Lenovo IdeaPad Y730

[Elizle]

Has anyone been able to install Snow Leopard on the IdeaPad y730. If not I am ready to do some work with people and write up what they need.

[ceratophyllum]

Has anyone been able to install Snow Leopard on the IdeaPad y730. If not I am ready to do some work with people and write up what they need.

 

 

 

 

I love this laptop! It puts macbooks to shame with its decent non-integrated video card and quiet, even under high load, fans. And its huge 17" screen rocks!  

 

Summary:

 

 

Ethernet/wireless and Time Machine do not work.  I've hunted around and it looks to me like it would be simplest just to buy a USB wifi for like $12 on eBay.

 

DVDROM drive, optiarc 7560 does not seem to work: probably ATA. Not sure what to do about this.

 

Help? 

 

Installation:

 

Linux/GRUB was there first.  I shrunk my linux etx4 partition with gparted and created a second, empty partition on the Y730's internal hard drive.

I used the myHack installer to copy SL-retail 6.0 installer disk to a USB drive for the install. Booted from the USB drive no problem and install went ok. I have 2 partitions on my internal hard disk: Mint linux and OS X. I'm using MBR. I was scared of hosing the partition table and grub bootloader so I first installed to ANOTHER external hard disk. Once I was satisfied that OS X would boot from the external hard disk partition, I "restored" using Disk Utility to my second internal partition. (This is convoluted, but I really didn't want to lose my Mint Linux partition and backup/restore is a PITA. Also, the Installer will not install to a drive that does not have GPT partition table.) GRUB autodetected the presence of the "restored" Snow Leopard partition and boots it no problem. I think there are some Mint/ubuntu specific scripts grub is using to do this: I did nothing at all and OS X SL was on my grub menu when I rebooted after the "restore."

 

I'm not sure what the default is, but make sure you are running the 32-bit kernel. (GRUB has 2 entries, to choose to boot 64 or 32 bit.) Lots of stuff does not work in 64-bit, even though some drivers sites say that 64-bit is supported.

 

ATI Video driver kernel panic:

 

When I first tried to boot, I got a kernel panic when it tried to load ATIX2000 kext. So I deleted it and put this Radeon HD driver in S/L/E folder. Make sure to run pfix, a util included with myHack, when you change anything in S/L/E folder. When you reboot you should have a nice 1440x900 screen with 3D effects fast and working, but a goofed up looking square mouse cursor.

 

Garbled mouse cursor fix:

 

Show the contents of the RadeonHD.kext. Open the info.plist file and change <true/> to </false> under the enableHWCursor key. Save the file, pfix, and reboot.

 

VoodooHDA required for sound:

 

Out of the box, there is no sound. Put the VoodooHDA kext in the S/L/E folder and run pfix.

Trackpad/keyboard working:

 

Use the appleps2controller kext included in myHack.

 

 

 

 

Updates hazardous due to ATIX2000:

 

I installed the 10.6.4 combo update and got a KP right as it started to reboot. I *think* 10.6.4 installed completely.  The KP was because the update put a new copy of ATIX2000 kext in S/L/E. I deleted it and all was well again. Is there some way to blacklist a kext in SnowLeopard?