[GUIDE] - Perfect Snow Leopard on dv6700 (dv6821el)

[ytrox]

I'm not talking about how to install basic software to get the desktop working (there are many topics that do this job). Just for inspiration, I used hazard DVD 10.6.2 to install the OS, then I have Installed the vanilla SL and upgraded it to 10.6.8 from software update.

 

 

hp dv6821el is a very compatible machine so I suggest to take advantage of this thing and install Snow Leopard on it. I've also installed ML but, believe me, SL is much much fast and smooth...

 

 

Everything is working (except for SD.. mine is broken so you are free to test..)

webcam has to be activated using camera control App (after you open Skype open also this application)

Maybe you will prefer VoodooPs2 for touchpad (free to test it to).. Sometime ApplePS2Controller doesn't works well, specially after unespected shutdown (because of battery low ).

DSDT includes a lots of patches (battery, backlight, audio, shutdown, smbus, lid....).

Only IOPCIFamily from 10.6.2(hazard) permit to get the sleep (it makes the installation a bit less vanilla and give me some random kernel panic I guess..)

thanks to ninjarap for the applehda (guida) he save to me a lot of job

I changed the model to MacMini2,1 so I got vanilla powermanagement combined to dsdt patch (processor T5550 is used only by MacMini2,1)

Added OpenHaltRestart.kext to get reboot (if somebody knows a better fix please, share it!)

legacy dummy for IOATAFamily maybe is useless (I don't have notebook to test)

hp_snow_dv6821el_dv6700.zip

 

 

Enjoy!

 

 

[ramoncio]

This is great!

Finally I got my DV6730 shutting down properly on Mavericks!

I tried many clover/chameleon combinations, but your DSDT.aml did it!!!   

Could you post the DSDT.dsl and the patches you applied?

 

Now everything is working perfect (changed wifi for an AR9285, which worked ootb) but:

1- Reboot: it stays in the same nearly-shutdown-with-fans-and-lights-on mode as it also was when I tried to shut down before the DSDT fix. I tried OpenHaltRestart.kext and reboot fix in chameleon with no success. I'm afraid that IOPCIFamily will not work in mavericks, but I might give it a try tomorrow.

 

2- Suspend: same mode. If I come back from suspend immediately, then it's ok. If I wait a bit longer, same nearly-shutdown mode, it never comes back.

 

Now I see a light at the end of the road finally!

[ytrox]

reboot fix doesn't works, only using openhaltrestart i got reboot. 

if you want your sleep working maybe you have to get all your peripheral working properly..

[ramoncio]

Yes, OpenHaltRestart.kext did it, thanks!

Now I can halt and reboot.

 

Everything but sleep seems to work perfect. 

I have installed hwmonitor and MacBook Pro 3,1 SMBios and speedstep works quite well.

 

I'll see if I can patch my extracted DSDT, so I learn which patches are needed, and I'll also try to use my own SSDT.

[ytrox]

Maybe I can check differences between your and mine dsdt but now I'm a little bit busy for work.

[ramoncio]

http://www.solidpc.net/backup_extensions.tgz

 

This is a dump of /boot /Extra and /System/Library/Extensions running very well on my DV6830es on Mavericks 10.9.1.

I deleted some extensions that we will not need on this laptop, like ATI and Radeon kexts.

 

I noticed the LCD was not as bright as in windows, and I tried some fixes, but none of them seemed to work.

Today, finally it seems to be brighter, I don't know how this got fixed.

Everything but sleep works fine.

 

It has your DSDT, I'll try mine this weekend to see if I can get sleep working.

[ytrox]

i've added backlight brightness control using f11/f12 or whatever. I suggest to you to use snow leopard and not maverick.

sleep: if you try to go to sleep all your periphericals turn off? your pc seems to be completely shut down?

[ramoncio]

Hi ytrox!

I tried changing to clover with 10.9.1, I also extracted my SSDT tables from Windows with an old aida version and I managed to get suspend to work ok.

But screen brightness was very low and I couldn't fix it. Also, it took ages (3-4min) to boot, so I went back to chameleon. 

I noticed we don't need npci=0x2000 flag during the boot testing process, now I don't use it anymore.

 

Most things were working with chameleon, but no come back from sleep, boot times were quite high (more than 2 minutes) and I needed to press enter on the white screen after I selected the chameleon "Mavericks" menu entry, in order for the boot process to continue. Maybe a kernel message or a warning, but quite annoying.

Then I upgraded to latest 10.9.2. Great improvement!

Boot time is way faster, about a minute, and now I don't need that extra Enter press.

Screen brightness is ok (though I can't control it with the keyboard shortcuts), the only things not working are suspend, hdmi output and there is a problem with CPU power management.

I have installed hwmonitor and fakesmc cpu/gpu/hd sensors and I notice that sometimes the CPU gets stuck at 796mhz, and doesn't scale up again until next reboot. I think this worked ok with clover, with only 2 p-states 2,19ghz and 1,19ghz, I might try clover again later on.

So I have installed NullCPUPowerManagement.kext, and everything runs as butter.

 

One more note, with the default chameleon /boot my cpu got detected as 2ghz, so I changed it for a manually compiled one I found somewhere which shows the correct 2,2ghz for my T7500 CPU.

 

Here is a link to a tgz with /boot* /Extra /System/Library/Extensions and /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches 

It also has the /EFI directory I used for clover, suspend should work with that config.

 

http://solidpc.net/backup_extensions_mavericks-1.9.2.tgz

 

We are closer!!

[ramoncio]

How did you get working backlight brightness control using f11/f12? Installing an application?

 

On the other hand, bad news, I sold (actually swapped it for a 17" Toshiba AMD RM74 laptop) my DV6830 to a friend, so I think won't be trying clover on it anytime soon.

She was in a hurry to get a cheap mac and she is ok with the lack of sleep and hdmi.

 

VGA + speakers minijack work great. I installed XBMC 13, and could even play MicroHD 1080p movies with perfect quality on my 50" tv from my Linux home server samba shares using wifi. Geforce 8400M performs really great in dual screen mode, I am impressed.

 

I'll try to see if I can get power management working fine remotely, I left NullCPUPowerManagement.kext installed, and I'd prefer some proper CPU energy saving going on.

 

With clover I got full sleep working perfect, but screen brightness was terrible.

With my current chameleon config, screen turns off, but fans and leds stay on. And I can resume from that "sleep" if I press the power button before the speaker (or mute?) volume led gets red. When that led goes red system freezes and you need to press the power for 10-15 seconds to turn the laptop off.

 

Finally why do you suggest Snow Leopard? That is very old.

Latest 10.9.2  Mavericks seems to work really well on this laptop, nearly in a Vanilla system, I suggest you to try it in a different hard drive.

[ytrox]

there are some things to do on your laptop. 

power management (i dont understand if you get it working or not)

backlight

sleep

I suggest to use chameleon.. i don't know clover but i guess is usefull on newest hardware than ours.

i suggest snow leopard because is optimized for ours hardware. believe me use snow! you can do whatever you want as mavericks!

ACPI Backlight Driver - Other Peripheral Devices - InsanelyMac Forum here there is all info to get backlight control

if your peripheral are all working (included pm) you will get sleep (and if you cannot get pm working properly use sleep enabler.kext)

on my laptop audio is not working after sleep (it's locked on mute) I'm working on it http://forum.osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/1970-fix-for-no-audio-issue-after-sleep-in-realtek-codecs/