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


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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.

 

 

Ahh...mobile broadband. Got it. I use my iPhone 3GS and it's data plan, tethered to my 14z via usb cable, for times when there is no Wifi around. I have the original firmware on my 3GS so tethering is easy, and no additional charges!

 

It works like a champ!

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Step-by-Step Install Guide:
  • This is a very basic step-by-step install guide specifically for the Dell 14z. The 14z runs OS X great! I'm using it as my primary OS on my 14z right now, I actually prefer the 14z over the current gen macbooks because of the 14z's higher-res screen and HDMI output! The 14z works without a hitch, the only minor issues are that the brightness of the screen can not be adjusted and the speakers have the occasional "pop".I hope this guide will help those struggling get their 14z up and running OS X! If anyone has any tips or corrections you think should be made to this guide, feel free to reply in this thread!

  • You do not need an external DVD drive for this install so long as you have access to another machine running OS X. This guide assumes you are using a retail image/disc and that you want to run just OS X on your machine - no windows.
  • Special thanks to glitchbit for all his hard work on perfecting the DSDT for the 14z along with his collection of extensions.
  • As with any guide, I am not responsible for any damage you may cause by following this blah blah.

Requirements:

Lingo:

  • SLE = System\Library\Extensions
  • EE = Extra\Extensions

Procedure:

  1. Follow Lifehacker's "Install Snow Leopard on Your Hackintosh PC, No Hacking Required" guide to set up your Snow Leopard Install disc to a bootable pendrive with the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg tool. You must use a computer already running OS X to do this (real mac or a hackintosh). Basically all your doing is formatting the pendrive with GUID, ripping your install disc to the pendrive and then installing their "magic" package to the pendrive
  2. Boot your laptop and remember to press F12 and select to boot from pendrive once you're ready to install.
  3. Format your destination drive as Mac OS X (Journaled) with Disk Utility
  4. Install OS X with desired customizations (i suggest installing only the base system not the printer drivers etc to save HD space).
  5. Restart and press F12 and select to boot from the USB Pendrive again, once the pendrive boots press the right arrow key on the keyboard to change from "Mac os Install DVD" to "Macintosh HD" (or whatever you named the harddrive). In essence your using the pendrive to boot the harddrive since you haven't installed a bootloader yet). Run through first boot registration etc.
  6. Install ChamelionRC2.0_v3 with the installer
  7. Delete AppleHDA.kext from SLE
  8. Right click IOnetworking.kext in SLE and click "show package contents" and then go to Contents\Plugins and delete AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext
  9. Copy the extensions from glitchbit's Extensions-2-4-Aps2.zip to EE
  10. Copy glitchbit's latest DSDT.aml to \Extras
  11. Run KextUtility to fix permissions in SLE and EE
  12. Update system software to 10.6.2 via the Update Software option by clicking the apple in the top left
  13. Shut Down and on boot up, enter the following boot commands when in Chameleon "-v -f"
  14. If all is good you should be booting into a fresh OS X Install with the dock on the bottom of the screen

 

 

Was looking forward to giving this a try but it seems the two files that were on mediafire have timed out, anyone happen to have a copy they could send to me or re-upload?

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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.

 

I assume you mean the 3g card needs antenna's and not the bluetooth? My bluetooth adapter works fine without any atenna attachment.

 

Also I have re-uploaded my v3r45 DSDT to the forum, since mediafire appears to be a very temporary file storage solution I will have to start uploading files elsewhere.

 

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).

 

Yea, I've been rather busy myself and for the last 48 hours I came down with something pretty bad.. my entire weekend has been wasted.

 

Well I looked at your DSDT and appears like your system grabbed the modified DSDT file in your Extra folder. If the DropSSDT=y does not work like I thought it would then maybe you will just have to remove the DSDT from your extra folder altogether until after you extract your real DSDT.

 

On the autodimming feature, it appears to work on my install fine, although it appears like I have a way of consistently breaking eSATA and even USB that causes them to eject on sleep improperly. Even worse eSATA will not start to work again until after I reboot. I do not know which software I installed that causes this issue. I suspect vmware or ntfs for mac. Neither software applications would have been tested with eSATA and certainly not native eSATA and removing said software does not seem to fix it, but those were the last 2 programs I installed immediately before I started having issues with my eSATA.

14z_v3r45.zip

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I assume you mean the 3g card needs antenna's and not the bluetooth? My bluetooth adapter works fine without any atenna attachment.

 

Also I have re-uploaded my v3r45 DSDT to the forum, since mediafire appears to be a very temporary file storage solution I will have to start uploading files elsewhere.

 

 

 

Yea, I've been rather busy myself and for the last 48 hours I came down with something pretty bad.. my entire weekend has been wasted.

 

Well I looked at your DSDT and appears like your system grabbed the modified DSDT file in your Extra folder. If the DropSSDT=y does not work like I thought it would then maybe you will just have to remove the DSDT from your extra folder altogether until after you extract your real DSDT.

 

On the autodimming feature, it appears to work on my install fine, although it appears like I have a way of consistently breaking eSATA and even USB that causes them to eject on sleep improperly. Even worse eSATA will not start to work again until after I reboot. I do not know which software I installed that causes this issue. I suspect vmware or ntfs for mac. Neither software applications would have been tested with eSATA and certainly not native eSATA and removing said software does not seem to fix it, but those were the last 2 programs I installed immediately before I started having issues with my eSATA.

 

Is that zip with the code I provided or an older version? I'll try to pull the DSDT again and send it over to you.

 

I've uploaded the dsdt.dsl file again using your suggestion of simply removing the existing one. It looks like I got a clean one this time, as my graphics aren't accelerated anymore and sound doesn't work.

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Is that zip with the code I provided or an older version? I'll try to pull the DSDT again and send it over to you.

 

I've uploaded the dsdt.dsl file again using your suggestion of simply removing the existing one. It looks like I got a clean one this time, as my graphics aren't accelerated anymore and sound doesn't work.

 

Ok I just looked it over and I cannot tell any difference between my T6600 cpu and yours. So I guess that is probably good news, we can keep 1 DSDT file that should apply to others. Unless I missed something.

 

What I did notice though is that between BIOS version A01 and A04, there are differences in the WMI and AMW interface implementations. This would explain why the media keys on our keyboards function properly in BIOS A04 and not A01 (or maybe just more consistently?). Dell most likely did not fully implement WMI in A01 which affected its linux users so they updated the WMI code for A04. Only other notable difference was a slight change to the usb devices, they added an RHUB device too it, not sure if that really makes any difference at all in OSX.

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Ok I just looked it over and I cannot tell any difference between my T6600 cpu and yours. So I guess that is probably good news, we can keep 1 DSDT file that should apply to others. Unless I missed something.

 

What I did notice though is that between BIOS version A01 and A04, there are differences in the WMI and AMW interface implementations. This would explain why the media keys on our keyboards function properly in BIOS A04 and not A01 (or maybe just more consistently?). Dell most likely did not fully implement WMI in A01 which affected its linux users so they updated the WMI code for A04. Only other notable difference was a slight change to the usb devices, they added an RHUB device too it, not sure if that really makes any difference at all in OSX.

 

Are you running A01 then? I am running the A04, so maybe that's the reason my autodimming isn't working.

 

I'd like to try that code fix I mentioned, but I can't get it to compile. Do you have any idea how to fix that error?

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Are you running A01 then? I am running the A04, so maybe that's the reason my autodimming isn't working.

 

I'd like to try that code fix I mentioned, but I can't get it to compile. Do you have any idea how to fix that error?

 

No, I am running on A04 just like you. I just compared your A04 DSDT to my old DSDT original since I could not find my A04 original, it should not really make a difference though.. From what I can tell there is either a lack of speedstepping info in our DSDT compared to most other or the code for it is a good deal different and I just can't seem to find the proper entries for it.. I found the normal _PR scope and cpu entries, but it takes up all of about 3 lines of code where as others have it take a dozen or more lines code and the frequencies and voltages are fairly easy to read, but ours does not have that kind of code that I have been able to find thus far. I thought maybe it was because I have a lower end T6600, and assumed it has less speedsteps, but I guess it is either in the DSDT somewhere else.

 

I don't expect to find any CPU related differences later though, because every instance where the DSDT files did not match up I pretty much googled all of the entries so I could confirm what they were related to and it was mostly differences in WMI and AWM interfaces which as far as I can tell will not be controlling the speedstepping our cpu's.

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No, I am running on A04 just like you. I just compared your A04 DSDT to my old DSDT original since I could not find my A04 original, it should not really make a difference though.. From what I can tell there is either a lack of speedstepping info in our DSDT compared to most other or the code for it is a good deal different and I just can't seem to find the proper entries for it.. I found the normal _PR scope and cpu entries, but it takes up all of about 3 lines of code where as others have it take a dozen or more lines code and the frequencies and voltages are fairly easy to read, but ours does not have that kind of code that I have been able to find thus far. I thought maybe it was because I have a lower end T6600, and assumed it has less speedsteps, but I guess it is either in the DSDT somewhere else.

 

I don't expect to find any CPU related differences later though, because every instance where the DSDT files did not match up I pretty much googled all of the entries so I could confirm what they were related to and it was mostly differences in WMI and AWM interfaces which as far as I can tell will not be controlling the speedstepping our cpu's.

 

Interesting. Any idea how to get that speed stepping back in the DSDT?

 

I may have come across some of those speed stepping scripts a while back. If I can find them, I'll send them to you and maybe we can get them in the A04 DSDT and be a bit more functional.

 

BTW, after I removed the DSDT from my boot sequence yesterday and put it back in, my graphics acceleration stopped working. I know this because a good test was always pressing F12 to get the Dashboard to come, and you got a ripple actions around the widgets if acceleration was on. Now, the ripples are gone. Any idea what I could have done?

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As far as I can tell speedstepping works fine on T6600 and it should on the others, I just needed to confirm it because other laptop models apparently have DSDT files that differ depending on the CPU used for it. The other question was if the DSDT for T6600 differed slightly, could it still work for other CPU's but just not as well as it could/should.

 

I believe the answer is that my DSDT should work just as well for P8700 or whatever model CPU as it does for T6600. Also I am confused as to why your acceleration is lost, that makes no sense because it ought to detect the built in kext just fine assuming that you booting with the DSDT file you were using earlier. Maybe you should boot with "-v -f" to force all the kexts to reload?

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Also I am confused as to why your acceleration is lost, that makes no sense because it ought to detect the built in kext just fine assuming that you booting with the DSDT file you were using earlier. Maybe you should boot with "-v -f" to force all the kexts to reload?

 

Is it possible your latest upload was without any corrections, or the A01 DSDT? I just used kext utility on my kexts, rebooted with -v -f, and even redownloaded your DSDT.aml file from the previous page. I'm wondering if it's an older version.

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Well I followed nightriders guide and used glitchbit's dsdt and extensions and following his instructions worked right away except bluetooth but that was simple I just used the install pkg for dell bluetooth modules. I have the p8600 processor, 900p screen, 1515 n if anyone is curious and running A04. Only thing i've noticed is the speaker pop which was mentioned before and that my backlight controls work some of the time. Currently trying to dual boot windows 7 using http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dual-booti...-chameleon.html

 

Ill let you guys know if that works.

 

Thanks to everyone in this forum for posting so much about the 14z definitely made it way easier and I definitely would not of been able to do it.

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Hi,

 

just wanted to check whether anybody reuploaded those extensions and drivers to mediafire or is there any other site that they are available to download from?

 

By the way, did any other Dell Studio 14z user experience what I do with the touchpad? It often freezes at one point, you have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to start moving again. Happened in Vista, Win7, and Ubuntu. Wonder if it's just a bad pad or is there just a special setting I can choose? So far I couldn't find any that would work.

 

Thank you.

 

Well I followed nightriders guide and used glitchbit's dsdt and extensions and following his instructions worked right away except bluetooth but that was simple I just used the install pkg for dell bluetooth modules. I have the p8600 processor, 900p screen, 1515 n if anyone is curious and running A04. Only thing i've noticed is the speaker pop which was mentioned before and that my backlight controls work some of the time. Currently trying to dual boot windows 7 using http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dual-booti...-chameleon.html

 

Ill let you guys know if that works.

 

Thanks to everyone in this forum for posting so much about the 14z definitely made it way easier and I definitely would not of been able to do it.

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I'm afraid I have created a lot of confusion regarding my DSDT v3r45 release, so I am going to try and clear this up. A lot of it was due to uncertainties on whether my DSDT was the cause of certain issues (such as eSATA disappearing after sleep & wake, but it indeed was software related.. either ntfs for mac or vmware, have not confirmed yet). Also I was not sure if speedstepping was working all CPU models, and from the best of knowledge these DSDT files are not CPU specific like some other Dell notebooks. I can confirm that speedstepping works as expected in T6600, and there is no reason speeding should not work with P8600+ or any other, assuming the proper kext files are in place in EE or even SLE if you want.

 

And I did not re-upload the wrong file as v3r45, I kept the original zipped file which is dated Feb 12th, and the file inside was Feb 1st. I tested it for several days before releasing it, every revision I have made since then does not noticeable improve any functionality, nor do I see any future room for improvement in the DSDT. Instead the best thing I can advise is for you to thoroughly test all functionalities, sleep & wake, firewire, esata, usb drives and the like the best you can on a fresh install once I did this I found that everything appeared to work properly and only after installing my required applications did I find issues that primarily relate to esata de-activating upon sleep, but again it is not something that can be fixed in the DSDT.

 

As far as I am concerned, my tweaking of the DSDT is done, I'd love to figure out audio over HDMI, but short of that I have all functionality working on my system. I will let someone else figure out audio over HDMI for the MCP79 platform and someone here will probably add it in to ours sometime in the future before I even notice a solution for the audio. There is a hardware fix for it though, if you buy the right adapters at monoprice, you could theoretically take your audio out and merge it with your hdmi a couple of ways probably.

 

14z_v3r45.zip - DSDT

http://www.multiupload.com/QHTR6LKWFE - I think these are the last extensions I posted

- eliminated all compiler warnings from iaslme, removed a lot of useless return zeros added a lot of return zeros.

- renamed several devices to match the original macbookpro5,5 dsdt, which uses the same MCP79 chipset

- applied known fixes for the USB devices to enable sleep without sleepenabler (other people here I am sure applied it to theirs too)

- applied additional USB fix to prevent eject error when waking back up from sleep

- modified several scope entries to match macbookpro5,5

- Power button device modified, added Sleep button device entry

- Added power state methods to PCI device

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Hi,

 

just wanted to check whether anybody reuploaded those extensions and drivers to mediafire or is there any other site that they are available to download from?

 

By the way, did any other Dell Studio 14z user experience what I do with the touchpad? It often freezes at one point, you have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to start moving again. Happened in Vista, Win7, and Ubuntu. Wonder if it's just a bad pad or is there just a special setting I can choose? So far I couldn't find any that would work.

 

Thank you.

 

I've had something similar. randomly it happened in 7 before I even dual booted and it was randomly just seem to have a mind of its own for a good 10 seconds. Just did the same thing to me in osx as well.

 

Also the guide that I followed that i mentioned previously for dual booting windows 7 and osx work very well. No snags everything went according to the guide

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my graphics acceleration stopped working. I know this because a good test was always pressing F12 to get the Dashboard to come, and you got a ripple actions around the widgets if acceleration was on. Now, the ripples are gone. Any idea what I could have done?

 

At first, I thought I had never seen the ripple effect, but doing some investigation, I see it only ripples when you add a new widget, which mine does. It also has the 3D flip effect when looking at the reverse side of a widget, so I believe my graphics acceleration must be working.

 

Try adding a new widget to your dashboard and see if you have the ripple effect.

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At first, I thought I had never seen the ripple effect, but doing some investigation, I see it only ripples when you add a new widget, which mine does. It also has the 3D flip effect when looking at the reverse side of a widget, so I believe my graphics acceleration must be working.

 

Try adding a new widget to your dashboard and see if you have the ripple effect.

 

lancrop,

You are correct. I know I had read that the ripple effect was a good test for graphics acceleration, but it must have also mentioned adding a widget as you suggested. Feel like an idiot right about now.

:(

 

I still would like to work on getting the backlighting corrected, but I've never been able to get a DSDT to compile successfully, even just reading the one that glitchbit compiled. I have a potential fix, but just can't get the file to compile without errors. Any advice?

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And I did not re-upload the wrong file as v3r45, I kept the original zipped file which is dated Feb 12th, and the file inside was Feb 1st.

Glitchbit, that was my error. Sorry about that. I think I was imagining that graphics were slower than before, and the "surefire" method of determining if acceleration was enabled required a step I kind of left out.

 

As far as I am concerned, my tweaking of the DSDT is done, I'd love to figure out audio over HDMI, but short of that I have all functionality working on my system.

 

I'd like to pick up where you left off and work on the backlighting/autodimming issue, but I have never been able to get a DSDT to compile without errors. I'm using EvO DSDTSE. Can you advise me of anything I need to get this working?

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Glitchbit, that was my error. Sorry about that. I think I was imagining that graphics were slower than before, and the "surefire" method of determining if acceleration was enabled required a step I kind of left out.

 

 

 

I'd like to pick up where you left off and work on the backlighting/autodimming issue, but I have never been able to get a DSDT to compile without errors. I'm using EvO DSDTSE. Can you advise me of anything I need to get this working?

 

I edit in a normal text editor (Komodo Edit) the backlighting works perfectly for me so I suggest that you look outside the DSDT for your solution. Maybe you should boot into windows and play with your backlighting some and then go back into OSX. Are you using Ubuntu any? (I personally haven't). You may even want to try messing with your BIOS settings and maybe swapping out your media key config and booting into OSX with "-v -x -f" then reboot normally. There are a lot of things I would play around with like that if I were you before messing with the DSDT.

 

Also are you sure your backlighting does not work with a fresh install of OSX? It could be software related too, I know NTFS for Mac OSX screws with our eSATA ports and usb ports and I think it even causes VMWare fusion to perform horribly bad!! Ever since I removed that piece of {censored} my systems runs as stable as it did when I first installed OSX on here.

 

Good luck!

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I edit in a normal text editor (Komodo Edit) the backlighting works perfectly for me so I suggest that you look outside the DSDT for your solution. Maybe you should boot into windows and play with your backlighting some and then go back into OSX. Are you using Ubuntu any? (I personally haven't). You may even want to try messing with your BIOS settings and maybe swapping out your media key config and booting into OSX with "-v -x -f" then reboot normally. There are a lot of things I would play around with like that if I were you before messing with the DSDT.

 

Also are you sure your backlighting does not work with a fresh install of OSX? It could be software related too, I know NTFS for Mac OSX screws with our eSATA ports and usb ports and I think it even causes VMWare fusion to perform horribly bad!! Ever since I removed that piece of {censored} my systems runs as stable as it did when I first installed OSX on here.

 

Good luck!

 

Sorry, not the backlighting. That does work fine for me. I'm talking about the autodimming for the screen & F4/F5.

 

Once you edit it, how are you compiling?

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Sorry, not the backlighting. That does work fine for me. I'm talking about the autodimming for the screen & F4/F5.

 

Once you edit it, how are you compiling?

 

I use iaslMe, and the autodimming feature as far as switching from power adapter to battery does work for me. Also it appears that removing ntfs for mac osx did not fully resolve my esata issue after sleep.. its just a hit or miss it appears.

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I use iaslMe, and the autodimming feature as far as switching from power adapter to battery does work for me.

 

Okay, thanks. I'll give iaslMe a shot. Any chance you can post the uncompiled DSDT so I can play with it?

 

I'm wondering if the autodimming may be related to the bootloader at this point, since yours is working and we are essentially using the same kexts & DSDTs. What bootloader are you using?

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Okay, thanks. I'll give iaslMe a shot. Any chance you can post the uncompiled DSDT so I can play with it?

 

I'm wondering if the autodimming may be related to the bootloader at this point, since yours is working and we are essentially using the same kexts & DSDTs. What bootloader are you using?

 

iaslme also decompiles the files as well you can simply drag any of my aml files on it and it will spit out the dsl file.. vice versa of course.

 

Also concerning your F4/F5 keys not working, I would suggest that you shut down your laptop, unplug any hdmi or displayport connector if you have a monitor plugged in and unplug your laptop from your power adapter. Then boot back up into OSX and see if your F4/F5 keys work, because while may keys usually works, I have noticed that if they don't, then I can certainly get them to work via that method.

 

Also sometimes the VoodooBattery kext does not load properly, and that may be why the power adapter needs to be unplugged. Also I have had to become corrupt once and I had to replace the VoodooBattery kext.

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I discovered that, while trying to install the Zinio digital magazine reader, that it requires that Rosetta be installed.

 

While I'm surprised that Rosetta is still used for current apps, I'm also unsure if Rosetta will screw up my installation.

 

Has anyone installed Rosetta for SL on their hackintosh? Any problems, or is it problem-free?

 

Thanks!

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I'd give it a shot this person with a real mac has no issues with it http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=4786

 

Also oddly enough when I have a problem with my install I have found better help from legit macbook forums and even apples support forums than what I have found here.. probably because there are quite a few bugs that actually relate to SL across the board than my non-macbook laptop.

 

It is a little irritating though for people like us because our first reaction, is oh it must be because it is a hack and we rarely think oh it must be OSX lol. That typically is a very distant after thought, but it really shouldn't be...

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iaslme also decompiles the files as well you can simply drag any of my aml files on it and it will spit out the dsl file.. vice versa of course.

 

I decompiled your DSDT.aml file, and then tried to recompile it with iASLme. The following errors showed up in the log, and of course no DSDT.aml file was generated.

Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL Optimizing Compiler version 20100304 [Mar  9 2010] with Fix Integer bug
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2010 Intel Corporation
Supports ACPI Specification Revision 4.0

Non-ASCII character [0x80] found in line 31, file offset 0x3F1
Non-ASCII character [0xA4] found in line 31, file offset 0x3F2
Non-ASCII character [0xD9] found in line 33, file offset 0x41A
Non-ASCII character [0xA4] found in line 33, file offset 0x41B
4 non-ASCII characters found in input source text, could be a binary file

 

The associated code with those lines:

DefinitionBlock ("/DSDT.aml", "DSDT", 1, "DELL  ", "CL09	", 0x06040000)
{
External (WMI0)
External (\_SB_.PCI0.IXVE.IGPU.
ħ)
External (\_SB_.PCI0.IXVE.IGPU.
٤`)

 

Obviously some of that code is non-asci. Question is, what was it supposed to be?

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