[Guide & Boot CD] D-Series Latitude/w NVIDIA or GMA950 and Intel Dual Core Retail Installs

[exkuisiteone]

That's how I learned web design. I bought the 2800 dollar software from adobe with my income tax return 1 yr and a half ago, and now I work in the advertising world building web sites and magazine layouts. I learned from reading and persistance. If it's not that hard, maybe I should try to learn this. Hell, who knows, I might be able to fix the 3945 intel card. NOT!!! But I just might research this more. If everyday ppl can do it, I should have noooooo problem. I will try this to see if it works. If not, then I will go and get another wifi card. Being broke isn't easy, but i'll come up with something. This Laptop was given to me by a guy at work with the notorious BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!! I slapped in an xp install disk and an hour later was flying thru the world wide web. lol. oh well, his loss.

Thnx for the help leppy, I really honestly appreciate it. You give window lickers and short bus riders like me someone to look up to!!!!!

[leppy700m]

That's how I learned web design. I bought the 2800 dollar software from adobe with my income tax return 1 yr and a half ago, and now I work in the advertising world building web sites and magazine layouts. I learned from reading and persistance. If it's not that hard, maybe I should try to learn this. Hell, who knows, I might be able to fix the 3945 intel card. NOT!!! But I just might research this more. If everyday ppl can do it, I should have noooooo problem. I will try this to see if it works. If not, then I will go and get another wifi card. Being broke isn't easy, but i'll come up with something. This Laptop was given to me by a guy at work with the notorious BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!! I slapped in an xp install disk and an hour later was flying thru the world wide web. lol. oh well, his loss.

Thnx for the help leppy, I really honestly appreciate it. You give window lickers and short bus riders like me someone to look up to!!!!!

 

So.... did the patched kext from the other thread help you out with that card?

[exkuisiteone]

No, I am holding steady after the 1st update. I have yet to update to 5.7 and 5.8. I just don't get it. I added the kext to the extensions.mkext and it worked right off the bat. But still, once I reboot after the 5.7 update, nothing. I have been looking into this and still can't come up with an explanation or fix. Soooo, I have downloaded some info on Chameleon rc2, and am looking at trying to come up with my own little fix. Hell, who knows, maybe I can fix this and create something specifically for these lattitude d models that can keep up with osx for a while to come. But I do thankyou for the time and effort to help me with this. Until I can come up with a fix, i will hold at the 10.5.6 update so I can have my wireless. My luck it's something simple. So Thanx Leppy!!! I will post more and we'll see what happens. Wish me luck!!!!

[leppy700m]

No, I am holding steady after the 1st update. I have yet to update to 5.7 and 5.8. I just don't get it. I added the kext to the extensions.mkext and it worked right off the bat. But still, once I reboot after the 5.7 update, nothing. I have been looking into this and still can't come up with an explanation or fix. Soooo, I have downloaded some info on Chameleon rc2, and am looking at trying to come up with my own little fix. Hell, who knows, maybe I can fix this and create something specifically for these lattitude d models that can keep up with osx for a while to come. But I do thankyou for the time and effort to help me with this. Until I can come up with a fix, i will hold at the 10.5.6 update so I can have my wireless. My luck it's something simple. So Thanx Leppy!!! I will post more and we'll see what happens. Wish me luck!!!!

 

Don't forget that the Extensions.mkext gets changed out because Intel video drivers have to changed for 10.5.7, so if you update to 10.5.7 and have your own kexts in Extension.mkext, you will have to add them back in.

 

Keep us posted. I really think it would be worth $15.00 including shipping for a card that just works.

[FoxND001]

Hi Leppy!

 

Wow - life gets interesting, you have to go away for a month, and when you come back there is a LOT of work done on this project! Woo-hoo!!

 

I'm back with my trusty D820, and ready to help out again. Last time, I tried out the nvidia kext, and it didn't work for me (see the last post I made in this thread).

 

So, what should I try next? Is there a different kext I try? Let me know and I'll give feedback from the D820 side of the house.

 

FYI - I have both Leopard and SnowLeopard Retail discs now (SnowLeopard is cheap right now, so why not?), so I can do either if I have instructions. 2 yen for your thoughts?

 

~FoxND001

[leppy700m]

Hi Leppy!

 

Wow - life gets interesting, you have to go away for a month, and when you come back there is a LOT of work done on this project! Woo-hoo!!

 

I'm back with my trusty D820, and ready to help out again. Last time, I tried out the nvidia kext, and it didn't work for me (see the last post I made in this thread).

 

So, what should I try next? Is there a different kext I try? Let me know and I'll give feedback from the D820 side of the house.

 

FYI - I have both Leopard and SnowLeopard Retail discs now (SnowLeopard is cheap right now, so why not?), so I can do either if I have instructions. 2 yen for your thoughts?

 

~FoxND001

 

Hey Fox! I thought maybe you were in a plane wreck. It's good to see you back.

 

Anyway - there are a couple of ways to go for your Nvidia card. It's essentially the same as the card in the D620, but since it's not working the same way, I assume that it's using a different memory address. I think the D820 has more video memory than the D620 does, so that sort of makes sense to me. There are a few ways to go for 10.5.x. but fewer that we'll be able to carry forward to Snow Leopard.

 

- Try the new version of chameleon (Chameleon 2.0-RC3). I think they added some functionality to the detect string they use in the /Extra/~Boot.plist file. That might fix it. Oh, did I mention the new version has to be installed manually? yech. But it's not too bad, there are good instructions in the distribution. I am already planning to use the newer version in the next distribution of my boot image. FYI - this version of Chameleon boots Snow Leopard. I used this on my latest 10.5.x install, and it works smoothly with my D620 with Nvidia all the way up to 10.5.8, - but then again, so did the previous release.

 

- next would be to insert an EFI string into your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist file. What string, you ask? I don't know because I don't have a D820 and can't play with it. But I've been reading up on EFI and I think it might work for you. Look for the EFI tools and do some reading on EFI strings. Once you get it working, this solution should be SL compatible.

 

- Next is use of a custom patched dsdt.aml file. These are very hardware specific, but once they are right, they are great. I am reading up on this to see if I can implement a real fix to the GMA graphics for these machines so that they use stock kexts. I would love to get this working for all of these machines. This solution should also be SL compatible.

 

- Next, and maybe a lot easier but far less desirable would be to load nvkush.pkg or nvkush.kext. I used to use that on my D630 with good results with the IPC distro - once I finally got the IPC distro to load the installer. It enables hardware to use the stock Apple nvidia kexts, and I read that it works with the D820. The caveat is that nvkush is old, and I read that it's not working with Snow Leopard. The pkg version will also write stuff to your "vanilla" install, which we'd rather avoid.

 

- A last ditch effort would be to try some of the nvinjectors circulating around. Some people report some success with them, but I never played with it much. When I did, it didn't work so I moved on to nvkush, which did - and I didn't look back. I also don't think this is the most desirable approach because of the same reasons nvkush is not. But if nothing else works and this does - what can I say?

 

I'd bet a case of really good beer that the first person to contribute a working dsdt.aml to this project for the D820/Nvidia will be worshiped by other D820/nvidia owners.

 

I'd also like to see the same for the other configurations of D620, D630, D820 and D830s out there. That's 4 models with 2 graphics options, representing a ton of machines sold that all have really good potential as hackbooks.

 

Wanted: dsdt experts. No pay, bad hours and must be able to take a lot of verbal abuse while exercising heroic patience. Apply within.

[leppy700m]

I spotted a deal on DW 1490 cards - these are the same cards used in D620's by Dell - and they are known to work out of the box for leopard.

 

$14.99 including shipping from a shipper in the states isn't awful.

 

DW 1490

[StevoDevo]

Hi Leppy,

 

I have 10.5.8 up and running perfectly now on my D620! Thanks! I also have a D820 that I'd like to install 10.5.8 on too. It also has the nVidia card - would your boot CD work on the D820 as well?

 

Steve

[leppy700m]

Hi Leppy,

 

I have 10.5.8 up and running perfectly now on my D620! Thanks! I also have a D820 that I'd like to install 10.5.8 on too. It also has the nVidia card - would your boot CD work on the D820 as well?

 

Steve

 

According to Fox, the install CD works, but the nvidia 620 patch doesn't, resulting in non-hardware accelerated graphics in lower resolution. Scroll up and read my last reply to Fox - you two are going down the same road on the same machine. My approach to Nvidia was to use the graphics detector built into Chameleon. It works on Nvidia 620's and 630's, but fails on Fox's D820. I don't have any other reports back for 820s yet.

 

I'd try installing the new version of Chameleon (RC3) from Voodoo instead of the one on the CD. That might fix the autodetect for the D820's Nvidia setup. That would be ideal.

 

Another thing to be aware of is that about half of those shipped with Intel wifi cards. If yours was supplied with a Dell wireless card, your wifi should be okay, otherwise, find yourself a cheap Dell/Broadcom DW1490 or 1500/1510 on Ebay.

[StevoDevo]

Leppy - thanks for the notes above. I'll give it a go on the D820.

 

I have another question. I'm trying to install a XP virtual machine and everytime I try to launch it MacOS crashes. This happens right after the VM software (I've tried both Fusion and Parallels) tries to launch the guest OS.

 

Any ideas?

 

Leppy - one more question. I just noticed that my install only has one core enabled. Not sure when this changed, but any ideas on how to get the other core running?

[leppy700m]

Leppy - thanks for the notes above. I'll give it a go on the D820.

 

I have another question. I'm trying to install a XP virtual machine and everytime I try to launch it MacOS crashes. This happens right after the VM software (I've tried both Fusion and Parallels) tries to launch the guest OS.

 

Any ideas?

 

Leppy - one more question. I just noticed that my install only has one core enabled. Not sure when this changed, but any ideas on how to get the other core running?

 

I haven't tried VMs, but if your kernel is not in sync with your version, you'll get all kinds of issues.

 

If you're running 10.5.8, the patched dual core kernel was not available when I released that code. See the notes.

 

Since then, the kernel source was released and a kernel for 10.5.8 is available here . To enable dual core in 10.5.8, get the patched kernel, un-archive it, and place mach_kernel in /Extra

 

Make sure your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist looks like this:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>/Extra/mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-tscsync</string>

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>y</string>

<key>Legacy Logo</key>

<string>yes</string>

</dict>

</plist>

 

 

Repair permissions from terminal with sudo chown -R root:wheel /Extra

[StevoDevo]

I haven't tried VMs, but if your kernel is not in sync with your version, you'll get all kinds of issues.

 

If you're running 10.5.8, the patched dual core kernel was not available when I released that code. See the notes.

 

Since then, the kernel source was released and a kernel for 10.5.8 is available here . To enable dual core in 10.5.8, get the patched kernel, un-archive it, and place mach_kernel in /Extra

 

Make sure your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist looks like this:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>/Extra/mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-tscsync</string>

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>y</string>

<key>Legacy Logo</key>

<string>yes</string>

</dict>

</plist>

 

 

Repair permissions from terminal with sudo chown -R root:wheel /Extra

 

Hi Leppy - I just tried this and I'm still stuck with a single core. I copied the mach_kernel file into /Extra and then did the chown above and rebooted and I'm still single cored.

 

Any ideas on other things I can check?

[leppy700m]

Hi Leppy - I just tried this and I'm still stuck with a single core. I copied the mach_kernel file into /Extra and then did the chown above and rebooted and I'm still single cored.

 

Any ideas on other things I can check?

 

 

post your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist

[timmy1980]

Hi, This guide looks awesome and I was/am very excited about trying it. However.. I seem to falling at a fairly early hurdle!!! I am sure I have missed something REALLY obvious but, I have downloaded and burned the .iso and booted from this and then inserted my genuine 10.5.6 install DVD and after the first point where you select your language I get a prompt saying:

 

"Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer." OK or Restart.

 

If I click OK I can run disk utility and parttition my disk which I have done and rebooed but still the same.

 

I hav re-downloaded the .iso and burned it at a lower speed, I have reset BIOS defaults to no avail.

 

I have a d620 with intel GMA950 and Broadcom wifi (which is recognised by setup)

 

Please, I f I am being stupid and have miss read something then go easy on me!

 

Thanks for any help.

[timmy1980]

What type of genuine OS X install DVD do you have? Was it shipped with a system or is it a retail DVD? Boot-132 ONLY works with a RETAIL DVD and will NOT work with an OS DVD supplied with a system. They are different.

 

Then thats it. sorry It does say retail in your guide, mine came with my macbook. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

Time to do some more reading and have a play around with my retail snow Leopard disk!

 

Thanks again.

[leppy700m]

Hi, This guide looks awesome and I was/am very excited about trying it. However.. I seem to falling at a fairly early hurdle!!! I am sure I have missed something REALLY obvious but, I have downloaded and burned the .iso and booted from this and then inserted my genuine 10.5.6 install DVD and after the first point where you select your language I get a prompt saying:

 

"Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer." OK or Restart.

 

If I click OK I can run disk utility and parttition my disk which I have done and rebooed but still the same.

 

I hav re-downloaded the .iso and burned it at a lower speed, I have reset BIOS defaults to no avail.

 

I have a d620 with intel GMA950 and Broadcom wifi (which is recognised by setup)

 

Please, I f I am being stupid and have miss read something then go easy on me!

 

Thanks for any help.

 

What type of genuine OS X install DVD do you have? Was it shipped with a system or is it a retail DVD? Boot-132 ONLY works with a RETAIL DVD and will NOT work with an OS DVD supplied with an apple computer. They are different.

[StevoDevo]

post your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist

 

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>/Extra/mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-tscsync</string>

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>y</string>

<key>Legacy Logo</key>

<string>yes</string>

</dict>

</plist>

[StevoDevo]

I know! It's driving me crazy! Not sure what the problem is. Oh well - I'm going to install on my D820 and see how that goes next!

 

How does Snow Leopard work on the D620? Have you had any success with that yet?

[leppy700m]

Then thats it. sorry It does say retail in your guide, mine came with my macbook. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

Time to do some more reading and have a play around with my retail snow Leopard disk!

 

Thanks again.

 

Snow Leopard doesn't work with BOOT-132. If you have a 16GB flash drive, you can partition it, install Chameleon RC3 on that and move the contents of the DVD to the flash drive. You'd have to play with that config - I haven't got that far yet

 

 

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>/Extra/mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-tscsync</string>

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>y</string>

<key>Legacy Logo</key>

<string>yes</string>

</dict>

</plist>

 

Then you should have 2 cores functional as long as you are not booting from the cd. Edit: One more thing you could check is your CMOS settings. Make sure (double check) both cores are enabled before you boot.

[StevoDevo]

I took my D620 install drive running 10.5.8 and put it in my D820 and it worked great - including the nVidia card - I'm running at 1920 x 1200! Happy day! Wireless works great too! Just can't get the bloody key to the left of the number 1 key mapped correctly so I can switch between windows within an application!!

[leppy700m]

I took my D620 install drive running 10.5.8 and put it in my D820 and it worked great - including the nVidia card - I'm running at 1920 x 1200! Happy day! Wireless works great too! Just can't get the bloody key to the left of the number 1 key mapped correctly so I can switch between windows within an application!!

 

That is good news. That means the same Nvidia fix for D620 and D630 works on D820 - now if we could find someone to test with an Nvidia D830 we'd be in good shape for the whole series.

 

What about dual core processing on this machine?

 

How does Snow Leopard work on the D620? Have you had any success with that yet?

 

I'm still reading up on Snow Leopard.

[StevoDevo]

That is good news. That means the same Nvidia fix for D620 and D630 works on D820 - now if we could find someone to test with an Nvidia D830 we'd be in good shape for the whole series.

 

What about dual core processing on this machine?

 

Dual core works great - you're gonna laugh... I had the Dual Core support disabled in the BIOS on my D620 for some reason! Geez!

 

Another thing I've found on my D820 is that it won't 'sleep'. Any ideas there? I'm gonna ghost the disk image now and try and play around with some other options. Would an upgrade to Chameleon be worthwhile?

[hellken]

If you're running 10.5.8, the patched dual core kernel was not available when I released that code. See the notes.

 

Since then, the kernel source was released and a kernel for 10.5.8 is available here . To enable dual core in 10.5.8, get the patched kernel, un-archive it, and place mach_kernel in /Extra

 

Make sure your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist looks like this:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>/Extra/mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-tscsync</string>

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>y</string>

<key>Legacy Logo</key>

<string>yes</string>

</dict>

</plist>

 

 

Repair permissions from terminal with sudo chown -R root:wheel /Extra

 

This worked perfect for me on my d620, thank you so much! This guide is awesome and works great! I have a few issues that I cannot seem to find any answers to. If some of these issues are unable to be fixed at this time that is fine, but please let me know so I stop searching.

 

1. sleep mode does not work, tried a few of the ideas listed around but the machine only goes to sleep and will never wake back up. I have to power off and then back on and I am good to go. For now I just have the machine set to never sleep, but would love to be able to not have to shutdown every day when I go from home to work and vice versa.

 

2. dual monitors when on a dock (d/port). I have the same experience where my digital monitor shows the boot process, but once OS X loads I am on the vga monitor. If I open my laptop I can have two monitors (vga external and laptop display), but I have these 2 very nice LCD monitors hooked up via d/port and would LOVE to get both of them to work. Any ideas?

 

3. General question, is it safe to run software update and apply updates? I am assuming that app updates are fine (ilife, etc...), but what about security updates that apple puts out? Stay away or install no problem?

 

My only other issue I have is no wireless (3945 boo) so I will just need to get the other card and that will start working, no big deal.

 

Thanks again for all your hard work on this setup. This is exactly what I need to get me going. I have been running stable on your setup for about a month now using the machine (at work even) for over 8 hours a day.

[leppy700m]

Dual core works great - you're gonna laugh... I had the Dual Core support disabled in the BIOS on my D620 for some reason! Geez!

 

Another thing I've found on my D820 is that it won't 'sleep'. Any ideas there? I'm gonna ghost the disk image now and try and play around with some other options. Would an upgrade to Chameleon be worthwhile?

 

You say BIOS - that's what I meant when I said CMOS. Glad it works. Were you able to get parallels working right?

 

For 10.5.x. - RC2 is fine for these machines. I don't see any need to go to RC3 until we go to 10.6.x.

 

Sleep is a known bug that I don't have a suitable solution for.

 

 

 

This worked perfect for me on my d620, thank you so much! This guide is awesome and works great! I have a few issues that I cannot seem to find any answers to. If some of these issues are unable to be fixed at this time that is fine, but please let me know so I stop searching.

 

1. sleep mode does not work, tried a few of the ideas listed around but the machine only goes to sleep and will never wake back up. I have to power off and then back on and I am good to go. For now I just have the machine set to never sleep, but would love to be able to not have to shutdown every day when I go from home to work and vice versa.

 

2. dual monitors when on a dock (d/port). I have the same experience where my digital monitor shows the boot process, but once OS X loads I am on the vga monitor. If I open my laptop I can have two monitors (vga external and laptop display), but I have these 2 very nice LCD monitors hooked up via d/port and would LOVE to get both of them to work. Any ideas?

 

3. General question, is it safe to run software update and apply updates? I am assuming that app updates are fine (ilife, etc...), but what about security updates that apple puts out? Stay away or install no problem?

 

My only other issue I have is no wireless (3945 boo) so I will just need to get the other card and that will start working, no big deal.

 

Thanks again for all your hard work on this setup. This is exactly what I need to get me going. I have been running stable on your setup for about a month now using the machine (at work even) for over 8 hours a day.

 

 

Sleep - I wish.

 

I have the same setup with a D/port - same result. I'd love to get it working, but since it's not how a MAC works, I don't know if it's possible. I *think* the deal is this: we can get as close as possible to functioning like a real mac, but since a real macbook doesn't have a docking station, hackbooks don't get to use docking stations without something special. Since the VGA external monitor is supported without the dock, I think the dock VGA port just inherits the VGA port properties of the laptop, and DVI doesn't exist because it doesn't exist on the laptop. Until WinXP, docking was kind of squirrely even in Win2K, requiring a separate hardware profile to make it work. In other words, I think dock specific hardware (like our DVI ports) require dock drivers first, and they don't exist in OSX. In WinXP on, they get hotloaded behind the scenes.

 

 

 

Updates should be fine with the Nvidia graphics as long as you make sure to run the right kernel patched for dual core operation. Intel GMA are a little dicier, but we have them worked out up to 10.5.8. Once you've updated to 10.5.8 successfully, software updates should be fine. I always run them and nothing has broken yet.

 

 

I am glad other people are finding this useful.

[g0nad]

First thing first. Great, and I mean great, job on this guide. If it wasn't for this guide I wouldn't be where I am today.

 

I followed your guide and it worked great! I have 10.5.7 installed and everything working! Now, the problem

 

I changed the permissions and installed the nVidia drivers, rebooted, and then no wireless :/ I believe someone else is having the same problem. If I run 10.5.7 pre upgrade script and reinstalled 10.5.7 the wireless starts working again but the graphics are back to pre nVidia shape.

 

Any ideas?