Success with Inspiron 518

[Balineseterror]

Hi,

 

First things first.

 

I have been reading about hackintoshes for awhile and been wanted to flip my Dell Inspiron 518 into an OSX machine. My iMac is essentially dead, and I am unable to buy a better machine at this time. My wife uses a mac for all her teaching needs and I use to help make her graphics as well as many of the programs I enjoy using are on the mac.

 

However I did a very foolish thing. Monday morning at 2am found out my 3 month old niece had passed away. Looking to try and get my mind on something else after comforting my brother at the hospital I decided to partition my drive into two and use the second for the OSX and go ahead.

 

So I did that. Installation went to boot0 error. Somehow in trying to correct that piece of idicy I somehow made the entire Windows 7 side into unselected format and wiped all my data. Thankfully I only use my PC for gaming so didn't lose anything major except ALL my saved games of DA:O, DA2, ME1, and ME2. If you play those games you understand.

 

So after freaking out and then going to bury my niece later in the day I just tell myself to fudge it, rewipe the drive, make it one parition, and proceed to go ahead and get this monster moving.

 

I really hope to be able to document this and be able to add the Dell 518 to the selection of computers for people to use with the OSX.

 

So here are the specs, Hardware ids, and the selections I used for the installation. I'll get to what I need help with at the end.

 

 

Hardware IDs:

Intel Corp: 82801l (ICH9) Family PCI Express Port 1

Intel Corp: 82801l (ICH9) Family PCI Express Port 5

Realtek SemiCond: RTL8111/9168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Intel Corp: 82801l PCI Bridge

Boardcom Corp: BCM4318 (AirForce One 54g) 802.11g Wireless Lan Controller

Intel Corp: 82801R (ICH9R) LPC Interface Controller

Intel Corp: 82801l (ICH9) Family USB UHCI Controller x6

Intel Corp: 82801l (ICH9) Family USB2 UHCI Controller EHCI Controller x2

Intel Corp: 82801lR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 4 Port Sata IDE Controller

Intel Corp: 82801l (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller

Intel Corp: 82801l (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller

Intel Corp: 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port

ATI Technologies: RV620 Audio Device (Radeon HD 34xx Series)

ATI Technologies: RV620 LE (Radeon 3450)

Intel Corp: 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express Dram Controller

 

Specs:

 

Dell Inspiron 518 (Purchased 10/30/2008)

 

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 (1MB L2, 2.2 Ghz, 800 FSB)

3GB DDR2 SDRAM

ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB supporting HDMI

320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) w/Databurst Cache

16x DVD+/-RW Drive

Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Internal PCI 802.11g Wireless Network Card

 

How I installed OSX - on the 4th time using other configurations that kept causing me to have a kernal panic. This is the selections I used and it was a success.

 

Used iATKOS S3 v2.

 

Selections:

 

Bootloader: AsereBLN v1.1.9

Bootloader Options: None selected

Patches: I deselected /Extra Director/ Fakesmc, Disabler, RTC, and Evo Reboot were selected.

 

Drivers:

Main Hardware: The following were selected: SATA/IDE, Sound (both Voodoo HDA and Apple HDA were selected in default and left as that), Voodoo PS/2.

VGA: ATI Evo Enabler

Intel: EFI String

Network: Wireless Broadcom and Wired was Realtek RTL8168

 

What is working:

 

USB ports, Video (though the Radeon Card though the Radeon graphics are not usable, but having a basic vga output, Wireless.

 

Untested:

 

Ethernet

Firewire

 

What isn't working:

 

Graphics Card

Audio

 

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I have yet to update or see if the App Store will work. I am wishing to first back up the entire system first before I go ahead and do that which will be tonight.

 

I know from my search on the forums that the 3450 is unsupported so I will need to buy a new card. However I saw perhaps some help with the audio but I do not know how to be able to uninstall and install kext files.

 

So here is some help I am asking for:

 

#1 - New video card. I have a budget of around 100 to 200 dollars. What is the best one I could get without a major headache on getting the drivers working on my mac. Now before suggestion please read my limitation: My system only has a 300w power supply. Idealy I'd rather not have to replace the entire PSU so what is the best video card (that is better than the HD 3450) and could perhaps run World of Warcraft and other games at near max resolution

 

#2 - I am going to upgrade to 4gb of ram. What ram seems to do better for OSX or does it not matter? I am using two 1GB sticks and two 512GB right now.

 

#3 - Hoping the new video card will grant me a new audio ability. If not, what would be a good new audio board that is also fairly easy to install. I am thinking of buying a new speaker system for my computer.

 

#4 - I plan on also changing the CPU to something with more speed that will fit onto the current motherboard. Will changing the CPU affect my installation/running of OSX?

 

 

And side notes:

 

#1 - Anyone know of a good Wireless N card or usb dongle that works well with OSX? It could have Bluetooth as well but I already have an OSX compatible Bluetooth and I plan on using it with my computer - plan on getting a bluetooth apple keyboard and mouse.

 

 

Thank you very much in advance. Hopefully will get this to a good level of beastly performance and can finally replace my long dead iMac.