Vanilla install on Dell Vostro 1510 - 1520

[indianajones]

I spoke too soon

After installing windows on my second partition, I mysteriously started getting kernel panics. I had also previously updated OSX online to 10.6.2 and the system had booted fine.

So, I reinstalled SL and updated to 10.6.2 by downloading the combo from apple's website. Things are working again, but now my Nvidia 9300 is not being detected, no QE/CI

Here we go again.... by the way, the install tutorial should also list Voodoo Battery kext which is missing for now. I also did not install the VoodooPS2 and Voodoo Power kexts, and the preference panes either. The system is running pretty well for now... keeping my fingers crossed.

By the way anybody who updates to 10.6.2 should manually delete AppleHDA kext otherwise things get screwed up!

Hope this help someone....

Happy New Year

 

IJ

[dr.vox]

My AppleHDA.kext is still there and everything's been relatively stable for a while.

[indianajones]

@Dr. Vox: Wouldn't the two HDA kexts be incompatible? My system works fine with VoodooHDA only and had no sound when I left the AppleHDA in S/L/E directory.

@ Jason Parks: I experimented with several different installations and am running a system very close to a vanilla. The only changes to the vanilla required were:

1. /Extra directory had to be created. For some reason my first install created this directory but the second install did not. I had to manually create the directory.

2. Deleted AppleHDA from S/L/E and installed VoodooHDA, but as Dr. Vox points out some systems seem to work fine with both the files co-existing. I've had enough installs on my machine and don't want to carry out more experiments. Maybe somebody could give this a shot and see if the AppleHDA needs to remain or go?

3. VoodooBattery.kext installed into /S/L/E to get my battery meter to show up. Strangely it reports that my few month old battery needs to be replaced!

4. I ran the system fine for a whole day with the VoodooPS2 kext, but after umpteen changes my keyboard and touch pad stopped working this morning. Got the keyboard and touchpad back by installing the VoodooPS2 kext, I still don't know why I need it in the first place!

3. dsdt file moved to the / folder, also ran the system without this file and noticed that the computer model changed from a Vostro1520 to Mac Pro. Did not see any major changes to the system with or without.

 

The graphics card recognition is a pain in the butt, I spent several hours hopelessly googling for a SL driver. There is none beside SL already has support built into it. I just did not know how to make SL realize that I had a 9300M GS card with 256 MB RAM instead of 32 MB. It turned out to be pretty simple actually. Use "Graphics Mode"="1440x900x32" at Chameleons command prompt while booting and Viola the system recognizes my card with fully QE/CI. DVD player starts up just fine!

There seems to be an issue with the networking everynow and then. I am able to ping my router just fine but the web browsers think that the network is down. I suspect a DNS issue and will try to investigate. For those willing to help, could you guys please point your systems to use OpenDNS under Network Preferences/Advanced/DNS? I will post my findings in a day or two. The same {censored} would happen to me in Windoze and the problem went away after I pointed the system to use the OpenDNS IP address.

Dual boot SL and Vista: I formatted my HDD, partitioned it GUID/GPT style, installed SL, chameleon, installed Vista which broke my boot. Reinstalled Chameleon after booting from the SLboot CD, downloaded, installed and used gptsync to fix the MBR that Vista broke. System finally boots with Chameleon 2RC3 and dual boot capability!

A big thanks to all the folks who've made SL on our systems a reality, and to the endless folks who test out the gazzillion ways to make and break the sytem!

Happy New Year to everybody!

 

IJ

[dr.vox]

@IJ: you'd think so, re: AppleHDA conflicting with Voodoo audio, but it works fine, no apparent issues.

 

That's weird about the boot flag fixing graphics card recognition. Have you just put it in com.apple.boot.plist? Sophio, you should try this, though I thought you already had.

 

Wireless issues: try the wireless kext I posted a page or two back, see if you're still having issues with that. Sounds like it's probably a router issue, though, not OS X.

 

Dual boot: you formatted GUID? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure Windows won't install on GUID...

 

Good to hear you have a working install again though.

[indianajones]

@IJ: you'd think so, re: AppleHDA conflicting with Voodoo audio, but it works fine, no apparent issues.

 

That's weird about the boot flag fixing graphics card recognition. Have you just put it in com.apple.boot.plist? Sophio, you should try this, though I thought you already had.

 

Wireless issues: try the wireless kext I posted a page or two back, see if you're still having issues with that. Sounds like it's probably a router issue, though, not OS X.

 

Dual boot: you formatted GUID? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure Windows won't install on GUID...

 

Good to hear you have a working install again though.

 

@Dr.Vox: I thought about adding the Graphics to the boot.plist, but found the system boots fine in 1440x900 without the flag. Therefore for the moment I have no change to the boot.plist. On the other hand I'm interested to know why the system is restricted to boot in i386 or 32 bit mode.

 

I'm positive on the GUID and lot of people have the misconception baout Windows not installing. Vista installed just fine, but screwed my MBR. Thankfully gptsync is there to save the day. I now boot my GUID disk using Chameleon 2RC3, no problems for now!

Thanks for the pointer, I'll try the wireless kext and see if the system behaves any different.

Happy New Year again

 

IJ

[indianajones]

Folks interested in running the x86_64 bit version of SL:

 

The system boots up fine with the 64 bit kernel, however the sound (VoodooHDA) and keyboard and trackpad (VoodooPS2..) does not work. I managed to get the sound working by installing a 32/64 bit kext but the volume could not be controlled from the menu bar. A seperate preference pane is required which does not seem to be able to use the Vostros volume and mute buttons either.

The 64 bit PS2 kext also requires an additional AppleACPI NUBS kext to be installed.

I wanted my system to remain as close as possible to a Vanilla, so I decided not to take the 64 bit route at this time.

I did not notice any increase in speed with the x86_64 kernel either but I did not test it a great deal either.

 

IJ

[den_breacker]

can you please tell me what you did exactly? my 10.6.2 broke everything on my 1510

had to reinstall again

 

almost working fine now with 10.6.0, but a funny thing, the eject icon on the top bar is missing.

any suggestion?

Just delete the SleepEnabler.kext :-) Then you can update to 10.6.2

[dr.vox]

But you don't have an MBR if you're using GUID...? They're mutually exclusive. You use either MBR, GUID, or the old Apple Partition Table or whatever it is, which is for PPC and no hackintoshes can use, of course.

 

The sound thing is because there's not a modded version of Voodoo which we need for the system to recognise our sound (using PCIM as the main sound source/input).

 

I doubt running an entirely 64-bit system is worth the troubles at the minute...

And besides... aren't most of your processes 64-bit anyway?

 

 

Edit: anyone got any ideas about preventing the laptop from sleeping when you close the lid? Really annoying.

 

Also, is there any way to get multitouch for the trackpad?

 

Aaand does anyone have support for the external VGA port?

[indianajones]

Dr. Vox,

I formatted my hard drive using the OSX installed and selected GUID style partition. Once the install was done and confirmed working, I installed Chameleon 2RC3 and the other kexts.

I then installed Vista on the other partition and it ofcourse screwed up the MBR. I had to use GPTsync to fix the MBR to allow Chameleon to load.

I guess my configuration is called a GPT/MBR hybrid. Here's the output from fdisk as well as gpt:

 

bash-3.2# fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 38913/255/63 [625142448 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 409639] GPT

2: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 195318232] HFS+

3: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 195991552 - 429150208] NTFS

4: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 625141760 - 688] GPT

 

bash-3.2# gpt -rv show /dev/disk0

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=320072933376; sectorsize=512; blocks=625142448

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

start size index contents

0 1 MBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 195318232 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

195727872 263680

195991552 429150208 3 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

625141760 655

625142415 32 Sec GPT table

625142447 1 Sec GPT header

 

Here's what the gptsync utility describes itself as:

bash-3.2# gptsync --help

gptsync 0.2

 

Usage: gptsync [OPTION]... DEVICE [PARTITION[+/-[TYPE]]] ...

 

gptsync fill hybrid MBR of GPT drive DEVICE.

 

Specified partitions will be a part of hybrid MBR. Up to 3 partitions are allowed.

+ means that partition is active (only one partition can be active).

TYPE is an MBR hexadecimal type (use -t option to list recognized types).

 

Valid options:

-e, --empty create an MBR containing only the EFI Protective partition

-n, --nofill don't try to protect unused partition

-t, --types list the MBR recognized type codes

-h, --help display this message and exit

-V, --version print version information and exit

 

example: sudo ./gptsync /dev/disk1 1 2+af

 

I hope this makes helps! Let me know if you need any other output or anything else!

 

IJ

[dr.vox]

Hmm, interesting...

Also I forgot, of course there are MBRs in GUID/GPT... thinking of something else.

 

So you're saying I could still install Windows on a partition without having to reinstall Snow Leo...

I'm interested in doing this... any chance you can write up a quick guide and tell me which resources I'll need?

 

V1520:~ Dom$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
  #:					   TYPE NAME					SIZE	   IDENTIFIER
  0:	  GUID_partition_scheme						*320.1 GB   disk0
  1:						EFI						 209.7 MB   disk0s1
  2:				  Apple_HFS Leopard				 21.5 GB	disk0s2
  3:				  Apple_HFS Snow					190.6 GB   disk0s3
  4:				  Apple_HFS Media HD				107.4 GB   disk0s4

 

That'll work alright, won't it? If I just install over Leopard or make a new partition by making Snow smaller.

 

EDIT: Hmm, this says XP isn't supported in GUID, but Vista and 7 are (that's good, I want to install 7).

 

edit2: What about this? Bootcamp for Hackintoshes? Worth trying? Easier? Harder?

[Jason Parks]

Edit: anyone got any ideas about preventing the laptop from sleeping when you close the lid? Really annoying.

 

Should be in power options Something like allow system to sleep when the lid closes or similar.

[dr.vox]

Don't see anything in System Preferences about that... care to show me where? :s

 

Edit: Yeah, I was right, there's no Sys Pref for it.

There is a terminal command for it, which works as far as I've tested.

(sudo pmset -a closelid 0 or something)

[indianajones]

@Dr Vox: Here is my install procedure. This might need to be tailored for your machine.

1. Booted the computer using the SLBoot image from Jason's link.

2. Several EBIOS read errors were generated and I believed that this was due to a bad CD. Burned another CD and tried, and still the same errors. I even burned a third CD thinking for some reason that the CD burning was not proper!

3. Noticed that the EBIOS read errors were continuing even after I had ejected the SLBoot CD which made me think that the errors might be on the HDD, I had previously seen garbage in gpt and inability to get gptsync to fix the problem.

4. Fired up GParted CD and deleted all partitions, created OSX and Windows partitions.

5. Rebooted from the SLBoot CD and finally booted all the way to the Chameleon GUI screen.

6. Inserted the OSX install DVD and used the disk utility to format the OSX partition. Completed the OSX install after selecting the OSX partition.

7. Installed the kexts from Jason's tutorial after the OSX install was completed and I got to the Desktop. Note I did not install the VoodooPower kext or the preference panes and I did install the VoodooBattery kext that's missing from Jason's tutorial. Without this kext, the battery does not show up.

8. Installed the Chameleon 2RC3 bootloader in its default location (OSX drive). Note this installs the bulk of the Chameleon files on the OSX drive and a small portion on the MBR. The MBR is accessed by the BIOS and the PC will not boot without the information on the MBR.

9. Rebooted and had bootup failure with the boot process failing at the screen with the silver apple and the rotating wheel.

10. Noticed that the DVD was being accessed prior to the boot process failing and decided to stick in the OSX install DVD just on a hunch. The OSX installation finally booted with the DVD in place, I had not reason why since all the files should have been on the drive. This appears to be required during the first boot only and might be related to OSX verifying that the DVD is genuine, although this is only a pure guess.

11. Verified that the OSX installation worked fine. Downloaded the 10.6.2 update combo and applied it. Note my installation experienced a kernel panic after I updated using the software update initially. No such problems after I downloaded the combo and installed manually.

12. Rebooted the PC and inserted the Vista install CD, selected the windows partition and completed the windows install. As expected, Vista does not check for other OSes and installed its boot loader on the MBR thus screwing up the OSX boot loader.

14. Rebooted the computer several times as Vista drivers were installed.

15. Inserted the SLBoot CD when Vista install was finally done. The boot CD allowed the system to boot the OSX partition since the MBR was already screwed by Vista. I could have used BCDedit or something similar but I hate the windows boot loader and decided not to spend any of my time fixing it.

16. Downloaded gptsync utility for OSX and installed it. Note the Linux gptsync did not work for some reason.

17. Used gptsync to fix the MBR which allowed Chameleon to boot. Chameleon automatically detected a Windows installation and boots Vista just fine.

18. Sat back and drank my favorite beverage.... a Miller Genuine Draught Beer!

19. Started working on my linux server to allow time machine to backup to the linux server's 1TB RAID array. That's a story for another day!

 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need anything else, I might take a day or two to respond.

Good Luck

 

IJ

 

@Dr. Vox: Forgot to answer part of your question!

If you're happy with SL and can sacrifice the Leopard partition, I'd use disk utility and format the Leopard partition to Windows.

Boot using Vista/Windows 7 CD and choose the partition you just formatted. To be safe, I'd reformat the partition using the installer if possible. DO NOT TOUCH THE PARTITION TABLE or you risk losing the complete drive!

Allow Windoze to completed its install process.

Use the SLBoot CD to boot the OSX partition. Download and install the gptsync installer. Note the installer appears to do nothing, but actually it installs the gptsync command into the system that can be accessed from the command line in a terminal just like ls or fdisk.

Fire up gpt and read its options. In my case all I had to do was restore the MBR.

Reboot your machine and enjoy!

[dr.vox]

Oh great, cheers, thanks for that, IJ.

Snow day, so I might try that later. Currently trying to install OS X on a friend's laptop. D:

[Jason Parks]

Don't see anything in System Preferences about that... care to show me where? :s

 

Edit: Yeah, I was right, there's no Sys Pref for it.

There is a terminal command for it, which works as far as I've tested.

(sudo pmset -a closelid 0 or something)

 

Not sure, because mine does not go to sleep when I close the lid. You can look for a program called insomniax, which does work under Snow Leo and has the ability to start at run time and either enable or disable sleep

[dr.vox]

Yeah I read about insomniax but didn't bother to download because that terminal command did exactly what I wanted.

Thanks anyway though.

 

Long stretch here: I'm sticking OS X on a friend's laptop, and everything is working except the Battery and the Intel GMA 4500 M. :\ Does anyone know anything about the 4500 (primary concern) in Snow Leo? I can't find much, and what I can find hasn't yet worked. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[sonikku x]

Yeah I read about insomniax but didn't bother to download because that terminal command did exactly what I wanted.

Thanks anyway though.

 

Long stretch here: I'm sticking OS X on a friend's laptop, and everything is working except the Battery and the Intel GMA 4500 M. :\ Does anyone know anything about the 4500 (primary concern) in Snow Leo? I can't find much, and what I can find hasn't yet worked. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi dr. vox... On my Dell Vostro 1520, updated to 10.6.2 I installed this http://www.superhai.com/darwin.html to work the battery. So far, Im not sure If it's accurate but my laptop is fully charged and It says 2 hours and 10 minutes left. I backed up my partition which are both on my external hd, I used disk utility to resize the original partition and I've added another partition. I then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my partition unless something went wrong, and I need to use Snow Boot to get into my backed up partition. My updated snow leopard from 10.6.0 to 10.6.2 by combo update but i noticed it gave me a kernel panic error. This was caused by a lack of sleepenabler kext in the extra folder and the extensions. So I downloaded the 10.6.2 SleepEnabler version from the other partiition, logged in to the stuffed original partition and entered those files in extra folder in the MacintoshHD, and in the Extension folder. Booted into the original partition, success! Now if you want sound enabled, just remove appleHDA and keep VoodooHDA in. Backup all those files in-case something goes wrong. Internet WIFI sometimes doesnt work, a kext repair from the utillity, a permission repair and a restart fixes this temporarily though. Anyways, enjoy your day (or night)

 

Btw, the graphics card Intel 4500MHD is not compatible with OS X yet, but browse around the forum and you'll see that they are "early" developing a kext for it. So we will all be patient for that Because I need that kext anyway.

[triggerbg]

I'm in single user mode off Chameleon, but neither USB nor built in mouse/keyboard are working. They worked ONCE in my initial OS X install, first boot, but not after a reboot. I am booting through slboot.iso

 

Any hints?

 

I also need some clairifcation as to what is referring to: "set hdd to read-write mode" I don't see that mentioned in posts or initial instructiosn.

 

Hi John,

 

after I booted in single user mode I wasn't able to write to the filesystem, so I had to set the file system to read-write mode. How to set this mode is shown after the boot in single user mode. I found this instruction in another thread.

[mr sub]

Hey guys

 

I have ideneb version of mac and i wanna know can i use this Guide for install ( my laptop vostro 1520 )

also excuse me for english

[dr.vox]

@sonniku: Thanks, but I've already got 10.6.2 working fine on my Vostro, I was asking about a friend's laptop (not a Dell). I know there's development going on for the 4500 but I need some help & currently working methods; all I've tried so far has failed.

 

@mr sub: iDeneb is Leopard (10.5). This guide is for Snow Leopard (10.6).

Also it's Mac OS or OS X, not 'mac'.

[Jason Parks]

Hey guys

 

I have ideneb version of mac and i wanna know can i use this Guide for install ( my laptop vostro 1520 )

also excuse me for english

 

All you can do is try, but since this guide is specifically for that hardware, I would say you would have a pretty good chance of it working.

[mr sub]

i installed ideneb 10.5.7 but when i boot Snowboot after a few min it shows up apple label and i wait........

 

what s problem with it ? can't it boot automatic

 

what should i do ?

[dr.vox]

iDeneb does not need Snowboot.

You're installing Leopard (10.5), not Snow Leopard (10.6) and this guide is meant for Snow Leopard.

 

Also, if you really must insist on using Leopard, I would recommend iAtkos 7i, which I know to work well with the Vostro 1520.

[dr.vox]

@IndianaJones: Ok, I'm trying this dual booting thing and I'm having problems.

I've got three partitions on a GPT: first is Leopard, second is Snow, third is Windows (WIn7 on NTFS).

After I installed Win7 it'd go straight to the Windows bootloader, meaning I couldn't boot OS X without the SnowBoot disc. I tried gptsync (wasn't too sure exactly how to use it, but I think gptsync /dev/disk0 is right, yeah?) from Leopard, Snow Leopard and the iATkos 7i install disc, and all three times it said the tables were synced and nothing needed to be done, but it was still booting straight to the Win7 bootloader. One thing I noticed was fdisk reported only the Win7 partition as active.

I tried installing Chameleon 2 RC3 from both Leopard and Snow over those two partitions, but it didn't change anything.

So I installed Cham 2 from the iAtkos 7i install disc, which did work, but then I couldn't boot Win7. Tried using the WIn7 repair feature and it just says it can't do anything.

And now I can't boot Snow Leo either, it just hangs during verbose mode in Darwin...

 

Any help, please?

 

EDIT: Think I might have done it. This guide seems to be a good one to go by.

I'd forgotten how important the active partition was.

Although somehow, I ended up not needing to use gptsync...

[Jason Parks]

iDeneb does not need Snowboot.

You're installing Leopard (10.5), not Snow Leopard (10.6) and this guide is meant for Snow Leopard.

 

Also, if you really must insist on using Leopard, I would recommend iAtkos 7i, which I know to work well with the Vostro 1520.

 

I must have misread, thought he was going from iDeneb to Snow Leo. Actually you should be able to do a pretty vannilla install using the retail Leopard disk as well. consult this thread

( http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97966 ) and look for grub-dfe.iso and you should be able to boot the retail Leopard disk and after install use the Dell Laptop Post intaller for any missing kext. I think you also need voodoo ps2 and voodoo hda as well as some solution for graphics such as efi string or an enabler like nvkush etc.