Latitude 2100 Netbook Instructions - HOW TO

[DPazdan]

Here are some instructions on how I got a 2100 fully functioning (minus ethernet card)

 

1. Install iDeneb 10.5.6 customized with Netbook MSI Wind and Kexthelper check marked.

2. Once laptop has started run Dell EFI and do custom installation.

3. Check mark only Dell Mini 9 Extensions, restore keyboard pref, Custom dsdt.aml file. DO NOT INSTALL BOOTLOADER! Restart after install (note your password is likely blank as you have not set one yet)

4. After the computer starts back up you can now change the resolution or it may have already auto set itself to a higher rez. (external monitors should work now too).

5. Open Terminal and type:

6. sudo -s and then press enter

7. Press enter or type in your password if you have one

8. cd /system/library/extensions/

9. rm -rf AppleHDA.*

10. cd /system/library

11. rm -rf Extensions.mkext

12. open KextHelper

13. drag VoodooHDA.kext into kexthelper

14. run Easy Install

15. Open Disk Utility

16. Select the hard drive and click Repair Permissions

17. Restart

 

Screenshot

[jay-zi]

Here are some instructions on how I got a 2100 fully functioning (minus ethernet card)

 

1. Install iDeneb 10.5.6 customized with Netbook MSI Wind and Kexthelper check marked.

2. Once laptop has started run Dell EFI and do custom installation.

3. Check mark only Dell Mini 9 Extensions, restore keyboard pref, Custom dsdt.aml file. DO NOT INSTALL BOOTLOADER! Restart after install (note your password is likely blank as you have not set one yet)

4. After the computer starts back up you can now change the resolution or it may have already auto set itself to a higher rez. (external monitors should work now too).

5. Open Terminal and type:

6. sudo -s and then press enter

7. Press enter or type in your password if you have one

8. cd /system/library/extensions/

9. rm -rf AppleHDA.*

10. cd /system/library

11. rm -rf Extensions.mkext

12. open KextHelper

13. drag VoodooHDA.kext into kexthelper

14. run Easy Install

15. Open Disk Utility

16. Select the hard drive and click Repair Permissions

17. Restart

 

Screenshot

 

Sounds great! Does every other component works as designed? What about the touchscreen? Do you know if it is possible to get a german surface?

[DPazdan]

Sounds great! Does every other component works as designed? What about the touchscreen? Do you know if it is possible to get a german surface?

 

I do not have touchscreen on my 2100 so I can't tell u if that work or not. You might want to look into it Here.

Every other component works great, I mean I was quite surprised how easy it was to get it all working so well. Even the SD memory card reader works great. I'm not sure about the german keyboard either. You might want to look into that on dells site. Mac OSX has a dell language function but the keyboard is a standard english key qwerty.

[phoenix9557]

Here are some instructions on how I got a 2100 fully functioning (minus ethernet card)

 

1. Install iDeneb 10.5.6 customized with Netbook MSI Wind and Kexthelper check marked.

2. Once laptop has started run Dell EFI and do custom installation.

3. Check mark only Dell Mini 9 Extensions, restore keyboard pref, Custom dsdt.aml file. DO NOT INSTALL BOOTLOADER! Restart after install (note your password is likely blank as you have not set one yet)

4. After the computer starts back up you can now change the resolution or it may have already auto set itself to a higher rez. (external monitors should work now too).

5. Open Terminal and type:

6. sudo -s and then press enter

7. Press enter or type in your password if you have one

8. cd /system/library/extensions/

9. rm -rf AppleHDA.*

10. cd /system/library

11. rm -rf Extensions.mkext

12. open KextHelper

13. drag VoodooHDA.kext into kexthelper

14. run Easy Install

15. Open Disk Utility

16. Select the hard drive and click Repair Permissions

17. Restart

 

Screenshot

 

I followed your instructions to a "tee", and I am still stuck at the lowest resolution (with no options to change it), and my wifi doesnt work. I've ran the DellEFI utility, and it threw an error about how it couldnt install the extensions. Hey, but the touchscreen works great!

 

Any ideas? I'll trade my working touchscreen for any form of network connection!

[DPazdan]

I followed your instructions to a "tee", and I am still stuck at the lowest resolution (with no options to change it), and my wifi doesnt work. I've ran the DellEFI utility, and it threw an error about how it couldnt install the extensions. Hey, but the touchscreen works great!

 

Any ideas? I'll trade my working touchscreen for any form of network connection!

 

go to system preferences, accounts, and create an administrator password. Then when you run dell efi make sure you are logged in as the admin and if it promps you for a login/pass use the admin one.

Let me know if that works cuz it sounds like the files did not install because of permissions issues. The other thing I would try is running disk utility, repair permissions again and restart and press F8 then type in -f -v and press enter

[jay-zi]

Finally I've downloaded iDeneb 1.4, burned it to a DVD and try to install. But after partitioning I cannot find a continue button at the welcome screen. Do you know why is that?

[Brak]

Your tutorial was really helpful. Thanks!

 

I'd like to make a few amendments to it though that I've learned through 2 weeks of constant trial and error heh. Here's some stuff I didn't know and wasn't apparent in your tutorial and some other misc tips to make things a little easier. They are in no particular order.

• DellEFI is a CD Image / Application that you can download. It contains a bunch of relevant drivers and kexts for use with the Dell Mini 9. The Latitude 2100 shares many hardware similarities to the Mini 9, so it mostly works too.
  
• You should NOT install all Dell Mini 9 Extensions. If you do, your screen will be the right size, but you will lose Wireless. Don't install the "IO80211Family.kext" as it will overwrite the vanilla-installed working Broadcom kext.
   
  
• If you only want the screen to be the right resolution, you can just install the "AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext"
   
  
• You can find these and other potentially handy kexts by doing the following:
  1. Acquire the DellEFI.app
     
     
  2. Show Package Contents of DellEFI.app
     
     
  3. Navigate to Contents/Resources/Extensions/
     
     
  Everything in this folder is safe to install (Use Kext Helper like DPazdan describes) except the "IO80211Family.kext". (The only thing I noticed that actually does anything useful is the Intel Framebuffer one, but I may be being unobservant.)
   
  [*]The VoodooHDA.kext will get your sound working.
   
  [*]To get through the OS X install, you need to hook up an external monitor. The generic 640x480 Stretched resolution won't let you click the "Continue" button on the second screen of the installer. Be sure to hook up the external monitor and activate it [Fn] + [F8] AFTER the boot selector but BEFORE the Mac OS X Installer interface loads. This will ensure that when the OS switches resolutions, your external monitor will display 1024x768 instead of the impossible 640x480.
   
  [*]Kext Helper's "EASY INSTALL" button will be grayed out if you don't type anything at all in the password field. Even if you hit a key then delete it - because you have no password or it's blank - it will activate, but it will fail because it doesn't know what to do with an empty password. So go to SystemPreferences -> Accounts -> Administrator and set yourself a nice password. You'll be in business after that.
   
  [*]You don't need to do all the terminal/command line stuff to remove/install the AppleHDA.kext. The Finder can take care of that. Navigate to the /System/Library/Extensions folder and drag the kext to the trash or hit [CMD] + [backspace]. It will ask you to enter your password and BAMO it's gone.
   
  [*]I still haven't gotten bluetooth to work in any of my testing. It's part of the Wireless card, its 2.0, and Mac OS just doesn't want to play nicely with it. The hardware works fine in Ubuntu and Windows; so I dunno.

 

Thanks again DPazdan for your tutorial.

[jay-zi]

Thanks Brak. I'm tried the external monitor before your post, but presses FN+F8 at the wrong time. So I installed OSX without problems.

 

But after step 3...

 

Here are some instructions on how I got a 2100 fully functioning (minus ethernet card)

 

1. Install iDeneb 10.5.6 customized with Netbook MSI Wind and Kexthelper check marked.

2. Once laptop has started run Dell EFI and do custom installation.

3. Check mark only Dell Mini 9 Extensions, restore keyboard pref, Custom dsdt.aml file. DO NOT INSTALL BOOTLOADER! Restart after install (note your password is likely blank as you have not set one yet)

 

... OSX loads only with a blue screen for some seconds and after that the screen stays black.

 

Do you have any suggestions? Do I need to reinstall OSX and try other options?

[Brak]

But after step 3...

... OSX loads only with a blue screen for some seconds and after that the screen stays black.

 

Do you have any suggestions? Do I need to reinstall OSX and try other options?

You can see where it's stopping by using the "-v" boot options. It will just sorta stop doing anything and the last thing it says is what isn't working right.

This happened to me after I had done a restore from a crummy disk image. It had stopped for me on "Airport enabled" and it didn't really do anything else after that. I decided to wipe it and start over. Seemed to work fine after that. (This was about a week in of installs and whatnot)

 

One thing that has helped me A TON was to turn a USB Flash drive into an OS X Install DVD. So instead of actually using the actual iDeneb install DVD, I just boot off the flash drive and it's like 10,000 times faster. It gives me the freedom to boot into the installer (and terminal and disk utility) in about 10 seconds instead of 5 minutes. Saves so much time.

 

To do this:

You'll need a Mac with Disk Utility (you can use your newly installed OS X on your Latitude, or another Mac) and a USB Flash drive that has 5 or more GB capacity that you can safely format. (I used an 8GB)

From Disk Utility, Click a drive, Click the Restore tab

Drag the iDeneb CD Volume to the Source box, and the flash drive to the Destination.

(You could try enabling erase destination, but sometimes it fails, in which case just format it ahead of time to GUID and HFS+ Journaled)

Click restore. Wait.

Remove the CD and you should be able to reboot and boot from it. No other USB Flash Drives should be inserted at boot time because the Dell BIOS doesn't differentiate between the various USB drives. (Correct me if I'm wrong please. I'd love to be able to choose. Dell Boot Sequence selector, not the Chameleon EFI screen.)

 

Hope that helps.

[savestheday]

Anyway to get this working with a retail disk instead of iDeneb?

[Brak]

Anyway to get this working with a retail disk instead of iDeneb?

Maybe, but you'd need to make your own custom bootloader disk first. Have any experience with fdisk?

[savestheday]

I've tried using Chameleon but no luck....

 

EDIT

Okay so I moved away from using Chameleon's built in SMBIOS and tried using the AnV SMBIOS.plist and it's working! Previously, I was getting a message that said "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer"

[rb32]

I've tried using Chameleon but no luck....

 

EDIT

Okay so I moved away from using Chameleon's built in SMBIOS and tried using the AnV SMBIOS.plist and it's working! Previously, I was getting a message that said "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer"

@SAVESTHEDAY: Can you please describe a little detail how you make the retail OSX DVD working, please? I'll receive my 2100 by end of this week and I would like also to use the installation with the retail OSX DVD.

 

Thank you in advance

[jaykk]

Anyone got the LAN working, it is a "Broadcom Netxtreme 57xx" . I tried several AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext, none of them work.

 

I am running Snow Leopard. I installed OS X to external HD from a MacBook Pro, and replaced the hard disk. To get the Sound, Screen resolution, I followed steps in this thread. Thanks for the good write up DPazdan. Thanks to Brak as well, I loaded individual kexts via Kext Utility by opening up the DellEFI package.

 

Snow Leopard - OS X 10.6.1

 

Working :

 

wireless ( 1397, mini b/g)

screen resolution ( 1024x 576)

sound ( Using VoodooHDA.kext )

touchscreen (working out of the box, the touches are way off, requires calibration I guess. no idea where to get calibration software)

webcam ( working out of the box, its a 1.3 MP, but resolution seems like a .3MP, didn't explore much, photobooth works, but not really usable because of screen size)

 

 

Not Working :

 

Ethernet LAN ( "Broadcom Netxtreme 57xx" ) , gigabit

 

Other Issues:

 

There is a minor display issue, window refreshing/menus squished sometimes etc.

 

Verdict:

 

Perfect netbook to run OS X. Quiet happy with the purchase on Dell Business Outlet for $309 with Touchscreen/Webcam (XP home/ 80GB).

[The Last Angry Clown]

Anyone got the LAN working, it is a "Broadcom Netxtreme 57xx" . I tried several AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext, none of them work.

 

I am running Snow Leopard. I installed OS X to external HD from a MacBook Pro, and replaced the hard disk. To get the Sound, Screen resolution, I followed steps in this thread. Thanks for the good write up DPazdan. Thanks to Brak as well, I loaded individual kexts via Kext Utility by opening up the DellEFI package.

 

I just got a Latitude 2100 and I'm desperate to hear more detail on the procedures you used to do this, I'd love to have a vanilla retail install instead of a modded 10.5.x install (like Kalyway or iDeneb). I have a spare hard drive that has a stock install of 10.6.1, I installed it into the Latitude but I cannot get it to boot, alone or via the bootloader on an external drive (the external drive has a disk image of SL 10.6 install DVD and is supposed to be bootable using NetBootMaker 0.8.2). When trying to boot to internal hard drive it stops at a black screen with a flashing prompt, when using the external drive and an external monitor I get the Apple load screen (grey screen with Apple logo and spinning wheel, Apple logo is squeezed horizontally), eventually I will get the SL desktop wallpaper on the external screen but it doesn't complete booting. Did you load kexts before you installed the drive into the Latitude, and if so how did you do it (did you boot your MacBook from the drive and then load the kexts)? And how exactly did you make the drive bootable in the Latitude? Any advice is hugely appreciated...

[Rumi409]

Anyone got the LAN working, it is a "Broadcom Netxtreme 57xx" . I tried several AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext, none of them work.

 

I am running Snow Leopard. I installed OS X to external HD from a MacBook Pro, and replaced the hard disk. To get the Sound, Screen resolution, I followed steps in this thread. Thanks for the good write up DPazdan. Thanks to Brak as well, I loaded individual kexts via Kext Utility by opening up the DellEFI package.

 

Snow Leopard - OS X 10.6.1

 

Working :

 

wireless ( 1397, mini b/g)

screen resolution ( 1024x 576)

sound ( Using VoodooHDA.kext )

touchscreen (working out of the box, the touches are way off, requires calibration I guess. no idea where to get calibration software)

webcam ( working out of the box, its a 1.3 MP, but resolution seems like a .3MP, didn't explore much, photobooth works, but not really usable because of screen size)

 

 

Not Working :

 

Ethernet LAN ( "Broadcom Netxtreme 57xx" ) , gigabit

 

Other Issues:

 

There is a minor display issue, window refreshing/menus squished sometimes etc.

 

Verdict:

 

Perfect netbook to run OS X. Quiet happy with the purchase on Dell Business Outlet for $309 with Touchscreen/Webcam (XP home/ 80GB).

 

Hey Jaykk,

 

Are you getting any Kernel Panic due to AppleACPIBatteryManager?

[realityisterror]

Hey Jaykk,

 

Are you getting any Kernel Panic due to AppleACPIBatteryManager?

 

I figure I can chime in on this.

I just got a 2100 in the recent coupon deal which is no doubt where you got yours.

 

I was unable to get the regular installer to get past about 15% when I tried that. I ultimately did this:

Clone the installer onto a partitioned external hard drive. Using a regular Mac, I ran the clean, retail installer to install to another partition on my external. Then I ran NetBootMaker on the installer partition. Boot into the patched installer on the netbook and use Disk Utility to Restore the Snow Leopard installation on your external to the Latitude's internal drive. Quit Disk Utility and run NetBootInstaller from the Applications menu. Choose the internal drive and install only the Chameleon bootloader.

Then boot into Snow Leopard from the internal drive. I think you will need to be connected to power while doing this. Run NetBootInstaller and install only the Dell extensions and generate dsdt.aml. I think at least one of the other settings will cause your Latitude to not boot up, but I didn't take the time to diagnose which one it is that installs a bad kext.

 

I now seem to have everything working except for Sleep and I haven't tried ethernet. I haven't had a kernel panic in a few hours of use. I also think that the graphics kext is somehow not working correctly. I'm not getting smooth playback of Flash videos and Expose is not smooth. I think this is because the GMA950 in the Latitude is not 100% the same as the GMA950 used in the Mini 9/10v.

 

Let me know how it goes, especially if you're able to get the graphics or sleep working better

[joshaimm]

Your tutorial was really helpful. Thanks!

 

I'd like to make a few amendments to it though that I've learned through 2 weeks of constant trial and error heh. Here's some stuff I didn't know and wasn't apparent in your tutorial and some other misc tips to make things a little easier. They are in no particular order.

• DellEFI is a CD Image / Application that you can download. It contains a bunch of relevant drivers and kexts for use with the Dell Mini 9. The Latitude 2100 shares many hardware similarities to the Mini 9, so it mostly works too.
  
• You should NOT install all Dell Mini 9 Extensions. If you do, your screen will be the right size, but you will lose Wireless. Don't install the "IO80211Family.kext" as it will overwrite the vanilla-installed working Broadcom kext.
   
  
• If you only want the screen to be the right resolution, you can just install the "AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext"
   
  
• You can find these and other potentially handy kexts by doing the following:
  1. Acquire the DellEFI.app
     
     
  2. Show Package Contents of DellEFI.app
     
     
  3. Navigate to Contents/Resources/Extensions/
     
     
  Everything in this folder is safe to install (Use Kext Helper like DPazdan describes) except the "IO80211Family.kext". (The only thing I noticed that actually does anything useful is the Intel Framebuffer one, but I may be being unobservant.)
   
  [*]The VoodooHDA.kext will get your sound working.
   
  [*]To get through the OS X install, you need to hook up an external monitor. The generic 640x480 Stretched resolution won't let you click the "Continue" button on the second screen of the installer. Be sure to hook up the external monitor and activate it [Fn] + [F8] AFTER the boot selector but BEFORE the Mac OS X Installer interface loads. This will ensure that when the OS switches resolutions, your external monitor will display 1024x768 instead of the impossible 640x480.
   
  [*]Kext Helper's "EASY INSTALL" button will be grayed out if you don't type anything at all in the password field. Even if you hit a key then delete it - because you have no password or it's blank - it will activate, but it will fail because it doesn't know what to do with an empty password. So go to SystemPreferences -> Accounts -> Administrator and set yourself a nice password. You'll be in business after that.
   
  [*]You don't need to do all the terminal/command line stuff to remove/install the AppleHDA.kext. The Finder can take care of that. Navigate to the /System/Library/Extensions folder and drag the kext to the trash or hit [CMD] + [backspace]. It will ask you to enter your password and BAMO it's gone.
   
  [*]I still haven't gotten bluetooth to work in any of my testing. It's part of the Wireless card, its 2.0, and Mac OS just doesn't want to play nicely with it. The hardware works fine in Ubuntu and Windows; so I dunno.

 

Thanks again DPazdan for your tutorial.

 

 

Somehow I don't have my Wireless Adapter working. Is there any kext that will get it working again. Or do I need to reinstall osX again?

 

Thanks!

[jaykk]

Hi,

 

Sorry guys, I was away for a while. I am not getting any kernal panic. I didn't work on it for a while now. I installed first on a External Hard drive using my macbacook. Then I took that and replaced it on Latitude. I use to get a lot of kernel panics first, finally I figured out the kexts needed, no kernal panic. Except ethernet everything works.

 

Working on a different project now, I will boot it up tomorrow and post more info (kexts needed, other settings).

 

Glad to see more Latitude 2100 users in here.

 

- Jay

[Rumi409]

Glad to see there are more people with 2100s trying to install SL. I was able to get SL installed by using another hackintosh and connecting the 2100 HD to it. Used netbook boot and installer. Got everything to work but ethernet. Graphics was very choppy (i.e. Youtube, etc.) and no sleep. I only got Battery Manager KP when the battery was plugged in and at random times. Could be because I checked almost everything in the Netbook installer.

 

Jay,

If you could list the Kexts that you used, that would be great. Also did you use Netbook Boot loader and/or Installer? Is your video playback using youtube smooth?

 

Problem with the video playback could be due to the Hard drive controller. When I installed Win 7, I noticed the same choppy video playback. But once I updated the HD controller driver, it was fixed.

[finahmenal]

Hey guys,

 

I have a latitude 2100- got mac os 10.5.8 installed. Only issue is getting sleep and ethernet to work properly.

It seems that when i do press the sleep button on the apple menu, it might actually try to put the computer to sleep, but doesn't, then when i move the mouse, it disconnects wirless, and reconnects... so it seems like its kind of working.

 

anyways here is what i used to get everythign work minus sleep. I actually didnt use the dellefi, as everytime i loaded the dell exstensions, it would not allow my mac os to reboot, and i would have to do another install of the os. So i suggest manually loading the kext i mention below using Kext Helper.

 

Ideneb v1.6 lite (10.5.8)

Vanilla Kernal

used default broadcom wireless kext in installer

used VoodooHDA.kext to get sound working.

used AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext and PowerManagement.bundle from Dell Mini 9 Essentials to get battery meter/power management working.

used VoodooPS2Controller-0.98-installer.pkg to get keyboard and trackpad working

patch27ae.command script got video working for me.

 

Anyone got sleep working... let me know!

[Rumi409]

Hey guys,

 

I have a latitude 2100- got mac os 10.5.8 installed. Only issue is getting sleep and ethernet to work properly.

It seems that when i do press the sleep button on the apple menu, it might actually try to put the computer to sleep, but doesn't, then when i move the mouse, it disconnects wirless, and reconnects... so it seems like its kind of working.

 

anyways here is what i used to get everythign work minus sleep. I actually didnt use the dellefi, as everytime i loaded the dell exstensions, it would not allow my mac os to reboot, and i would have to do another install of the os. So i suggest manually loading the kext i mention below using Kext Helper.

 

Ideneb v1.6 lite (10.5.8)

Vanilla Kernal

used default broadcom wireless kext in installer

used VoodooHDA.kext to get sound working.

used AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext and PowerManagement.bundle from Dell Mini 9 Essentials to get battery meter/power management working.

used VoodooPS2Controller-0.98-installer.pkg to get keyboard and trackpad working

patch27ae.command script got video working for me.

 

Anyone got sleep working... let me know!

 

 

How is your video playback? Can you post the link to the dell 9 essentials you used?

 

Thanks,

Rumi

[finahmenal]

Rumi,

 

I wont be able to check until late tonight... ill try to post it then, never did try Youtube.

 

DellEFI from here - http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/mac-os-x-g...efi-method.html

[finahmenal]

Rumi,

 

full screen playback is choppy, just like yours. Any luck fixing this ?

[Rumi409]

Rumi,

 

full screen playback is choppy, just like yours. Any luck fixing this ?

 

I figured as much. I had the same issue when I had Snow Leopard installed. I'm guessing this has to do with the SATA controller. Currently I have Win 7 installed, but left a 15GB partition for OSX. I got Win 7 to play HD video from Youtube and other sources smoothly after updating the SATA controller driver. I'm hoping to get more feedback from others that have OSX installednso we can work on a solution.