Help on installing SL 10.6.x on Old Laptop with NO AHCI

[egnm1969]

Hi all,

I wonder if someone can help me with my complicated dilemma...

I've an old Sony Vaio laptop (VGN-FS115S - Intel Pentium M740 1.73ghz processor/1GB Memory/ICH6/SSE2) which has NO AHCI/Extended IDE options in the Bios (therefore PATA HD & DVD drive) & obviously, no SATA drives. It doesn't support booting off USB sticks/external HD's, but I found a way around this using a bootcd called "PlopManager".

This laptop has been happily running iDeneb 10.5.8 for the last 2 years with no problem, but now I've decided to try & upgrade to SL 10.6.x due to the fact that everything that's being released is now based for SL than good old Leopard, and because I've seen & read posts from others with equally old machines, having had some success.

I have tried various installs but all seem to fail. Here's what I've tried so far:

 

1) iPortable Snow 10.6.2 - When I installed this to a USB stick & booted from the "PlopManager" bootcd, it actually worked using either the default chocolate_kernel or the anv/legacy/blackknight kernel's. I've even found the kexts that support my Audio/Video & Network cards & they all work !! I can even clone this install over my 10.5.8 HD & it continues to work, but with 1 major problem on both the USB stick & the 10.5.8 HD... everytime I open System Preferences I get a double kernel panic !!

Now I read on the forums here that if I delete the "com.apple.systempreferences.plist" this would fix the problem... I tried that & it does work & I can quite happily open/close System Preferences with no problem BUT for only that session ! When I reboot & try to open System Preferences again, the double kernel panic returns (regardless of which kernel I'm using BTW). Now having to delete the prefs file everytime is not practical, so if anyone has any ideas how to finally fix this that would be great, as this would be the quickest fix.

 

2) I've tried Hazard's 10.6.1/10.6.2 SSE2 SSE3 & iAtkos S3 v2 installs, but when I come to run the installers, both come up with the dreaded "Still waiting for the root device" error message & that's where it stops.

 

3) I've tried using the Retail 10.6.3 disc with Empire EFI bootcd's & MyHack bootloaders, but unfortunately I either get the "Still waiting for the root device" or they freeze when the "Error: Firewire unable to determine security-mode" message appears.

 

For the last 2 options I've tried adding various kexts to get them working (thanks to various posts here suggesting advice to others...) like AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext, IOATAFamily.kext & JMicron36xATA.kext, but with no luck.

 

So there you have it. If anyone can help me in getting one of these working, I'd really appreciate it !

 

Thanks

 

:-)

 

P.S.: I've included a screen capture of Hardware Info, so you can see my laptops specs...