Metalchic

ok so i found an old (like 2009) guide with a prebuilt iso for GMA950/3000/X3000 suposivly compadible Chameleon 2 RC3 bootloader on it and its loaded up so far i'm repartitioning the hard disk now.

i had some trouble figuring out how to 'repartition with a guid partition table' but i figured out you just choose erase as Mac os extended to do that. its installing now. i got this thing in the corner thats a wireless icon and when i click it it says airport on and shows my local wireless network ids so i'm assuming that my atheros card has a compadible chipset. its installing now.


i dont know what to say, using the boot loader disk it installed fine, took about 45 minutes and after finishing it detected my wireless and configured the internet connection, i was able to download and install chameleon 2.1 svn 2000 on the hard drive (its booting now we'll see.) i had no problems with the keyboard (alt seems to be Command) and 2 finger scrolling is even working on my Synaptic touchpad. i feel liks all this is workign to smoothly to be true. idk what to say.


DEEPBREATH... SIGH... ok so it was fine on the first boot but now its refusing to play nice with my Linksys WRT54G v8. i can connect to the router configuration at 192.168.1.1 but safari and software update bolth tell me theres no possible internet connection, it also seems to be refusing to connect via ethernet (not even an option) using my wireless ethernet bridge that i'm using for this computer, it feels alot less like a problem with mac os x itself and more a problem with my wtr54g v8 and the fact that its somthing like 9-10 years old. i'm not sure how to convince the computer to attempt to reestablish a connection. its not even trying right now.

the internet started working again after a reboot (4th times the charm i guess?) and now its downloading updates. the computer has been overall detected as a mac pro i dont think it realizes its a laptop.

one of the things that i wasent brought to understand reading through some guides (most of them are from 2009) would be that i would need a special or somthing like that bootloader for 10.6.8 so i'm starting over from scratch to see if i can figure it out (things were running pretty well till that point)

i dont feel like anyone is interested in this project but i'm gonna post my results anyway so here we go.

well its working, i feel like i've been hitting it with all the finece of a sledgehammer for the last 4 hours. the first major problem was the 10.6.8 boot issue, i solved that one by guide hopping till i figured out what files i need to pull out of the chameleon boot disk to put into the hard drive boot loader to get it to not hang, then i had issues with a kernel panic becasue of the audio. i installed somthing called voodoo for the audio (i had a problem with the internal mic getting feedback from the speakers so the high pich wail but then i discovered the voodoo control panel cus the mac sound control panel doesnt let you completely mute the mic) i'm not sure if the ethernet is working but it doesnt really matter becasue i got the wifi working with airport so yeah. i ended up deleting all the kexts at one time to get rid of issues with doubling up on drivers unintentialy which messed up the touchpad setup tho i'll take alook at it another time.

however my overall goal for this computer has been met, its very zippy compared to having windows 7 on it. preformance in minecraft for example is up from 3-5fps to 20-30 fps and i suspect that running multiplayer (so my main PC is handling the CPU and Hard drive I/O intensive part) it could be better. the various windows smoothness (especialy that effect of minimizing somthing to the dock) are quite smooth (as is HD youtube) especialy considering how wimpy the GMA950 is even when pushed up to 400mhz (i belive the one in this one was originaly run 233mhz stock) tho i just tried full screen 720p youtube. its not liking it very much on either safari or firefox. i hope that somone can find this thread usefull someday.

i would also like to know if i should post about compadiblity somwhere for this (since the only modification i made for this computer was the swap out of the wireless card. and i was able to install from an unmodified retail install dvd ok well mabye not 100% unmodified, does copying it over to a usb stick count as modification? i couldent get the boot disk to refresh or whatever when i swapped the disks)

(i'm just gonna take all the garbage i wrote here and put it in a trash compactor)

well i've read that atheros chipsets are better to use with Mac OS X or was that just very specific chipsets? i've managed to do some strange thigns with non windowd OS (linux in this case) and a GeForce 4 Ti so i figured i could squeeze a bit more out of it in this case. plus i dont really have anything better to do with the laptop (if i could get more stable framerates in wow or minecraft running mp i would use it a bit more)

do you reccomend a specific method or should i just look around and try some in the order i find them?

according to some research i should be able to run any 533/667 FSB T7xxx cpu. so i'll take a look around for possible upgrades. this one has the mpga478 mobile socket. actualy very easy to get to so. i do wonder however, the T2060 is a 32bit cpu, the T7600 is a 64bit cpu, i'm not sure how that works on a laptop (it seems very cut and dry on desktops but OEM computers and laptops seem to be picky about ram) that it should properly support 4GB+ of ram? (i probably wouldent put more than 4GB in it anyway but with a 64bit cpu it should properly do 4gb right?)

i checked out this thread about a system info tool to identify in use kexts and can be used on windows to check hardware compadibility, it doesnt like the Memory Stick part of my universal card reader (the SD part is fine the whole thing seems to be on the PCI bus not USB) and it doesnt like my SAA7134 TV capture card drivers but i wont have that installed. i'm gonna go ahead and try some tutorials to see if it works.

well the early macbooks used i945 chipsets thats what gave me the idea it could work, there just wasent alot of info to attempt it. there seems to be issues with the Direct X support on the GMA950 for example the orange fog on the world of warcraft cataclysm title screen apears solid in Direct X mode but is fine in OpenGL mode. the desktop is really more of an experement (to see if i can kinda thing) the laptop is the one i really wanna get working, the desktop does in fact have a GMA3000 not the GMA X3000. i actualy ususaly run it with a Radeon HD3450 but i couldent find any HD 3000 series listed anywhere for support on macs so yeah.

if i'm getting upgrades for the laptop they would need to be cheap (~100USD) or else its not really worth it and i could just start saving for a new one. the Lenovo 3000 n100 is 6 years old now so yeah. anyway the wireless i have in it right now is an Atheros card from a Toshiba M115-S1061 (becasue Windows 7 has drivers built in for it) but the card that came with it is a Broadcom BMC94311MCG that i've had trouble with Windows drivers with in the past so i swaped for the Atheros (unfortunatly the atheros doesnt support the wireless activity led on the front.)

also the i945 is not 100% even for 65nm Core 2 Duos it might only do Core Duos. i remember reading up on the T2060 and the i945 and reading about case by case support for 64bit Core 2 Duo cpus somtimes it works somtimes it doesnt. the T2060 is very similar to the T2300 mostly that the T2060 is only 1MB L2 and 533MHz FSB. actualy the T2060 is the T2050 just with only 1MB L2 instaid of 2MB. not sure 100% how that works but yeah anyway.