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OSX on a Dell 6400 - Status


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Let me start by saying that I am no stranger to computers and installing/tweaking operating systems. I am also not a stranger to OSX or Linux or complications of hardware conflicts.

 

So I've been sitting on the idea of getting the Dell E1505/6400 I purchased to run OSX for some time now. Watching the reports.. Waiting for everything to get resolved.. Thinking about what I would do if I had to scratch the whole project and reformat - locating the drivers from Dell to reinstall Winblows.

 

I decided. It's been long enough and I've seen enough reports that the hardware is smoothly compatible..

 

Setup -

 

Dell E1505/6400

Dual Core 1.8 (T2050)

1gb 533mhz

80gb HD - partitions: 40mb Dell, 40gb NTFS, 10gb EXT3, 22.5gb FAT32, 1gb LinuxSwap

Dell/Broadcom 1390 Wireless

Integrated Audio and Video (forgetting the specs right now, nothing special)

 

I found a reportedly good copy of JaS 10.4.9 from Pirate Bay and burned it to disc. Located all the correct software and installed it. Two different methods for a backup plan. First we'll try the VmWare install and then the boot install.

 

Used Acronis Disk Manager to add FAT 32 partition to dual booting Linux system - Prepare to triple boot.

 

Alcohol 120% installed and mounted image!

VmWare Player reported it was not a server.

-Downloaded server 1.0 software and setup according to specs found at :VmWare Install Guide

-Could not boot. Wondering if the image is bad.

 

Plan B -

 

Reboot with disc.

Starting OSX! Image good. VmWare build not working for whatever reason. Oh well. Virtualization isn't preferred anyways.

Disk Utility - Erase FAT32 as MSDOS (FAT32) > Erase FAT32 to HFS+ > Erase HFS+ to HFS+ again.

Partition not recognized as HFS+, but as Windows NT FAT32!

Reboot and repeat.

Same result!

Cannot continue.

 

Reboot into Windows and attempt to reformat the partition. Partition set as (unrecognized format). Reformat again and repeat. Same result. No Install possible.

 

Scratching my head.. Download GParted. Boot and examine drive again. Discover that having having 4 primary partitions is an issue. GParted doesn't function the way I like it to to move partitions around. Restart and use Acronis to:

 

Delete Dell partition and move NTFS info to the front of the drive.

Remove Linux and relocate partition to directly after NTFS.

Follow with a FAT32 partition. < All three set to primary.

Follow with a primary extended Swap partition.

 

I then reinstall Linux and verify that everything is booting correctly. Success!

 

VmWare still not happy - Plan B again.

 

Boot disc to Disk utility - Format 3 times and SUCCESS! Partition recognized and install continued forward.

Selected the proper hardware/software for my system (Intel, GMA950, English).

And..... OSX starts! YAY!

 

First problem to tackle. I hear wireless doesn't work at first. Plug in the LAN to check out the posts and download whatever is necessary.. LAN doesn't work. Strange. Oh well.. Get wireless working.

 

Wireless doesn't work! Seems there isn't yet a workaround for the 1390?? I've seen reports of it working. I've seen reports that it doesn't. Anyone have an idea of what is true? I followed the instructions to alter the .kext and can get an "airport" card to be seen, but not to function.

- Interestingly enough, when the kext is altered the LAN option goes away. One or the other?

 

Running out of time. Gotta get some sleep before the day is up. Laptop must be able to connect to the network - reboot for Windows.

 

Reboots into OSX. Not good.

Use Gparted to mark NTFS as boot partition.

 

Failure. Hal.DLL missing or corrupt! WTF?

 

Find out that this is due to something in the MBR and use Windows install disc to "repair" MBR using fixboot utility.

 

Still nothing. Hmm...

 

Researching......... Seems OSX overwrote the MBR for Grub and I need to reinstall Grub on the MBR.

Found the instructions for that. Booted into Linux using Boot disc and pointed Grub to the bootfile.

 

Boot into Windows - Hal.DLL? WTF!?

Boot into Linux - Kernel not found!? Rar!

 

Exploring Grub options some more.

 

For some reason I need to use (hda0,0) as my Windows partition and makeactive each time I reboot.

rootnoverify (hda0,0)

makeactive

chainloader +1

>>> another boot menu?

- 1. <BLANK>

- 2. Windows XP MCE

 

I tried 2 and it was no good. Same Hal error. 1 boots me right into XP.

 

So this is where I stand now. I haven't had the opportunity to test out the booting options any further than this, and I am expecting an issue with the sound aspect of OSX.

 

Am I the first person to have every stage of this install just fail on every level? Is it some random stroke of fate forcing me to dig deeper into the world of multi-os installation procedures? Does anyone know off hand how to edit that Windows Boot menu that fixboot clearly created?

 

And most importantly.... Does anyone see where in the world this install fell short besides using a copy of JaS instead of a developer disc?

 

Thanks!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Update - Installation complete!

 

So here's the rundown of what I needed to do to install OSX 10.4.8 sucessfully on my Dell 6400/E1505

 

Hardware -

 

Dell 6400/E1505 15.4"

Core 2 Duo - T2050 1.6 SSE3

Sigmatel 9200 HDA

Broadcom 1390 Wireless

Broadcom 440bx LAN

Intel 945 (GMA950) - Native 1280x800

80gb SATA + 120gb USB

Triple boot WinXP-MCE, Fedora 6 and OSX

 

Software:

Acronis Disk Suite

Alcohol 120%

 

Image :

Mac OS X 10.4.8 [JaS AMD-Intel-SSE2-SSE3 with PPF1 & PPF2].iso

Burned to DVD for native install

 

Keep in mind that I did not wipe my drive prior to partitioning or installation of Linux or OSX.

 

First thing's first - Partition the disk properly. Most of these Dell's shipped with Windows XP-MCE installed with 2 other partitions on the drive. There is a small 50mb partition in the front of the disk, the main NTFS partition, then another partition with the restore info. I don't care about the restore point - Deleted the 50mb partition and moved NTFS to the front. Without that partition what is the point of the other? Delete that other partition. (Note: I think that removing these factory partitions before installing Linux/OSX would have saved alot of headaches.)

Final partitions:

NTFS - 35gb~ (this partition uses up whatever the other 3 do not)

Ext3 - 10gb

FAT32 - 25gb

SWAP - 1gb

 

Acronis does a fast job of partitioning the drive. I used to use PartitionMagic. Not any longer.

 

Be aware that I think removing that first partition from the drive does something to the NTLoader. You will need to repair the Windows boot partition. I will point out when I noticed this error in the following steps.

 

Once the drive was partitioned I installed Fedora 6 to the ext3 partition. Please note that Fedora 6 does not support the network card and sound out of the box. It would be suggested to install a minimal FC5 then install FC6 with all the options you desire in order to expedite the process. Wireless still requires ndiswrapper process.

 

GRUB installed as bootloader.

 

Install OSX from DVD.

 

Disk utility >Erase >FAT32 partition format as MS-DOS (can we skip this step?) >Format as HFS+ (journaled) 2x (it appeared to have success after first pass) >Exit

Continue install - Select customizations you desire. I chose:

Intel SSE3, GMA900+950, English Only, Sigmatel Audio, No Printers

Skip Disc Verification (unless you are not sure of the quality of your media)

 

Welcome to Tiger video! No sound. :thumbsdown_anim:

Registered (do you really think Apple is going to send someone to your house? I don't. I'm Beta Testing and own a copy of Tiger)

Wireless Works. Lan works. Audio does not work. Video works. Reboot.

(skipped Grub?)

Wireless does not work. Lan does not work. Audio still does not work. Video is fine.

Replaces IONetworking.kext with older version from Devilhood's post (not positive this is necessary). Reboot.

No networking. Used Sportman's guide for Broadcom 1390 (4311 is the number BTW). Used EN2. Reboot.

Found Airport. Found LAN! Reboot for AppleHDA.

Press F8 at Darwinx86 and use -legacy.

Used Taruga's guide for this. I used an audio codec I found in that post then pulled my own from my linux boot. There is a difference in the files, but not a functional difference that I have noticed. Audio out works, Mic IN does not. Mute on jack does not work. I don't have super loud external speakers, but frequency response seems good.

 

Reboot for Windows. F8 at Darwinx86. NTLDR (hal.dll) cannot be found (this is the part I mentioned before).

Boot to WinXP install disk to repair the MBR using fixmbr. Reboot.

Boot brings me to a menu to choose which Windows to boot to - Blank or XP-MCE. MCE gives me Hal.dll error, blank boots to Windows.

Edit boot.ini to remove menu. Reboot.

Windows boots fine.

Reinstall GRUB from LiveCD (GPartEd).

Generic b&w GRUB menu

Linux cannot find kernel, Windows boots, OSX not found.

Boot to linux using Fedora disc to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Partitions are misdirected - corrected:

windows root(0,0)

linux root(0,1)

Add OSX to menu (0,2), also specify makeactive after rootnoverify on windows and OSX. This would also be a great time to set your default boot option.

Reboot.

Fedora color GRUB loader:

Linux kernel boots.

Windows boots.

OSX boots.

Linux boots.

 

Functional:

1390 Wireless, Sigmatel 9200, BCM440X LAN, Video, USB.

 

Partial Function:

Single Processor

Front volume controls - No mute or Track control.

Touchpad - No Sidebar Scroll/Multiple Finger Scroll

NTFS Volume management

Keyboard - Ctrl, Windows, Alt - Not always consistent (cmd-shft-3 screenshot was ctrl-shift-3, cut and paste is alt-c/alt-v)

 

No Function:

Wake from Sleep

SDCard Reader

 

That just about wraps it up. A satisfactory install of OSX on a machine that was already running a dual boot setup. Learned alot about MBR editing in this process due (mostly) to the fact that I removed the first primary partition after installing linux and before installing OSX. I feel that this may also have been what caused the hal.dll error I received, not the installing of OSX.

 

See attached screenshot.

 

If anyone needs help with post installation partition management please post it here! I am not a developer and do not have all the answers, but I have avoided a wipe and install. If anyone has any problems with their Dell 6400, please post them here.

 

Mad thanks go out to JaS - without you this project would have been more hassle than compiling a slackware 1 kernel.

Devilhood - Thanks for the 9400 walkthrough!

Taruga - Great job on the AppleHDA fix!

 

Thank you for your continued efforts to push the impossible into reality!

 

Mystical Dream

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