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[Guide] Dell XPS 15 L502X (Early 2011) Snow Leopard Install (possibly L702x too)

wen1

By wen1,
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owen77
owen77
Posted
Posted

Hi everyone,

 

I wanted to buy me a new Dell XPS 15 with a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphic card inside.

 

Now I wanted to ask if there have been some changes/news 'cause of the hardware that doesn't work.

In older guides I've read that

 

1. Wifi

2. Sleep

3. Nvidia Graphics

4. External display ports (miniDP, HDMI etc)

 

do not work. Has there been some development?

I really care about the graphic/resolution and that I can plug TFT display onto it. Wifi is not a big deal, sleep function would be nice to have.

 

Thx,

Owen

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darren cox
darren cox
Posted
Posted
1768071[/url]']

Wicked, can you link to the 702x thread, I can't seem to find it.

 

Oops the 701 thread! About 3 below this one use the v3 lion zip, use kext wizard to unpack the extensions.mkext and in a folder labels s/l/e you'll find the audio kexts.

Also sleep works with sleepenabler.kext wifi is sorted with a swap of cards, and with a bit of luck hdmi/GeForce will be working soon thanks to DoiX

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DoiX
DoiX
Posted
Posted

After another 24+ hours countless coffees and alcohol i managed to emulate proper "positioning" card should work all that remains is figuring how to simply activate it... but for now i need sleep!

 

Please keep me posted on the sound issue with l701x kexts.

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darren cox
darren cox
Posted
Posted

Got battery working by using 2 kexts posted earlier in the thread, now pretty much have a perfect system!

 

Regretting installing to a 64GB SSD though... How do people cope with that - My iTunes is like 70GB alone plus about 20GB pictures I have an external drive but it's a pain to keep connecting. I have the 500GB HDD from before so might attempt to clone over onto that, I'll lose a bit of speed but at least I can have everything available!

 

Fingers crossed it works...I don't think I'll remember the steps and files I used otherwise!

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amh10
amh10
Posted
Posted
Got battery working by using 2 kexts posted earlier in the thread, now pretty much have a perfect system!

 

Regretting installing to a 64GB SSD though... How do people cope with that - My iTunes is like 70GB alone plus about 20GB pictures I have an external drive but it's a pain to keep connecting. I have the 500GB HDD from before so might attempt to clone over onto that, I'll lose a bit of speed but at least I can have everything available!

 

Fingers crossed it works...I don't think I'll remember the steps and files I used otherwise!

 

Sorry, which two kexts??

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AKennedy_4
AKennedy_4
Posted
Posted

Alright so I got sound to work via that l702 v3 pack! But for some reason the trackpad still cant be recognized and the battery wont either. It also seems like I'm going to have to manually patch CPU power managment cause it wont install through the pack

 

Install procedure:

1) Set SMBios to 8,2

2) Install everything except for audio in pack, then use kext wizard to install audio from other pack

3) Use kext utility

4) repair permissions in disk utility

 

Also it doesnt seem like the extensions.mkext is needed for lion. Anyone confirm this?

 

EDIT: Got battery working using the voodoobattery from the L502x pack DoiX originally posted. Trackpad still not registering in prepanes but I can use it without multitouch. Can someone upload their trackpad kext? Also I manually patched the AICPUPM and got speedstep working. Only problem is when I wake from sleep nothing is recognized (keyboard trackpad mouse)

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markmac81
markmac81
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Posted
After another 24+ hours countless coffees and alcohol i managed to emulate proper "positioning" card should work all that remains is figuring how to simply activate it... but for now i need sleep!

 

Please keep me posted on the sound issue with l701x kexts.

 

Sleep well. You'll be our hero if you can get that card working!

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lloydowen
lloydowen
Posted
Posted

I've been watching the progress on this post over the past few days well done DoiX! I've never seen such amazing support for him either!

 

 

 

I seen your getting the 540 Card to work, will the 525 work as well? Can't wait to try this out!

 

 

 

:):D:D

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darren cox
darren cox
Posted
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Well I managed to clone my OS from the SSD to the HDD, and installed chimera via [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] to make it bootable and and back up and running, albeit at a slightly slower speed.

 

Need to find a UK vendor for the DVD HDD caddy, then will be very happy.

**EDIT **

Found a caddy and USB enclosure for the Bluray drive :) will keep the SSD for OS & Apps and use the full 500GB for media :hysterical:

**

 

Would be great if the Geforce card can be used, nice to play WOW again with good framerates at 1080p! Might look into making it dual boot as theres a few games due out I really wanted to play (mainly Skyrim :hysterical: and can't be bothered with it on Xbox or PS3)

 

FAO DoiX - Would http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=271292 not help in enabling the card - if thats supposedly turns it off the reverse might work?

 

Failing that I might give this a go later TonyMac Nvidia Driver for 5xx series

 

And also I've seen advice to install the nvidia developer CUDA drivers... Never know might be something simple

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DoiX
DoiX
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Posted

@darren, only if it would be that easy, the card is active in the acpi tables, problem is with drivers. IOReg doesn't show it gets powered properly, this is the only impediment in having g5xxm working. Tho from what i found for some reason it just works using UseNvidiaRom=Yes VBIOS=Yes with video card rom dump in /Extra/ folder and device id in NVDAGF100HAL.kext.

 

GT545M might work with chimera and GraphicsEnabler=Yes boot flag, if some here can try it and post a screenshot with System Profile > Graphics /Display tab open i'd appreciate it.

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darren cox
darren cox
Posted
Posted
@darren, only if it would be that easy, the card is active in the acpi tables, problem is with drivers. IOReg doesn't show it gets powered properly, this is the only impediment in having g5xxm working. Tho from what i found for some reason it just works using UseNvidiaRom=Yes VBIOS=Yes with video card rom dump in /Extra/ folder and device id in NVDAGF100HAL.kext.

 

GT545M might work with chimera and GraphicsEnabler=Yes boot flag, if some here can try it and post a screenshot with System Profile > Graphics /Display tab open i'd appreciate it.

 

Just to clarify then... are you saying you could just get the 540m working on its own with those flags/video bios?

 

And i seem to have ended up with Chimera so if i set graphicsenabler=yes then it might work?

 

Sorry to be a pain!

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DoiX
DoiX
Posted
Posted

If my some weird - freak-o-system - difference, yeah it's possible. From my searching and documentation i haven't encountered anything about the 540m working, 555m 525m yes... this issue is puzzling chimera devs as well.

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darren cox
darren cox
Posted
Posted

I'll try the Chimera option in a minute then, assume its just the PList to edit? com.apple.boot.plist ? or type in at boot prompt?

 

As for the other option I think that might suit me perfectly - rarely use unplugged so battery life not an issue, might try that later too once i hunt down the instructions on how to get the video bios etc and the rest. Think i know how to add the device id to the nvidia kext, well see what happens...

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DoiX
DoiX
Posted
Posted

At boot or in .boot.plist file, doesn't matter, we add stuff to the plist file so we don't have to write them every time we boot.

 

For the bios, get AIDA64 , in it right click > video > bios dump or around there :unsure: then rename the file including the extension in 10de_xxxx.rom (xxxx - device id)

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darren cox
darren cox
Posted
Posted
GraphicsEnabler=No UseNvidiaROM=Yes -v boot flags you need to use, it will take a while probably

 

Is that for when I dump the bios? Only AIDA64 is windows only it seems and i just have OSX right now

 

Tried them without the ROM dump and nothings changed - system booted but in system info the nvidia card is still listed as 'Display' type GPU, bus PCIe, DeviceID 0x0df4

 

That device ID is what I added to the NVAGAF100Hal kext (or whatever its called) maybe i mucked it up somewhere

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