Installation guide for Dell XPS 420 with iATKOS v7

[jotu78]

Hi everyone, I figured i would share my experience with installing OSX 10.5 onto a Dell XPS 420 successfully.

 

I started out trying the Rebel EFI software by Psystar.com, it was said to install OSX onto ANY(!) computer, that was obviously not the case. I looked into a few other installation alternatives but all of them was unsuccessful. Finally i found the "iATKOS v7" iso on a torrent site and finally I was able to install OSX 10.5 successfully. In all honestly I wanted to install the new Snow Leopard 10.6 version but all my attempt on 10.6 ended up with a kernel panic in the installation boot process.

 

My hardware is as follows:

DELL XPS 420

- Intel Core 2 QUAD Processor 2.4GHz

- Intel X38 Bearlake Chipset

- 4GB Memory (2x2GB)

- 750GB SATA II 3.0GB/s Harddrive

- BLU-RAY Burner Drive (CD/DVD/BD Dual Layer Burner)

- nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB Graphic Card

- Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music

- WinTV HVR-1200 TV Tuner Analog/Digital

- Bluetooth

- Intel 82566 Network card

 

Step A. In the Bios, change the DRIVES>SATA OPERATIONS setting to RAID Auto/ATA.

Step 1. Download and burn the "iATKOS v7" iso to a recordable DVD.

Step 2. Boot the computer on the newly created installation disc.

Step 3. The Apple boot screen should now be showing, when done, click the button to continue (as it says)

Step 4. You should now see the Welcome screen, do not click continue just yet.

Step 5. Click Utilities in the menu bar at the top and select Disk Utility

Step 6. In Disk Utility delete all the partitions on your harddrive and set up one new partition using the MBR (also works with two partitions but to make life simple, use one for now) Make sure you format all the partitions with MAC OS Extended (Journaled). Exit Disk Utility when done.

Step 7. Click Continue on the Welcome screen.

Step 8. Read the instructions, they are provide a lot of good info. Click Agree when done.

Step 9. Select which drive/partition to install OSX to, click continue when done.

Step 10. On the Install Summary screen, click Customize.

Step 11. Here is where the hardware specifics come in to play. Each computer requires different settings, these settings that I'm about to tell you works for the hardware i listed above.

- BOOTLOADER: Chameleon v2

- DRIVERS>VGA>NVIDIA>EFI STING FOR NVIDIA: DVI/DVI (as i have two DVI ports on the back of my graphics card)

- DRIVERS>VGA>NVIDIA>ENABLER: NVENABLER

- SYSTEM>SATA/IDE: INTEL SATA/IDE

- SYSTEM>NETWORK>WIRED>INTEL: INTEL GIGABIT

Now click Done.

Step 12. Click Install on the Install Summary Screen, should take about 15mins and then click the Restart button unless the computer restarts itself.

Step 13. The computer should now successfully boot into OSX, the graphic card should be functioning properly, but for some reason I had to adjust it from 1920x1080 to 1920x1200 to show the correct resolution for my monitor. The Audio and Network will not be working at the stage...

Step 14. On another computer (preferably a Mac) Go to http://techresearchinfo.blogspot.com/ and find the blog post titled "Intel 82566MM -- Link is broken" and use the download link to download the file "Intel82566MM.kext.tar.gz" If the link is broken, look around on the techresearchinfo site and try to download the latest version of the file, it should hopefully work. Also google "Kext Helper" and download this excellent little tool. Put both files on a USB drive and transfer them to the desktop of your new MacDELL.

Step 15. Edit the Intel82566mm.kext file using the instructions by dingguijin here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversi...hp/t128931.html (look for a post dated Oct 3 2008, 08:12 PM). You need to change the version numbers between the <string> and </string>.

Step 16. Install the edited Intel82566mm.kext file using the Kext Helper app that you downloaded earlier. Reboot when done. You should now have network.

Step 17. No more instructions!

 

Ok, so if you successfully got this far, Congrats! Go ahead and run Software updates etc. I did not get the Sound Blaster X-FI card to work and after a lot of time on google i gave up, instead i'm using USB Audio which works perfectly. Bluetooth doesn't work either. The TV Tuner is a later project.

 

About This Mac:

Version 10.5.8

Processor 2.46 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

Memory 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

 

I hope this write-up helps someone out there! The performance is great, I'm really surprised how well it runs on Dell hardware.

[kNewton]

thanks, it has already helped me.

 

i have a XPS 420, 2.4 Quad, 3GB, Ati Radeon HD 3650 and i am downloading iAtkos 7 as i type.

 

kNewton

open apple closed apple

[nandor690]

Hi all,

 

I have used this site a lot but never asked a question so sorry if its not in line with what you usually get

 

I have a hp compaq presario cq60-215dx running vmware workstation 7.0.0 with iAtkos v7 10.5.7 installed.

specs are:

 

Processor: AMD Athlon Dual-Core QL-62 2.00GHz

Memory 2.00GB

System type: 32-bit Operating System

Graphics Processor/Vendor NVIDIA GeForce 8200m g

Video Memory 895MB

Chipset:AMD RS780M

 

Please let me know if you need more info.

 

I have iatkos v7 running ok but the only feature that works is wireless (bridged or lan) both work.

I got audio working with AppleAC97Audio.kext after editing the plist but it was so stuttery that you couldnt understand anything. I thought part of the problem was that in "about this mac" it didnt recognize my graphics card. it says.Display:

 

Type: Display

Bus: PCI

VRAM (Total): 128 MB

Device ID: 0x0405

Revision ID: 0x0000

Kernel Extension Info: No Kext Loaded

Displays:

Display:

Resolution: 1366 x 768

Depth: 32-Bit Color

Core Image: Software

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

Vendor ID: 0x15ad

 

And under PC Cards tab in "about this mac" it says no information found.

I may be wrong but I was thinking that the audio and graphics went hand in hand because the video would stutter just as much as the audio.

So, I have spent about the last week trying different ways to install my graphic drive i.d. (0x084510de) into different kexts to get it to recognize it. but i have not succeeded. Anything that I have done I never got a kernel panic, so i dont know if that means I wasent doing it right to begin with. Most of the guides that i have found and followed where for earlier mac os i.e. 10.4.2. If someone on here knows if my card will work with a Injector please let me know and if you know where a guide to do would be, that would be great to know too. I am pretty new to this but i am comfortable using terminal and i think i am using it right to edit plist and change permissions and such.

Also if i am posting this in the wrong place please let me know and i will move it to the right place.

Like I said before if you need more info to answer my question let me know and i will post as soon as possible because I would really like to getting this running in vmware right so I can eventually run mac osx exsulsivly on my compaq. I am using vmware as the trial and error part of my process.

 

Thanks you guys. so far this forum has been extremely helpful so i hope someone can help me here

[kNewton]

this tutorial is printed out and taped to the inside of my xps.

 

thanks

[geekdad]

this tutorial is printed out and taped to the inside of my xps.

 

thanks

 

I have almost the exact same specs as the original poster for my Dell XPS 420

But I can't get past the boot screen from the iAtkios DVD. I get the infamous circle with a line crossed through it.... I have followed the directions to a T! lol

oh well....maybe its time to buy an iMac........

[applebender]

Great first post. Nice to know that there is a different way for the install than mine

what is the behavior of the BR drive in OSX, do you have Toast ?

[tcmint415]

Great first post. Nice to know that there is a different way for the install than mine

what is the behavior of the BR drive in OSX, do you have Toast ?

 

AppleBender, care to link your instructions too?