (which I spent a WHOLE $50 on (over the price of an identical 6000)) then so be it. I can now atleast code in TextMate and I'm working on a php install.

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Been looking for a thread on the E1505.

 

I picked up the base system t2300 duo, don't have the specs handy.

 

Installed on a 60 gig Seagate external USB 20 for OSX and 40 for me.

 

Using the 10.4.5 DVD (the one everyone mentions).

 

It installs fine with dual core enable, but only runs with it disabled.

 

Ethernet - Broadcom 440x works after install, but can never get it back up after reboot.

Turns out this was a router/switch problem Ethernet works perfect ;)

 

Onboard sound (sigmatel) not working. (see next)

 

Altec lansing usb head set works fine (already had one and it sucked on my desktop, but rocks on the laptop. Nice temp solution for no sound card)

 

Dell wireless 1390 detected as airport and stable.

 

Video - GMA 950 Core Image and Quartz supported (Mac Noob No clue what this is?) Runs at 1280x800 default and has 640x680, 800x500, 800x600, and 1024x640 offered (some also have the stretched option)

 

Forgot to mention - system will not wake up from any type of power saving option.

 

Running: Stuffit, Opera, Teamspeex, PureFTPd, Remote Desktop....so far

 

Thats as far as Ive got, the Ethernet really bugs me because it works for the first session and then bye-bye. I have reinstalled several times but get the same result. Not that i need it, but i need it....

 

Thats my 2 cents, hope we can find a solution on the sound, and any tips on my Ethernet would be nice.

 

Thanx

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Just got my new laptop last week and the spec are shown in my sig. I think 6400 is the same as E1505.

I've successfully installed from 10.4.4/10.4.5 DVD Patched MYZ iso. I've tried both 10.4.4/10.4.5, but still no sound. I've check the System profile, no build-in audio, no wireless, unstable ethernet. I've tried reading a sorts of guides, but I dun really understand and know how to edit or patch things. Any ideas?

 

Please can anyone help me thanks !!

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Someone in the HCL seems to be claiming he has solved the Core Duo bug issue on a E1705(=9400).

Quoted from the Wiki 10.4.5 HCL :

"Native installaion of 10.4.5 dvd (disabled multi core support in Bios before install, took awhile to get to install screen, went very smooth through install) After installation was totally done i.e 2nd restart I enabled the multi-core and it ran very well."

(full entry here)

 

Apparently, both 9400(=E1705) and 6400(=E1505) use the same CPU/Chipset combination, so it might be worth trying... ?

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Someone in the HCL seems to be claiming he has solved the Core Duo bug issue on a E1705(=9400).

Quoted from the Wiki 10.4.5 HCL :

"Native installaion of 10.4.5 dvd (disabled multi core support in Bios before install, took awhile to get to install screen, went very smooth through install) After installation was totally done i.e 2nd restart I enabled the multi-core and it ran very well."

(full entry here)

 

Apparently, both 9400(=E1705) and 6400(=E1505) use the same CPU/Chipset combination, so it might be worth trying... ?

 

The problem is getting the sound to work :weight_lift:

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well i know this may sound a bit disheartening, but i finally said "to heck with it", sold my dell laptop, and slap down double the price to get a macbook pro.

 

overall it's not nearly as nice as the dell hardware-wise (dell had a much nicer screen and bigger battery) but it is a nicely built laptop, and using boot camp is VERY stable. Seeing as how what i really needed was a laptop that could run any OS and run it stable, i think this is going to be a good investment.

 

besides, the titanium looks really nice with my titanium microsoft laptop mouse :-)

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Anyone knows if any of the following USB sound cards likely to work?

 

http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audioadvantage/

http://computers.search.ebay.com/usb-sound...Z1QQsacatZ31530

 

My e1505 should be arriving pretty soon, so I am trying to figure out a solution to the broken audio issue.

 

Edit: Never mind - see this thread if you are looking for a USB card: http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=13772

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Thanks for the USB Sound card link! I've been looking for a cheap solution, and I've found a noname usb card for about 20$ (in Sweden). Here's a picture. I've been googling around trying to figure out what chipset it has, but there's not much to go on...so I'm not sure whether it works or not.

 

Thing is, I'm waiting for my Inspiron 6400 to arrive too! I'll probably have it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow - I'm really eager to get osx up and running! :whistle:

 

It seems like i'll have to get myself a wlan usb card too, since my laptop ships with the intel 3945 wlan chipset and not the dell 1390. I've found one from sweex for 30$ that's been reported as working.

 

Also, the x1400 gpu doesn't seem to be supported yet - do you guys know if it's possible to disable the x1400 from bios and use the gma950 instead?

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it's strange. I have two e1505's, and the 2.0 ghz model has unstable ethernet, but the 1.7ghz model is perfect stable. everything else the same. have no idea why this would be the case. I got a SUPER cheap usb sound solution. It was like $10 after shipping from ebay. do a search on here. LOVE this machine.

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it's strange. I have two e1505's, and the 2.0 ghz model has unstable ethernet, but the 1.7ghz model is perfect stable. everything else the same. have no idea why this would be the case. I got a SUPER cheap usb sound solution. It was like $10 after shipping from ebay. do a search on here. LOVE this machine.

 

Hmm...spooky stuff, those ethernet issues! I've heard others reporting both as working and unstable :|

 

I looked up those SUPER cheap usb sound solutions of yours on ebay, and they really are cheap! Unfortunately, with shipping all the way to sweden, I'd end up paying about as much as in the store nextdoors. And with no way to return it if it sucks. :angel:

 

Glad to hear you like your e1505's! Mine has an ETA on wednesday. And that's when i'll get the 2x1gb sticks of 667mhz ram I ordered too! drool! :):thumbsup_anim:

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