Help Please: Dell M90 Snow Leopard Install

[total_newbie]

Any help with this would be great.

 

I know zilch about programming, but can follow directions.

 

I am trying to install Snow Leopard onto a Dell M90

 

Dell M90 specs: (see attached jpeg for Empire EFI's list of hardware)

Core 2 Duo 2.33 MHz

Intel Motherboard (82801G ?)

nVidia Quadro 2500M Vid Card (512 MB)

Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5752 Ethernet

4 GB Ram

SATA Drive

Display is 1920x1200

 

 

I have tried:

Rebel EFI Demo - Kernel Panic at start, never reaches Snow Leopard install screen.

Snow Leopard Universal Boot Disk v3.5 - Installs, but when restarts crashes at booting.

Empire EFI & Snow Leopard Install- Installed and boots, but very slow, nothing works except USB ports and DVD drive. Display is at low resolution. Only recognizes 1 GB of RAM. Have to use external keyboard and mouse. No ethernet, audio.

Tried using the UIInstaller (for leopard) on the Empire EFI & Snow Leopard install, but it failed to boot afterwards.

 

So, any suggestions? Please be specific. If you say "find the proper kexts", OK, but then what do I do with them? How do I install them? Which ones should I use?

 

Ideally I would love to use a simple setup, like the Universal Boot Disk, but have it work.

 

Also, I want to know if it is possible to install OS X on one half of a partition, and Vista on the other, and have the Vista be rock solid (as much as it would be without OS X on the other partition). Thanks.

[total_newbie]

Anyone?

[chrisbraddock]

I am trying to install Snow Leopard onto a Dell M90

 

I'm working on the same thing. My hardware probably isn't all identical to yours (e.g. I have a FX 1500m).

 

Empire EFI & Snow Leopard Install- Installed and boots, but very slow

 

Insert option "use cpus=1" @ Chameleon bootloader screen.

 

nothing works except USB ports and DVD drive. Display is at low resolution. Only recognizes 1 GB of RAM. Have to use external keyboard and mouse. No ethernet, audio.

 

I'm working on all this now. At this point I'm able to boot to SL from the hard drive and I have 1900x1200 resolution (both thanks to [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]).

[aeondubs]

use EFI 10.6.3 Boot disk and [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] afterwards.

kexts needed:

 

-NVEnabler

-VoodooHDA

 

boot with cpus=1 otherwise unresponsive gui (anyone know how to get around this pls post)

 

thanks

[idefix09152006]

Rebel EFI Demo - Kernel Panic at start, never reaches Snow Leopard install screen.

i know why... the rebel only runs if the opt. drive is sata too. i think your dvd is ide, how in my dell xps m1710.

 

@ chris working on bcm 5752 too ???

[madmatt]

i know why... the rebel only runs if the opt. drive is sata too. i think your dvd is ide, how in my dell xps m1710.

 

@ chris working on bcm 5752 too ???

 

 

Hey guys,

I have been working in the past couple of days to try and set up a m90 with 3GB of ram and an Nvidia Quadro FX2500m (512MB vram)

These are the things that worked for me (didn't write down what I did and proceeded by trial and error):

 

Before install: Disable second core in the BIOS

 

Install:

Boot using Empire EFI 1.0.85 R2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?thd5nmo2oyn)

After the empireefi cd has booted eject it, insert a copy of Retail SL install disk (I used 10.6.0 retail) and hit f5 ... install completed smoothly for me.

 

Once the install was done, I had to boot again with the empireefi cd and choose the hd where I installed the system.

 

After that, I used [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] to install some extra extensions:

NullCPUPowerManagement

VoodooHDA

VoodooBattery

OpenHaltRestart

 

Then I copied a couple from the preboot.dmg kexts on the empire efi cd to /Extra/Extensions/:

JMicron***

AHCIPortInjector

LegacyAppleRTC*

IOATA***

IOAHCI*

fakesmc

 

 

and to /System/Library/Extensions/

VoodooPS2Controller - AppleACPIPS2Nub

 

At this point I ran Kext Utility (from [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]) to fix permissions and regen caches

 

And then I installed chameleon rc5 on the hd mbr

 

After doing all this I was able to boot without the Empire efi cd, had some audio, but no networking, trackpad working and resolution 1024x768, no QE/CI, and only one cpu working (if it doesn't boot because of complaints about wrong numbers of core, add cpus=1 to the boot command line)

 

Cpu fix:

Install VoodooTSCSync.kext in /Extra/Extensions (attached) and reenable the second core in bios (and remove cpus=1 in com.apple.Boot.plist if needed)

 

Lan Driver:

Install AplleBCM5751Ethernet kext in /System/Library/Extensions/ (attached)

 

Wifi Driver: I cheated and replaced the intel 3945g mini pci with a Dell 1510 (broadcom chipset, no driver needed) I had around

 

At this point I updated to 10.6.5 without any problem.

 

Video driver: this was a {censored} to get working:

1 - I could manage to have 1920x1200 but no qe/ci with an efi string and Graphicsenabler=no in com.apple.boot.plist: com.apple.Boot.plist.efi.txt (attached)

2 - Or I could enable graphicsenabler=yes (with no efi string) and have the boot complete to a blue screen with no interface

 

What I did was use NVEnabler in /Extra/Extensions, with a custom config in Info.plist (custom string for display-cfg entries to cope with the blue screen and/or black screen when enabling 1920x1200 and qe/ci plus bios rom for the quadro fx2500m in hex code, also in Info.plist) (attached) and this com.apple.Boot.plist:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>DropSSDT</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>/mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-v  arch=i386</string>
<key>Legacy Logo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>NVCAP_029a</key>
<string>04000000000003000c0000000000000700000000</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>1</string>
<key>UseNvidiaROM</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>VBIOS</key>
<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

 

After all this fiddling I have a working M90 updated to 10.6.5 with LAN, Wifi, 1920x1200 QE/CI working and tested (Front row working, flash working)

 

What still need working: sleep and display sleep: I couldn't manage to find a working DSDT for the M90 that wouldn't disable QE/CI, and that would make the M90 to go to sleep (and recover from sleep), and also putting the display to sleep will black it out and only a screen resolution change will have it come back to life (in an unstable state, 8 times out of 10 it will also log me out and kill all the running applications)

 

Apart from that I have been installing pretty much everything I need without any problem (<lightroom, Vmware fusion, IntelliJ Idea, openoffice). usb is working without any problem, haven't tried firewire yet, even the multimedia keys are working

 

Performance is good (for a core 2 duo@2ghz), video performance is excellent, temperatures are nominal (45-50 degrees when idle, fans runnin low, 50-60 degrees when under load, fans a little bit louder), system is stable (have been running it for a couple of days non stop, with an instance of sql server running in a vmware fusion and a java app using the db running in intelliJ .. while using lightroom just to give you an Idea)

 

As usual, this wouldn't have been possible without all the info available in this forum .. it just took me some time to gather it all together and make it work for my machine ...

 

Have fun

 

Mattia

VoodooTSCSync.kext.zip

AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext.zip

com.apple.Boot.plist.efi.txt

NVEnabler_64.kext.zip

[chrisbraddock]

It looks like I ended up splitting my info across two forums. Here's the most complete writeup of what I ended up with:

 

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?p=3851...22e175e4#p38519

[madmatt]

It looks like I ended up splitting my info across two forums. Here's the most complete writeup of what I ended up with:

 

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?p=3851...22e175e4#p38519

 

 

Thanks Chris, that was actually the post that got me started (again, after failing to use QE/CI successfully in 10.5.x).

I had the same problem the other guy in your thread posted about (blue screen flickering with stock nvenabler) probably due to the different video card (Quadro FX 2500M 512MB), and had to customize the info.plist in nvenabler in order to be able to boot successfully at 1920x1200 with QE/CI enabled.

[madmatt]

Hi,

kraftb asked for the whole Extra folder so I attached it, please note that it will probably enable qe/ci only for a Quadro FX 2500M (512MB)

 

Have fun

 

Mattia

Extra.zip

[madmatt]

Hi, again for kraftb, attached my ioreg dump with ioreg -l

info.txt