iPC on Dell Precision M6400 Covet

syphon1c · June 18, 2009

(sorry my formatting of text hasnt quite come out like I envisioned (: )

Hey guys,

I thought Id post some information with regards to where I am with my installation on my Dell M6400 Covet.

My machine specs are as follows:

DELL M6400 Covet

Chipset Intel Q43 Express

2x 500gig SATA HDD

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M

16gig MEMORY/RAM

IDT 92HDxxx HD Audio

Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN

Broadcom 57xx NIC

Synaptic Jog Shuttle

Creative Labs Integrated Webcam

Step 1.

· Firstly sort out partitioning before running the OSX Install DVD. OSX86 needs to be on a primary partition of its own. Format the drive to FAT32.

· Download the iPC 10.5.6 Final DVD and burn it to a DVD at 1x speed.

· Boot from the DVD, one shouldn't need to boot with any command line arguments

Step 2.

· Once fully booted into the installation section of the DVD go to Utilities->Disk Utility

· Select the OSX86 drive from the menu that you previously formatted. Erase the disk with format MAC OSX Journaled (HFS+)

· Once done exit the Disk Utility program and proceed to install

Step 3.

· Customise the install

My Customised install includes the following packages:

Kernel Driver – 9.4.0 StageXNU Universal Kernel

Video Drivers – Natit

Chipset – Intel ICH10 SATA Drivers

- Intel ICHx SATA Drivers

- LegacyAppleIntelPIIATA

- AppleNforceATA

- LegacyJMicronATA

- JmicronATA

I selected the above, wont hurt but I figured in the end I also needed AppleNforce driver or I got the "waiting for root device" error after install

Ethernet Drivers - AppleBCM5751Ethernet (Not Working)

Wireless Drivers – Broadcom Driver (Not Working, I have an Intel 5100 AGN, awaiting drivers)

Wireless Drivers – Zydas 1211/1215 (Using a USB wireless dongle that works for now)

USB Drivers – All of them

Power Management – Power Management Package

Fixes and Patches – IOUSBMassStorageFix

- Sata Drive Icon Fix (New)

- Sata Drive Icon Fix (Old)

- FireWire Mount Fix

- SeaBelt (Downloading DMG's kept freezing my machine until I loaded this patch )

- IOPCIFamily

- IOPCMCIAFamily

- Shutdown Restart Fix (after fixing the Graphics machine wont shutdown properly)

- USB Mount Fix

- PS/2 Device Support (both packages)

Applications – AppleHDAPatcher

- OSx86 Tools Utility (awesome tool, tip: need to move it to proper directory after install)

- EFI Studio

- Kext Helper b7

Once the install completes, the machine will reboot. Before booting into the newly installed OS, press "F8" on the boot option, and add the following arguments, "-v –f" (without quotes) -f will ensure all newly installed extensions are active/used

OSx86 should boot up now for the first time, proceed through the registration process (Surprised my intergrated webcam works off the fly).

The first thing I did was fix the graphics display for my nVidia FX3700M graphics card. Use OSX86 Tools for this (Make sure you copy the OSXTools binary to /Applications/OSXTools had issues with the default install location and EXE name).

Tip: You will create a custom GFX Geforce string for the nVidia FX3700M 1024mb

Use the following youtube tutorial to get this to work: