Dell Studio 1440 (14z)

[murdock743]

I recently purchased a Dell studio 1440 (14z) and decided I would like to put OS X on it. I used to own a powerbook er... macbook pro and I enjoyed the operating system (obviously quite a bit as I bought a multiple user license for 10.5). However, when it was time to buy a new computer I went the cheaper PC route and the Studio 1440 was about what I was looking for. Anyways, I do not know what device drivers I will need for an OS X install. The further compound the problem I don't know what hardware I have for my audio or my wifi. When I purchased the system I upgraded the wireless card to a wireless N card (Dell Wireless 1515 Wireless-N on my invoice). I also have an Nvidia 9400M graphics card in the system that I can't seem to find the OS X drivers for, which is ironic as some of apple's new computers use this card. My audio card is called Integrated High Definition Audio 2.2 on the invoice. One other notable thing would be that I erased all of Dell's software from my computer and installed Windows 7 RC and I plan on dual booting Windows 7 and OS X. I did try and install a version of OS X from a Kalway install disc. The OS ran beautifully at 1024x768, and it recognized my built in web cam! The only issue is that there was no sound, no way to increase the resolution to my native 720p and no wireless card detected.

 

I did some quick research on the web and noticed that there were a lot of people having this issue with other laptops. Any help would be appreciated. I do not need help installing the actual OS or dual booting the two as I have found many tutorials on the matter. This is unless I need to do some extra things during the installation. Any help on finding my hardware and the appropriate drivers would be much appreciated. I am assuming that this is where I place this query, however if I am incorrect please let me know and I will move this post to where it should be. Thanks for any help.

 

Cheers,

Christian

[homeskilly_antny]

In regards to your questions about drivers: you shouldn't need any drivers for the video card or the wifi card. Nvidia 9400M is the same graphics card used on the new macbooks so there should be native support for that card and the wifi cards from Dell are Broadcom based cards, which is the same as Airport wireless cards so that should be natively supported too. I threw a Dell 1505N card on my MSI Wind and it was detected as an airport card by OS X. Which version of Kalyway are you using? Try using a newer distro. Try iAtkos v7. That has OS X 10.5.7 install. Should have the proper drivers for the 9400M and the 1515N wifi card built in. Also try installing OSX86 tools and enable Quartz GL that will help with display problems. As far as sound, gonna need a bit more to go on. See if you can find out exactly what built in sound is on the motherboard (i.e. AD1988B or ALC888) Hope this helps. Wanted to upgrade my OS X Netbook, and I was looking at buying this same laptop and throwing OS X on it too. Let me know how it all works out for you.