iATKOS v5i (10.5.5) on a ThinkPad Z61t -- Still Need Advice

[ewhac]

Through the graces of iATKOS v5i, I got 10.5.5 installed on my ThinkPad Z61t last night. Unlike the previous v4i release, this release does not randomly kernel-panic on me, so now I get to notice all the other oddities.

 

Installation Options

 

This is from memory:

 

Bootloader: PC EFI V9

X86 Patches/Decrypters: AppleDecrypt

X86 Patches/SMBIOS Drivers/SMBIOS Enablers: SMBIOS-EFI Air

X86 Patches/Kernel: [none selected]

X86 Patches/ACPI: x86 ACPI

X86 Patches/Disabler.kext: selected

X86 Patches/Remove PowerManagement.kext: not selected

Drivers/VGA/Graphics Update: selected

Drivers/VGA/Intel/GMA650: [none selected]

Drivers/VGA/Intel/EFI string for Intel: selected

Drivers/System/SATA-IDE: Intel AHCI SATA

Drivers/System/Speedstep: [none selected]

Drivers/System/Laptop Battery: selected

Drivers/Network: [none selected]

 

Other details:

Hard drive is SATA, MBR-partitioned. Boot manager is GRUB2, installed to MBR.

 

Stuff That Seemed To Work

 

Intel 950 graphics came up more or less right away. However, if the display is allowed to sleep, there's a chance it won't come back, and I need to power-cycle the machine. Backlight controls are absent; BIOS backlight controls (FN-HOME and FN-END) don't work.

 

Keyboard and touchpad working. Command key is mapped to ALT by default.

 

Audio output (Intel HDA, via Analog Devices AD1981) came up right away. Little grey volume buttons also work, but they're entirely managed within the BIOS, so this is no surprise. No audio input reported.

 

USB appears to work. External USB storage volumes are recognized and are mounted. My USB card reader worked just fine, which is how I'm getting files in and out of the thing.

 

DVD-ROM drive works. Discs inserted are recognized and mounted. Eject also works.

 

AC/Battery power state is displayed in the menu bar; seems to be correct.

 

Stuff That Just Plain Doesn't Work

 

The Z61t uses a Broadcom BCM5752M (14e4:1601) Ethernet NIC which, according to all the Googling I've done, is chronically under-supported in OSX86. My Z61t also has Intel 3945 WiFi. So, no networking at all for me as of yet.

 

System sleep doesn't work. If the system is put to sleep, or is allowed to put itself to sleep, the machine appears to sleep properly and the little "moon" LED illuminates. However, when the FN key is pressed to wake it up, the BIOS boot screen appears, followed shortly by a loud beep and an error message saying the TPM chip has been tampered with. CTRL-ALT-DELETE brings the machine back, but it's a pain. I've disabled system sleep for the moment.

 

The boot screen appears infatuated with the resolution 1024x768. Actual LCD panel resolution is 1440*900, so the boot console is fuzzy. Once the desktop launches, full resolution is established, but it would be nice to have it earlier. I added a key to com.apple.Boot.plist asking for "Graphics Mode" to be set to "1440x900x32", but it had no effect. (Not a big surprise; Linux has also had lots of trouble changing console resolution on this machine.)

 

Stuff Behaving Oddly

 

More than once, the system has forgotten my preferences settings. I would, for example, set up Spaces to use CTRL-Arrow keys and CTRL-Number keys to navigate between spaces. But upon a subsequent reboot when Spaces didn't seem to work, I found these settings erased. I reset them, and it's working for the moment, but this is very puzzling. (Are disk caches not getting flushed?)

 

Stuff I Haven't Tried Yet

 

PCMCIA/PC card slot.

Built-in SD card reader slot.

External VGA display.

Firewire.

 

Any suggestions on how to improve things would be greatly welcomed. Thanks for reading.