Dell Dimension 8400 OSX

[munt]

Hello again folks.

 

I'm having trouble getting Kalway 10.5.2 Intel/AMD Release working reliably on my Dell Dimension 8400.

 

Initially the Belkin F5D7001 v1101uk wouldn't recognise. After a considerable amount of fiddling (and learning how to operate the OS) I managed to combine a few different posts to get a result ... good job.

 

The next hurdle is my NVidia 7300 GT PCI-e card. I installed the default NVinject drivers with the Kalway install and it seemingly works fine. Unfortunately I cannot change resolution or use the quartzeffects screen-savers (not that I really care about the screensavers, I just want the video card and the computer to work) I installed VLC and some codec’s with the install DVD but when I load an .avi or any format other than .mov there is no video rendered on the screen. VLC just quits as soon as an avi is opened.

 

My system is terribly unstable and if downloading a torrent or having adium open while surfing the net (or at random perhaps?) I get a message to hold down my power button and reboot.

 

(Crosses fingers in an attempt to stop it happening now)

 

I tried adding the device id 0393 into the NVinject kexts mentioned in the post on this site to no effect. Messing with the video Ktexts has involved me having to reinstall osx about 6 times today so I’m going to leave it until I can get some advice.

 

My system is as follows:

Dell Dimension 8400

2 GB RAM DDR2 (2x256, 1024, 512)

2x SATA2 (Maxtor 6Y160M0 ATA & MAXTOR STM3160811AS ATA)

NVidia Geforce 7300 GT (DEV_ID 0393)

Belkin Wireless F5D7001 (v1101uk)

On Board NIC (Disabled, caused leopard installer to hang)

Dell CRT 17" Monitor

On Board Sound Card Enabled -working

SB Live 24 in PC -not working, not fussed

DVD Writer (_NEC DVD+-RW ND-3530A ATA Device)

Apple keyboard

Brother HL-5140 (Recognised but not working, something to do with the postscript driver despite it being the one I downloaded for MacOSX from the brother site.

 

In other ways Leopard is MORE compatible with my hardware than windows ... My Logitech Quickcam Communicate works again, same with my CanoScan Lide35 both of which were killed by vista.

 

Is my system just unsuitable for osx or is it possible to get it running reliably and get rid of Windows?

 

Thanks for reading,

Munt.

[munt]

NVFLASHed my 7300GT today and patched it with the 512mb patcher utility from the nvinject forum. Installed Leopard again with NVinject 512MB option.

 

My GFX now works and displays 512mb memory in darwin ... i can now change resolutions, view videos and opengl ... woohoo.

(flashed and unflashed bios attached)

 

My f5d7001 is the weakest link now .... working to get it fixed.

 

here is my xbench results.

 

Results	92.06	

 System Info		
	 Xbench Version		1.3
	 System Version		10.5.2 (9C7010)
	 Physical RAM		2048 MB
	 Model		MacPro3,1
	 Drive Type		Maxtor 6Y160M0
 CPU Test	73.06	
	 GCD Loop	90.53	4.77 Mops/sec
	 Floating Point Basic	69.53	1.65 Gflop/sec
	 vecLib FFT	49.32	1.63 Gflop/sec
	 Floating Point Library	110.57	19.25 Mops/sec
 Thread Test	90.23	
	 Computation	78.39	1.59 Mops/sec, 4 threads
	 Lock Contention	106.27	4.57 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
 Memory Test	89.39	
	 System	92.75	
		 Allocate	122.81	450.98 Kalloc/sec
		 Fill	104.18	5065.41 MB/sec
		 Copy	68.47	1414.28 MB/sec
	 Stream	86.26	
		 Copy	83.28	1720.06 MB/sec
		 Scale	83.34	1721.82 MB/sec
		 Add	89.79	1912.66 MB/sec
		 Triad	89.07	1905.38 MB/sec
 Quartz Graphics Test	133.20	
	 Line	111.96	7.45 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
	 Rectangle	133.56	39.88 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
	 Circle	113.81	9.28 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
	 Bezier	114.91	2.90 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
	 Text	275.60	17.24 Kchars/sec
 OpenGL Graphics Test	123.22	
	 Spinning Squares	123.22	156.31 frames/sec
 User Interface Test	109.55	
	 Elements	109.55	502.79 refresh/sec
 Disk Test	65.23	
	 Sequential	84.84	
		 Uncached Write	68.73	42.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		 Uncached Write	84.85	48.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		 Uncached Read	100.01	29.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		 Uncached Read	92.45	46.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]
	 Random	52.98	
		 Uncached Write	20.80	2.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		 Uncached Write	118.39	37.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		 Uncached Read	93.44	0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		 Uncached Read	120.88	22.43 MB/sec [256K blocks]

jetway_nvgf_7300gt_bios_devid_0393.zip

[BigPimpin]

The f5d7001 issue will depend on what chipset is has. If it has the RaLink RT2500 chip you're out of luck. If it has something else there's hope.

[munt]

http://ralink.rapla.net/ says only these models use the Ralink RT2500:

Belkin

F5D7000 v3

F5D7010 v2/3000au/3001

F5D7050 v2000

 

I'm trying to find out what chipset it actually is but I'm unsure at the moment.

 

I'm gonna fiddle with the kexts again, as whatever I have done has made my system very unstable.

 

oh yes and all that messing with the networkinterfaces.plist eventually stopped the card from working.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=104669 < my modified kexts for f5d7001.

 

So you reckon there's a chance to get this working properly Pimpin ?

[munt]

Wireless.Support.pkg.zip

^ I got this from here I think: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...=23684&st=0

 

And attached is the file from atomic lemur.

wireless_fix_file.zip

 

Some file were missing from wireless_fix_file.zip so I added the left over files from Wireless.Support.pkg.zip to the wireless_fix_file.zip ktext file.

 

then I added 2 device id's the ones ending in 18 and 20

 

<key>IONameMatch</key>

<array>

<string>pci14e4,4328</string>

<string>pci14e4,4329</string>

<string>pci14e4,432a</string>

<string>pci14e4,4311</string>

<string>pci14e4,4312</string>

<string>pci14e4,4313</string>

<string>pci14e4,4319</string>

<string>pci14e4,4318</string>

<string>pci14e4,431a</string>

<string>pci14e4,4320</string>

</array>

 

Not sure what I've done but it works, I just need it to stop crashing my pc (i think its the cause).

[BigPimpin]

If it's crashing your system then it's not really working. A lot of people on this board seem to think otherwise. Not saying you're one of them

 

I have a wireless PCI card (not Belkin) that uses the RT2500 chipset and after reading different proposed "solutions" here I have concluded there are none that work. The bottom line is the RaLink driver package is broken for 10.5.

 

In your IONameMatch array I see pci14e4 which is Broadcom, not RaLink, so there seems to be some confusion about what chipset you actually have on the card. I'd find out for sure before messing around with anything else.

 

FWIW I have a Dell Dimension 8400 too. The onboard ethernet chip is a Broadcom BCM5751 which has no drivers at the moment. That's why I tried to get my wireless PCI card working, but I've since given up on it and gone back to trying to get the onboard Broadcom chip working.

 

The 8400 is a good OSX machine IMO. Not perfect, but good. I haven't had any really bizarre problems (like hanging at boot time or random lockups). It did take me about a week to get the onboard sound working and another week to get my GeForce 7800GT working, but overall it's been solid as a rock.

[munt]

I'm glad you've had some success with the same machine, very encouraging

 

The wireles sworks flawlesly I have deduced .... other than torrents.

 

Torrents pretty much guarantee a system lock restart message.

 

I've instaled XP on another partition to tide me over till I get it sorted.

[munt]

My OS seems to be nearly fully functioning now and running very well. My F5D7001 Finally works (due to reinstalling Kalyway with all wifi components selected).

 

The only thing I can see now that is foobared is the "more info ..." from apple menu > "about this mac". When clicked it quits and says "The Application System Profiler quit unexpectedly." Clicking report doesn't seem to do anything.

 

I have tried a few different solutions from this site all involving SMbios kexts but none of them worked for me. I also had a look in my Dell BIOS for a cpuid to disable it but there is no option to modify there.

 

My Processor is

Pentium 4 3GHz

800MHz Bus Speed

1MB L2 Cache

Processor ID : 0f41

Hyperthreading enabled.

 

I tried altering the CPUS=1 to 0 in the Com.Apple.boot.plist but i dont really know what I'm doing there.

 

Here is the current .plist file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>cpus=1</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>1</string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

Any idea on what I should do ?

 

Thanks for all the help so far !!!