Snow Leopard on the Pavilion Series (AMD)

[Joomluh12]

I'm basically starting this thread as a log of my experience and for a reference page. You can also log yours as well for different models as well as your experience.

 

System Specifications

• HP Pavilion dv6607rs
  
• Chipset: nForce 630m/i (applications have told me 560i though)
  
• Hard Disk: Hitachi 160 GB S-ATA
  
• GPU: GeForce 7150m
  
• Input: Synaptics Touchpad/standard US 101-102 character keyboard
  
• Processor: AMD Athalon x2 TK-55
  
• Sound: Conexant HD Audio
  
• Locked Phoenix BIOS F.31 (this means that there is no advanced menu available meaning I can't change my hard drive preference - I'll be updating to F.34 soon in hopes that an advanced menu will be added)
  

Past Experience

 

Most distrobutions that I've used always failed due to the fact that Disk Utility never recognizing my hard drive. When I saw that, I just gave up. The closest I got to installing was with Leo4All v4. DU would see my HD but when beginning the partition process, it would always time out and corrupt the partition table. Thinking DU wouldn't worked, I used GParted instead to format my drive to HFS+. The installer noticed it right at the beginning. After customizing my selection for install, I began the installation. About 5 minutes into the install, it would fail every time and tell me to reboot (it would also corrupt the partition). Other distros didn't even make it this far.

 

Current Location

 

I decided to take a break from trying so much and pursued Linux for a couple years. After giving Snow Leopard to get settled in and allow the community to get its hands on it, I got back in.

 

Installer of Choice: Snow Leopard 10.6 retail with ModUSB by NawCom on an 8 GB SanDisk Cruzer

 

After going through the process of creating a bootable USB with a retail disc, I was eager to get started. Immediately after booting up, I got a kernel panic. The Firewire kexts were causing it. Simple fix; just remove them. I also added mach_kernel.test7 to the USB which gave me better results.

 

After fixing the KP issue, I was finally able to get to the installer. I accepted the EULA and went to Disk Utility to format my drive. Once again, my hard drive is not listed on the left pane. Now then, I've been adding many kexts (Medevil's, SuperATA, an "optimized" ATA kext SL) to E/E in hopes that it would fix the issue but so far it has not. I'm still in search of a fix for this because I've been waiting for years to get this on my laptop. I'm hoping someone here has an available solution.