The Inspiron 6000 Thread (Should be official, but isant)

[poplars]

Hey all, this thread is about the Inspiron 6000 Running Mac OS X. Anyone and Everyone that has ran Mac OS X on they're Inspiron 6000 please state your experiences, and how you got it working in very specific detail, thank you.

 

I have yet to install it, still waiting on DVD. I'll edit this post after I install it. here are my system specs:

 

1.6 Ghz Pentium M Centrino

512MB DDR2 PC3200 Ram

Mobility Radeon X300 PCI-E 64MB Dedicated

Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG

Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller

NEC DVD+-RW

6 Cell standard Li-On ACPI battery.

15.4" 1280x800 Native.

 

(http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard to find out such detailed info).

 

So, that's about it. here's the following info that is needed to make this a fully functional/informational thread for the fellow Inspiron 6000 user's out there:

• How you got your Video Card working (Most definately include any special tweaks, like for QE/CI or anything like that, resolution, etc.
  
• Any special tweaks or anything like that to get the system initially working
  
• How you got your Wireless Card working (if so)
  
• You're battery life
  
• And of course, specific system specifications. all the way down to your native resolution
  
• Disk Image you're using (i.e. 10.4.7 JaS)
  

Let's try to keep this an active thread, or atleast one that was active and very detailed.

 

thanks

 

-Patrick

[shtoink]

First thing's first... Ditch the intel wireless miniPCI. This is the only *fix* for your furture wireless issues. What you'll want to find is pretty much anything with a broadcom chipset, but the Dell True Mobile 1450 is supported without having to hack a kext.

 

What that said, the next thing you'll want to do is read the following threads.

 

HowTo Mobility X300; QE/CL w/ Widescreen, Might work with other cards]

 

UnOfficial Dell Inspiron 6000 Thread, I Got It Working - Here's What I Used

 

Another thing will be to get your power managment working properly.

 

I personally have run into only a couple of strange things, but nothing that makes me want to run back to winders. I found that if a disk is left in my drive after I am done reading it, it fails to eject and then intereferes with anything else getting mounted or subsiquently unmounted/ejected. The mouse tearing was cleared almost completely with Mouse Locator and a clear png placed in the appropriate location. Finally, the issue with the failure to recover from sleep that almost everyone else reports with thier notebook. My solution for that was to get InsomniaX and remember to run it *BEFORE* shutting my lid. D'Oh!, Can't tell you how many times I forgot that one.

 

One last thing you'll probably want to look in to, is your OS selector option. I personally took the "Lazy GUI B*tch" route and went with Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 and used the Acronis OS Selector.

 

I hope that helps you out.

[poplars]

heh, thanks for the info man. I already read both those threads you've shown me . the thing I've also noticed about this laptop is alot of times it happens much differently for others lol. I REALLY hope I don't have that problem with the CD Drive lol. also, is there any way to make it so it turns off the screen instead of sleep's? regardless it seems like everything works well...mouse tearing...hmm....lol.

 

 

thanks for the detailed post, others that post in this forum PLEASE refrain from short useless posts

 

thank you

 

-Patrick

[osxgus]

How you got your Video Card working (Most definately include any special tweaks, like for QE/CI or anything like that, resolution, etc.

 

Followed instructions avail on that link shtoink just posted ^

 

Any special tweaks or anything like that to get the system initially working

 

I replaced my wireless card to a Dell 1450, no hacking needed as soon as it's physically installed.

 

How you got your Wireless Card working (if so)

 

See point above. If you have an intel card, like the 2200, forget it. Just get the dell 1450, it will be the best $15 you ever spent. I never used the ethernet port.

 

Your battery life

30 min to 1 hour...

 

And of course, specific system specifications. all the way down to your native resolution

x300 - 128mb / 1680x1050 / 1.8 ghz pentium M / 1gig ram / BT (working with mobile (SE), keyboard(mac) & mouse(m$))

 

Disk Image you're using (i.e. 10.4.7 JaS)

10.4.6 JaS

 

Oh I use the ppc solution to get itunes 7 working.. it's a b*tch though, slow... this is only because SSE2 cpu's don't work with the intel version of iTunes 7...

 

For booting, I just did a quick edit in boot.ini so i can choose darwin boot / windows xp home.. don't forget to get macdrive if you want to edit the boot.plist from windows!!

 

If you need more help, just PM me, I'll be glad to help. You should have no problems getting OSX running on your machine.

 

I never fixed mouse tearing or sleep issues, i only have problems with mac sleep when one of my kittens steps on the lid..... ;-)

 

Cheers!

osxG

[zedzed]

Installing on a 16 month old Inspiron 6000

 

CPU = Pentium M 1.5 GHz

Ram = 1 gig

Video = GMA900 (915GM)

LCD = 1680 x 1050

Network = Broadcom 440X

Wireless = 2200BG

 

Laptop connected to external LCD

Instaled 10.4.7 JaS - no problem

Networking worked

Sound worked

Bluetooth Worked

 

I was connected to home network and updates were downloaded from Apple (inlcuding 10.4.8 Intel)

 

After trying to restart the laptop I got the following message

"Loading PBR 2 ... done"

"HFS+ partition error"

then it just hangs there

 

If I try to boot with the install DVD in the drive (with external monitor still connected)

the system starts loading and then reboots by itself and keeps doing that.

Is this the same as the B0 error? Time to research

[Rammjet]

I was connected to home network and updates were downloaded from Apple (inlcuding 10.4.8 Intel)

 

After trying to restart the laptop I got the following message

"Loading PBR 2 ... done"

"HFS+ partition error"

then it just hangs there

 

If I try to boot with the install DVD in the drive (with external monitor still connected) the system starts loading and then reboots by itself and keeps doing that.

I hope you didn't install the 10.4.8 update...else you will be reinstalling 10.4.7 from scratch.

[zedzed]

Yeah - pretty stupid installing 10.4.8 update

 

I just read http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=28920

ha ha ha

 

Now the question about the HFS+ Partition Error

 

I left my HD partitioned the way it came from Dell.

There are three partitions

1. 55 megs - I hav no clue what is on ther

2. 2.7 gigs - I assume that is the recovery partition - to recover and reinstall Windows fresh

3. 55 gigs - rest of the drive

 

I obviously loaded to the 55 gig partition.

When installing OSX I used the "Erase" function in dis utility to delete everything from the partition and I guess it formatted it to HFS+

 

Time to reinstall.Can you download 3 out of 4 updates without doing the 10.4.8 update?

 

HFS+ Partition error

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=28023

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=21841

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=22844

 

Update - I blew away all the other partitions and made one partition for OSX and now it boots

[Rammjet]

Time to reinstall.Can you download 3 out of 4 updates without doing the 10.4.8 update?

Notice that there are little checkboxes in the "Install" column in front of each item in Software Update? Uncheck the ones you don't want to install.

 

To hide updates so you don't have to see them, click on the item in the Update window, go to the Update menu and select "Ignore Update..."

[zedzed]

I have the Inspiron 6000 booting successfully now.

 

Since I have the Intel GMA900 / 915 video I have tried doing the VGA dongle (VGA Dummy / Monitor Dummy) trick. Has there been a software work-around for this problem?

 

I may have missed something - just to confirm - after you have booted and see the desktop do you guys take out the dongle? Or do you leave it in?

 

Is there a place to buy a real VGA dongle/dummy?

 

Make VGA Dongle - two different types

Which is better?

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=6880

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=6264

 

More on the "more sophisticated" VGA Dummy

http://www.modasylum.com/content.php?name=...UMMY&page=2

http://tvtool.info/go.htm?http://tvtool.in...ish/dummy_e.htm

 

Something else interesting about "locking your settings"

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=117727

[Metali]

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 and I finally got 1920x1200 working with this link.

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=22215

 

1.7 Ghz Pentium M Centrino

2 GB DDR2 533Mhz Ram

Mobility Radeon X300 PCI-E 128MB Dedicated

Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG *No people, it's not working*

Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller

Sony DVD+-RW

6 Cell standard Li-On ACPI battery.

17" 1920x1200 Native.

 

Using JaS 10.4.7

Callisto b003fixed

And manually entered my monitor's EDID with Plistedit Pro into Callisto.kext/Contents/Info.plist under DFP,EDID and AAPL,EDID

 

I used PowerStrip under Windows to find out my monitor's EDID, you may have to look in Program Files/PowerStrip/pstrip.ini to find the full number.

 

It should look something like this:

 

EDID.Data.03.00=00,FF,FF,FF,FF,FF,FF,00,36,7F,00,00,00,00,00,00
EDID.Data.03.01=FF,FF,FF,00,7F,00,00,00,00,03,28,00,00,00,00,00
EDID.Data.03.02=FF,FF,36,00,00,00,80,00,00,00,00,21,31,40,71,40
EDID.Data.03.03=FF,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,21,40,40,40,00,3F,B0,20
EDID.Data.03.04=FF,7F,00,03,F2,00,00,40,71,40,48,B0,13,00,00,00
EDID.Data.03.05=FF,00,00,00,00,21,40,40,00,B0,00,00,00,00,00,00
EDID.Data.03.06=FF,00,80,00,00,40,A9,3F,30,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
EDID.Data.03.07=00,00,00,00,40,40,3F,20,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,8E

 

With a lil' formatting it should look like this in the end.

 

FF00FFFF FFFF00FF 7F360000 00000000 FFFF00FF 007F0000 03000028 00000000 FFFF0036 00000080 00002100 40314071 00FF0000 00030000 40214040 3F0020B0 7FFF0300 00F24000 4071B048 00000000 00FF0000 21004040 B0000000 00000000 00FF0080 40003FA9 00300000 00000000 00000000 4040203F 00000000 0000A100

 

I'm still experiencing some mouse artifacts but I haven't tried using the MouseLocator fix yet.

 

I haven't tried any other Callisto versions since I'm tired of f***ing around with it.

 

EDIT: It has come to my attention that the EDID in the pstrip.ini might not show up for some. Here's how to make it show.

 

Start up PowerStrip as normal

Then right-click on the PowerStrip icon -> Options -> Monitor Information

The Monitor Information screen will appear, in the bottom left corner you'll see a box with "Read data from registry"

Click on that box and select Read data from stored EDID

Close PStrip and look at the ini file

[zedzed]

Next problem - USB Wireless mouse does not work.

The mouse is connected and jumps around but is not usable.

Touchpad works OK

 

I installed the Dell 1450 wi-fi card and it works flawlessly right out of the box.

 

I bought a Wireless Mighty Mouse. My laptop has bluetooth.

I installed the Mouse software and the mouse works great.

It is the most expensive mouse I have ever bough but I love the feel of the mouse.

 

Next up - I would like to find a way to make the integrated SD Card Reader to work.

At present nothing happens when I put an SD Card intot he slot