Driver compatibility for Dell Studio 14z (Successful OSX install!)

[tamorgen]

Quick question, though...your guide states Chameleon RC2v3, but the link takes us to RC4v3. Which did you use?

I used RC4 and it really messed up my installation. I am leery of using RC4.

 

lancorp,

I've used the latest RC4 build of Chameleon and had zero problems. If you want a good installer, head over to Tony Mac's Blog and find the latest RC4 installer. I would not yet recommend RC5, as you have to go back to using plists to get the memory to show up correctly, but RC4 119 is stable for me.

 

[*]Delete AppleHDA.kext from SLE

[*]Right click IOnetworking.kext in SLE and click "show package contents" and then go to Contents\Plugins and delete AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext

 

I didn't have to do these steps for mine to work. All I had to do was add the kexts to my E/E folder to get things working, along with the DSDT. It may have to do with what wireless card you have, as I have the 1515 N card, which works fine.

 

The only thing that doesn't work for me is screen dimming with F4 & F5 and screen dimming on battery. I'd really like to get those working, but I just don't know enough about DSDT editing to start this.

[Studio14ZGuy]

Nightrider,

I've been waiting for a post just like this. So, thanks a million!

I'm still considering doing a dual-boot with Windows 7. Is there any way of using your excellent guide to do a dual boot? Or would it require a whole different procedure?

Thanks again!

[nightrider]

Nightrider,

I've been waiting for a post just like this. So, thanks a million!

I'm still considering doing a dual-boot with Windows 7. Is there any way of using your excellent guide to do a dual boot? Or would it require a whole different procedure?

Thanks again!

 

My ideal setup would be just like you said, dual booting OS X and Windows 7 but I was originally having trouble with installing OS X so I decided it wasn't worth the time installing Win 7 over and over the way I was OS X to troubleshoot my set up. I might try it again eventually now that I have OS X running. Theoretically you should be able to install os x whist leaving some unpartitioned space on your hard drive and then install windows 7 on the unpartitioned space and be able to add OS X to your windows 7 bootloader with EasyBCD. All of this would require you to use a MBR partition table rather than a GUID as I used here unless you used chameleon as your primary bootloader.

 

To sum it up, I have not ventured into that territory yet lol I may try it soon though, will def post in this thread if I do. Others in this thread may be dual booting, if anyone has any light to shed please do

 

I didn't have to do these steps for mine to work. All I had to do was add the kexts to my E/E folder to get things working, along with the DSDT. It may have to do with what wireless card you have, as I have the 1515 N card, which works fine.

 

I was getting conflicts that were shown when I booted in verbose with AppleHDA.kext, deleting it just makes your boot-up cleaner. As for the wifi, I have the 1350 card (B/G only), I had to do the procedure I mentioned to make it work.

[lancorp]

lancorp,

I've used the latest RC4 build of Chameleon and had zero problems. If you want a good installer, head over to Tony Mac's Blog and find the latest RC4 installer. I would not yet recommend RC5, as you have to go back to using plists to get the memory to show up correctly, but RC4 119 is stable for me.

 

 

Did you use Tony's [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] or just Chameleon RC4?

 

See, my problems started when attempting to upgrade to RC4. I downloaded and installed, and RC4 wound up installing a bunch of new kexts (presumably overwriting important ones that were specific to the 14z), and did something that disabled all my network adapters in 64 bit mode. If I boot in 32 bit mode, things are fine, but I was in 64 bit mode and Ethernet and Wifi both worked. A bunch of time later, I undid some of RC4, but ultimately, have to run in 32 bit kernel mode (which seems fine since 64 bit apps and other stuff still works).

[Studio14ZGuy]

My ideal setup would be just like you said, dual booting OS X and Windows 7 but I was originally having trouble with installing OS X so I decided it wasn't worth the time installing Win 7 over and over the way I was OS X to troubleshoot my set up. I might try it again eventually now that I have OS X running. Theoretically you should be able to install os x whist leaving some unpartitioned space on your hard drive and then install windows 7 on the unpartitioned space and be able to add OS X to your windows 7 bootloader with EasyBCD. All of this would require you to use a MBR partition table rather than a GUID as I used here unless you used chameleon as your primary bootloader.

 

To sum it up, I have not ventured into that territory yet lol I may try it soon though, will def post in this thread if I do. Others in this thread may be dual booting, if anyone has any light to shed please do

 

 

 

I was getting conflicts that were shown when I booted in verbose with AppleHDA.kext, deleting it just makes your boot-up cleaner. As for the wifi, I have the 1350 card (B/G only), I had to do the procedure I mentioned to make it work.

 

Thanks Nightrider, you've confirmed what I've read others have been saying about dual-booting OS X and Win 7. I might just follow up by installing the OS X (as you did), and leaving a partition for a future install of Win 7.

Anyway, thanks again for your help!

[tamorgen]

Nightrider,

I've been waiting for a post just like this. So, thanks a million!

I'm still considering doing a dual-boot with Windows 7. Is there any way of using your excellent guide to do a dual boot? Or would it require a whole different procedure?

Thanks again!

 

Studio14ZGuy,

 

Try using this walkthrough. It's the only one I found that works correctly and allows me to use Chameleon as my sole bootloader. You can use any Boot-132 method to do the actual Mac OS X install, but that walkthrough will give you a general walkthrough of the order you need to complete the installation.

 

 

 

 

 

Did you use Tony's [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] or just Chameleon RC4?

 

 

I only tried Chameleon RC4 bootloader. Not sure about [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], although I may try it soon.

 

I had the unfortunate experience today of trying to install Chameleon RC5. It trashed my install. I got back into OSX with Empire EFI Boot CD, reinstalled RC4, but no matter what I did, I could not get Snow Leopard to come up in any method but safe from the boot CD. I may be reinstalling again shortly.

[glitchbit]

Well I just got my SSD Expresscard in the mail and here is the low down on using it with the 14z.

 

$144 from http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...&CatId=5302

Said to have a 115mb read speed & 65mb write speed.

 

Here is what I did.

 

1. plugged in Expresscard via usb port and formatted it to hsf+ & named it "Macintosh SSD"

2. booted SnowOSX v3.6, selected Macintosh SSD and went to customize and unchecked NullCPUPM

3. after install finishes it reboots, I removed the SnowOSX disc, my normal HDD boots (because dell will not EVER directly boot to expresscards via BIOS on this model), and so I type in this flag manually "rd=disk0s1" no quotes

4. System boots up and it uses my Extra folder from my normal hard drive install

 

**If you have esata drives plugged in off and on during boot then do not use the "rd=disk0s1" instead, use "boot-uuid=XXXX..." and you can find out your UUID by going to Disk Utilities -> Right-click drive and click Information and the UUID will be there. You may want to put this in your boot.plist inside the Extra folder.. the UUID is very long.**

 

Personally, if I need to boot into the normal HDD I like knowing that I do not have to change the plist so for now I use the rd=disk0s1 flag.. and I just make sure to unplug my eSata drives during boot. Maybe someone can find a way to add an entry into the darwin/chameleon bootloader manually?

 

As a side note I have emailed 3 Dell BIOS engineers concerning the lack of Expresscard boot option in the BIOS. Otherwise you will need to run a bootloader on your main HDD or a usb stick to load any expresscard ssd.

 

I would recommend that you back up your data to the normal hard drive anyways some people have left reviews saying this or that SSD died and so I will be cautious. But for a boot drive, I get the best of both worlds, the high storage capacity of normal drives (& reliability) and the freaking fast performance of an SSD (it's not the fastest SSD, but firefox now loads in 2 bounces with all my extensions loaded!). I am about to install my video editing and image editing apps, I'm excited =).

 

Here are some numbers from xbench

 

Normal 320gb HDD from dell with unoptimized DSDT.aml

Disk Test Overall score 23.57 (not in MB)

 

Sequential

Uncached Write 37.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 29.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 3.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 22.65 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random

Uncached Write 0.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 12.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 0.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 9.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

Normal 320gb HDD from dell with my optimized DSDT.aml

Disk Test overall 59.93 (not in MB)

 

Sequential

Uncached Write 52.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 51.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 20.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 54.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random

Uncached Write 1.93 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 33.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 0.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 20.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

Expresscard 48GB SSD

Disk Test Overall 83.76

Sequential 119.42

Uncached Write 77.13 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 66.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 22.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 126.54 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 64.50

Uncached Write 2.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 42.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 9.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 110.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

For a detailed break down go here http://db.xbench.com/search.xhtml?text=14z

[glitchbit]

lancorp, since you have a real SSD SATA drive why don't you post your xbench results?

 

Here is a video of a macbook running on this 48gb SSD and the guy does an application launch test that really shows you just how fast this thing is... also I find it amusing that my dell gets better xbench scores than his real mac on both standard HDD and even the SSD. His score was 76 for the SSD and mine is very consistently 83.

 

[tamorgen]

Well I just got my SSD Expresscard in the mail and here is the low down on using it with the 14z.

 

$144 from http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...&CatId=5302

Said to have a 115mb read speed & 65mb write speed.

 

Here is what I did.

 

1. plugged in Expresscard via usb port and formatted it to hsf+ & named it "Macintosh SSD"

2. booted SnowOSX v3.6, selected Macintosh SSD and went to customize and unchecked NullCPUPM

3. after install finishes it reboots, I removed the SnowOSX disc, my normal HDD boots (because dell will not EVER directly boot to expresscards via BIOS on this model), and so I type in this flag manually "rd=disk0s1" no quotes

4. System boots up and it uses my Extra folder from my normal hard drive install

 

**If you have esata drives plugged in off and on during boot then do not use the "rd=disk0s1" instead, use "boot-uuid=XXXX..." and you can find out your UUID by going to Disk Utilities -> Right-click drive and click Information and the UUID will be there. You may want to put this in your boot.plist inside the Extra folder.. the UUID is very long.**

 

Personally, if I need to boot into the normal HDD I like knowing that I do not have to change the plist so for now I use the rd=disk0s1 flag.. and I just make sure to unplug my eSata drives during boot. Maybe someone can find a way to add an entry into the darwin/chameleon bootloader manually?

 

As a side note I have emailed 3 Dell BIOS engineers concerning the lack of Expresscard boot option in the BIOS. Otherwise you will need to run a bootloader on your main HDD or a usb stick to load any expresscard ssd.

 

I would recommend that you back up your data to the normal hard drive anyways some people have left reviews saying this or that SSD died and so I will be cautious. But for a boot drive, I get the best of both worlds, the high storage capacity of normal drives (& reliability) and the freaking fast performance of an SSD (it's not the fastest SSD, but firefox now loads in 2 bounces with all my extensions loaded!). I am about to install my video editing and image editing apps, I'm excited =).

 

Here are some numbers from xbench

 

Normal 320gb HDD from dell with unoptimized DSDT.aml

Disk Test Overall score 23.57 (not in MB)

 

Sequential

Uncached Write 37.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 29.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 3.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 22.65 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random

Uncached Write 0.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 12.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 0.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 9.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

Normal 320gb HDD from dell with my optimized DSDT.aml

Disk Test overall 59.93 (not in MB)

 

Sequential

Uncached Write 52.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 51.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 20.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 54.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random

Uncached Write 1.93 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 33.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 0.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 20.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

Expresscard 48GB SSD

Disk Test Overall 83.76

Sequential 119.42

Uncached Write 77.13 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 66.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 22.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 126.54 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 64.50

Uncached Write 2.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 42.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 9.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 110.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

For a detailed break down go here http://db.xbench.com/search.xhtml?text=14z

 

I'd love to get a real SATA SSD drive, but the prices seriously need to come done. If I want anywhere near the storage I have now, even half what I have now, it's $600 minimum. I give it another year and maybe 250 GB will be affordable. All memory has just gone through the roof lately. The bubble has to burst at some point.

 

If the 14z had room for two HDD's, then I'd consider a smaller one for just booting the OS's, but like glitchbit has discovered, the expressport isn't a great option for Dell, since the BIOS won't boot to it. Frustrating.

[lancorp]

lancorp, since you have a real SSD SATA drive why don't you post your xbench results?

 

Here is a video of a macbook running on this 48gb SSD and the guy does an application launch test that really shows you just how fast this thing is... also I find it amusing that my dell gets better xbench scores than his real mac on both standard HDD and even the SSD. His score was 76 for the SSD and mine is very consistently 83.

 

 

I ran xbench plus my normal benchmark from SpeedTools. Here's my results from both run on my Samsung 256GB PM800:

 

XBENCH:

 

Results 162.37

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.6.2 (10C540)

Physical RAM 3072 MB

Model MacBookPro5,5

Drive Type SAMSUNG SSD PB22-JS3 FDE 2.5" 256GB

Disk Test 162.37

Sequential 126.23

Uncached Write 122.82 75.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 122.99 69.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 76.47 22.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 427.94 215.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 227.51

Uncached Write 125.34 13.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 131.56 42.12 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 2540.40 18.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 621.63 115.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

 

QUICKBENCH:

 

QuickBench 4.0 Test Results

©2000-2007 Intech Software Corp.

Test file created on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 4:35:39 AM

Test Volume Name: DellMac14z

Test Volume Type: MacOS Extended

Test Volume Size: 238.154 Gigabytes

Test Volume Free Space: 185.057 Gigabytes

Allow Disk Cache Effects: Disabled

All reads and writes performed sychronously

 

Standard Test Results:

Test Cycles: 1

 

Transfer Size Sequential Read Sequential Write Random Read Random Write

 

4 KBytes 40.559 MB/Sec 16.369 MB/Sec 21.494 MB/Sec 4.954 MB/Sec

8 KBytes 67.480 MB/Sec 49.475 MB/Sec 35.478 MB/Sec 9.584 MB/Sec

16 KBytes 102.159 MB/Sec 71.449 MB/Sec 51.393 MB/Sec 22.170 MB/Sec

32 KBytes 143.191 MB/Sec 37.651 MB/Sec 74.666 MB/Sec 37.399 MB/Sec

64 KBytes 169.877 MB/Sec 133.181 MB/Sec 107.062 MB/Sec 42.455 MB/Sec

128 KBytes 207.074 MB/Sec 160.444 MB/Sec 141.285 MB/Sec 56.881 MB/Sec

256 KBytes 213.649 MB/Sec 127.318 MB/Sec 173.863 MB/Sec 51.602 MB/Sec

512 KBytes 217.866 MB/Sec 187.049 MB/Sec 198.510 MB/Sec 70.675 MB/Sec

1024 KBytes 217.653 MB/Sec 191.771 MB/Sec 213.490 MB/Sec 83.371 MB/Sec

 

Standard Ave 153.279 MB/Sec 108.301 MB/Sec 113.027 MB/Sec 42.121 MB/Sec

 

 

Large Test Results:

Test Cycles: 1

 

Transfer Size Large Read Large Write

 

2 MBytes 225.455 MB/Sec 112.883 MB/Sec

3 MBytes 224.488 MB/Sec 198.083 MB/Sec

4 MBytes 225.792 MB/Sec 198.718 MB/Sec

5 MBytes 224.864 MB/Sec 198.846 MB/Sec

6 MBytes 226.028 MB/Sec 199.297 MB/Sec

7 MBytes 228.491 MB/Sec 199.174 MB/Sec

8 MBytes 227.387 MB/Sec 199.681 MB/Sec

9 MBytes 226.513 MB/Sec 198.916 MB/Sec

10 MBytes 223.114 MB/Sec 199.693 MB/Sec

 

Large Ave 225.793 MB/Sec 189.477 MB/Sec

 

 

Extended Test Results:

Test Cycles: 1

 

Transfer Size Extended Read Extended Write

 

20 MBytes 227.815 MB/Sec 199.510 MB/Sec

30 MBytes 227.372 MB/Sec 80.257 MB/Sec

40 MBytes 227.117 MB/Sec 202.121 MB/Sec

50 MBytes 228.112 MB/Sec 176.868 MB/Sec

60 MBytes 228.310 MB/Sec 158.336 MB/Sec

70 MBytes 228.025 MB/Sec 66.763 MB/Sec

80 MBytes 228.337 MB/Sec 126.894 MB/Sec

90 MBytes 228.384 MB/Sec 134.939 MB/Sec

100 MBytes 228.192 MB/Sec 179.232 MB/Sec

 

Extended Ave 227.963 MB/Sec 147.213 MB/Sec

 

 

Pretty fast, but I always feel this drive in my 14z with OSX isn't as speedy as it is in my Dell XPS 1640 running Windows 7. I have the same drive in both notebooks.

 

I basically got both SSD's in way underpriced Dell notebooks from the Dell Outlet. Removed the SSD's and sold the notebooks at cost. Can you say FREE 256GB SSD?

[glitchbit]

wow.. my write speed does not lag far behind but my read speed does in comparison to your SSDs lancorp. I just checked out the dell outlet and the cheapest notebook I saw with 256gb ssd was $1,249.. I'd be surprised if I could get that for that notebook without the SSD.. considering the drive is worth about $650 I could see $600-700 for it.. but at that rate I might as well just buy the drive. Guess you just have to keep a close eye for the good deals?

[tamorgen]

I had the unfortunate experience today of trying to install Chameleon RC5. It trashed my install. I got back into OSX with Empire EFI Boot CD, reinstalled RC4, but no matter what I did, I could not get Snow Leopard to come up in any method but safe from the boot CD. I may be reinstalling again shortly.

 

Good news, bad news today

 

I'll start with the bad news. I don't know what I did yesterday, but somehow my kernel got corrupted and I had to restart my Mac partition over. I reinstalled last night, used Chameleon RC4 v118, got everything back up and running. The only good thing that came out of it last night was that Airport is now behaving and not requiring me to login to my WPA2 enterprise network every time I boot, sleep, whatever. So, good times there.

 

Good news:

This morning I decided I wanted to tackle RC5 and check to see what it did to my machine. I performed a Time Machine backup, and manually backed up my S/L/E and E/E directories, as well as the kernel to be absolutely sure I could restore if RC5 fracked me up. Well, it didn't, and RC5 is awesome. It actually fixes the issue with screen dimming. Now, I unplug, screen goes dim. F4 & F5 now work to dim the screen. Also, there is now a nice preference pane to configure Chameleon. I won't say it makes Lizard obsolete, but it's on it's way to extinction. RC5 also has the added benefit of allowing us to remove any Reboot kexts.

 

So, for those brave souls, give it a shot. It only the speaker pops would stop, everything would be working perfectly.

[Studio14ZGuy]

Studio14ZGuy,

 

Try using this walkthrough. It's the only one I found that works correctly and allows me to use Chameleon as my sole bootloader. You can use any Boot-132 method to do the actual Mac OS X install, but that walkthrough will give you a general walkthrough of the order you need to complete the installation

 

 

 

I only tried Chameleon RC4 bootloader. Not sure about [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], although I may try it soon.

 

I had the unfortunate experience today of trying to install Chameleon RC5. It trashed my install. I got back into OSX with Empire EFI Boot CD, reinstalled RC4, but no matter what I did, I could not get Snow Leopard to come up in any method but safe from the boot CD. I may be reinstalling again shortly.

 

hey Tamorgen, That might just do the trick for me. I need a weekend to set this whole thing up. If I can successfully boot up with Nightrider's guide and the work-around that you posted for a dual-boot I'll report back. Thank you for your advice!

[lancorp]

wow.. my write speed does not lag far behind but my read speed does in comparison to your SSDs lancorp. I just checked out the dell outlet and the cheapest notebook I saw with 256gb ssd was $1,249.. I'd be surprised if I could get that for that notebook without the SSD.. considering the drive is worth about $650 I could see $600-700 for it.. but at that rate I might as well just buy the drive. Guess you just have to keep a close eye for the good deals?

 

I got the Dell (a Latitude E4300) with 256GB SSD for about $900 after coupon. That's the secret...wait for a decent coupon and pray.

I was able to slip a 320GB drive in place of the SSD and sell to a customer for what I paid (which was actually about

the Dell new price to begin with!).

 

 

It's just a matter of being lucky and being QUICK!

 

The write speeds from xbench don't seem right for my Samsung. Quickbench shows about 130MB/s for a 256k seq write, and 160MB/s to 190MB/s for a 128K and 512K seq writes. So, xbench seems way off at 70MB/s.

 

In Windows using various bench tools, I typically get well over 200MB/s on reads, especially at the 128K - 512K range.

 

Maybe it is something in the Mac OSX that hinders 256K reads???

[tamorgen]

Has anybody figured out the correct info for the smbios plist for DIMM A(onboard memory)? In Windows, I ran CPU-Z to get that information, but it only gave me the information for DIMM B (non-onboard). Even with the latest Chameleon RC5, the correct memory specs are not pulled. Funny thing is the memory used (at least for the 4 GB module) is the same memory that is used on a MacBook Pro. It's made by Hyundai Electronics (Hynix), in case anyone is interested. Even have the part # and serial, but I can't find the info for the on board memory.

 

FIXED:

I ran a report with Everest Ultimate on the Windows side, and it was the only one of three system profilers that actually reported that memory slot. Here it is for everyone's pleasure:

 

Form Factor SODIMM

Type Detail Synchronous

Size 1024 MB

Speed 1066 MHz

Total Width 64-bit

Data Width 64-bit

Device Locator DIMM_A

Manufacturer 80AD

Serial Number 00000001

Asset Tag 0700

Part Number HMT112S6AFP8C-G7N0

[tamorgen]

My dsdt v3r45 on the other hand has several optimizations, and fixes for A04 specifically (not sure if it is cpu specific yet but I am using T6600).

 

glitchbit,

Have you done any more DSDT editing? What do you see is left to fix?

 

I'm curious if the DSDT is CPU specific. I've got the P8700 in mine, so I'm sure there are some differences between our CPUs.

[glitchbit]

glitchbit,

Have you done any more DSDT editing? What do you see is left to fix?

 

I'm curious if the DSDT is CPU specific. I've got the P8700 in mine, so I'm sure there are some differences between our CPUs.

 

I won't know for sure until someone uploads their own untouched DSDT file here... I've asked earlier but no one responded. You'll have to boot up with DropSSDT=y I believe and use the app DSDTSE to rip the original DSDT for your system. Once you have that I'll gladly take a look at it once I get home and I will post my findings. If the code is different for the cpu part it should be a quick fix, I'll simply copy over a few lines of code.

 

Has anybody figured out the correct info for the smbios plist for DIMM A(onboard memory)? In Windows, I ran CPU-Z to get that information, but it only gave me the information for DIMM B (non-onboard). Even with the latest Chameleon RC5, the correct memory specs are not pulled. Funny thing is the memory used (at least for the 4 GB module) is the same memory that is used on a MacBook Pro. It's made by Hyundai Electronics (Hynix), in case anyone is interested. Even have the part # and serial, but I can't find the info for the on board memory.

 

FIXED:

I ran a report with Everest Ultimate on the Windows side, and it was the only one of three system profilers that actually reported that memory slot. Here it is for everyone's pleasure:

 

Form Factor SODIMM

Type Detail Synchronous

Size 1024 MB

Speed 1066 MHz

Total Width 64-bit

Data Width 64-bit

Device Locator DIMM_A

Manufacturer 80AD

Serial Number 00000001

Asset Tag 0700

Part Number HMT112S6AFP8C-G7N0

 

hmm interesting that is also Hynix

http://kauppa.cityplus.fi/fin/index.php?mp...mp;product=2303

 

are we sure this is soldered in, as in part of the motherboard or are the clamps just soldered in place? If the clamps are soldered, then I do not mind desoldering it..

[lancorp]

are we sure this is soldered in, as in part of the motherboard or are the clamps just soldered in place? If the clamps are soldered, then I do not mind desoldering it..

 

If you are talking about the first 1GB of RAM, it is part of the motherboard. I had mine completely apart, and there is only one SODIMM socket.

[glitchbit]

I just realized I did not fully answer tamorgen. As far as what is left to fix, it seems like my usb and esata issues after sleep may not be an issue related with my DSDT file at all and instead, an issue with either vmware or ntfs for mac. So short of that I do not really feel like there are any pressing matters to go after. The sound issue is a minor convenience but it works really well most of the time. I would like to figure out how to output sound with my hdmi but I do not have time right now to go after something like that.

 

Also I think it's a good idea to keep an eye on other MCP79 laptops out there such as the mini HP 311, if any significant developments happen over there or the Zotac 9300 ion they may be applicable to our system as well.

 

I will gladly take a look at DSDT files from 14z's that have cpu's that differ from my T6600 and see if I need create separate DSDT files for them, as soon as they are posted.

[tamorgen]

I just realized I did not fully answer tamorgen. As far as what is left to fix, it seems like my usb and esata issues after sleep may not be an issue related with my DSDT file at all and instead, an issue with either vmware or ntfs for mac. So short of that I do not really feel like there are any pressing matters to go after. The sound issue is a minor convenience but it works really well most of the time. I would like to figure out how to output sound with my hdmi but I do not have time right now to go after something like that.

 

Also I think it's a good idea to keep an eye on other MCP79 laptops out there such as the mini HP 311, if any significant developments happen over there or the Zotac 9300 ion they may be applicable to our system as well.

 

I will gladly take a look at DSDT files from 14z's that have cpu's that differ from my T6600 and see if I need create separate DSDT files for them, as soon as they are posted.

 

Here is my DSDT file. Like I said, I have the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz processor. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. It's been a heck of week for me.

 

 

Has anybody else had any luck with the autodimming feature? Mine worked for about a day, and hasn't worked since. I'm not sure what changed. I'm running A04 bios. This is about the only thing remaining that is bugging me. Even the audio pops are rare now (but if someone has fixed this, please let me know).

[lancorp]

Here is my DSDT file. Like I said, I have the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz processor. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. It's been a heck of week for me.

 

 

Has anybody else had any luck with the autodimming feature? Mine worked for about a day, and hasn't worked since. I'm not sure what changed. I'm running A04 bios. This is about the only thing remaining that is bugging me. Even the audio pops are rare now (but if someone has fixed this, please let me know).

 

Things like autodimming, screen saver and auto-sleep seem to be hit-or-miss with mine. The screen saver works one day, and not the next. I don't believe I've ever seem autodimming work, even though it's turned on.

[tamorgen]

Things like autodimming, screen saver and auto-sleep seem to be hit-or-miss with mine. The screen saver works one day, and not the next. I don't believe I've ever seem autodimming work, even though it's turned on.

 

Believe it or not, I've never run into a screen save or auto-sleep issue. All that works fine on mine. If I can only get the autodimming to work, I'd be happy.

[tamorgen]

Update:

 

I finally received my Dell 5530 3g card from ebay. Turns out it came from Hong Kong, so it took almost 4 weeks to get here. That's the good news.

 

Bad news. The guys at Dell are a bunch of cheapskates. My GF has a Inspiron 1720. She didn't order it with a WWAN card, but it's capable of taking one. It's also much easier to put in than ours, just have to remove one cover, put it in, attach antennas, done. Anyone who has even replaced a hard drive on the Studio 14z knows that you have to remove like 5 things to put anything in ours (hard drive, bluetooth, wlan, wwan).

 

Anyway, I did that today. I also put in the Bluetooth module that' I've been holding off on since I don't want to open this up too many times; it's too delicate. Anyway, all the way opened up, put it in, but no antenna leads! They didn't put the antenna leads in these from the factory, so if you guys are in the market to put a card in, better order a replacement LCD back cover as well, because the replacement covers have the leads, but the factory shipped one's don't. Another $44 + tax & shipping, and I'll let you know if everything works in another week or so.

 

Incidentally, does anyone know the correct carrier settings? I may have them, but I may not. I did find a script out on the net, but it may not be appropriate for the US.

 

Also, the 5530 shows up as two modems, and not a WWAN card. Really weird. I'd prefer that it shows up as a WWAN card, complete with signal bars, but I may be asking too much at this point.

[lancorp]

Is the 5530 the WiMax card? If so, I got one of those in a Dell XPS 16 once, for a client. I had a heck of a time getting it to work as a normal wifi card. It sure seems to be a strange card...

[tamorgen]

Is the 5530 the WiMax card? If so, I got one of those in a Dell XPS 16 once, for a client. I had a heck of a time getting it to work as a normal wifi card. It sure seems to be a strange card...

 

The 5530 is a GSM 3G card, so for AT&T, T-Mobile, or anywhere international. It's actually a Sony Ericsson F3507G card with a Dell sticker on it. As far as I know, it doesn't have any wifi abilities other than WWAN. Until I get an antenna for it, I won't know what it'll do. It also has GPS support, which could be interesting, but I don't count on it working on SL anytime soon.