[Guide] Dell Inspiron E1505 with Nvidia GeForce Go 7300

[waradmin]

The Dell Inspiron E1505 is a very common laptop. The near top-of-the-line E1505 features hardware similar to:

 

Intel Centrino Core Duo @ 2.0GHz

1.0GB RAM

80GB 7200 RPM HD

Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 @ 256MB

15.4" Monitor (as stated by the model name, 1505) @ 1280x800x32

 

The following worked right after installation using the 10.4.6 Install DVD and then upgrading to 10.4.7 with the JaS DVD:

80GB HD

15.4" Widescreen @ 1024x768

 

The following needed to be fixed after installation:

Processor (Eliminate duo core)

Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 (bad graphics response)

15.4" Monitor (running at 1024x768 and NOT 1280x800)

 

To fix the Slow performance on mouse clicks, typing, etc, you can do 1 of 2 things.

 

A) Disable the Multi-Core support in the BIOS

or Set the CPU's to 1 on boot (which is more practical if you are dual booting OS X and Windows (or Triple-booting OS X, Windows, and Fedora like myself)

 

To set the CPU's to a single core, you need to edit your com.apple.Boot.plist file. To do that:

 

1) open up a terminal window

2) type in: sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

3) Add the following Kernel flags: platform=X86PC fn=3 cpus=1

 

So you should have something like this:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>platform=X86PC fn=3 cpus=1 -v</string>

 

4) Save and exit (Control+O <enter> Control+X) respectively

 

Next you need to fix video. I had minimal luck using just the installer. I needed to use a combination of the installer from MacVidia (1.0.8) and then the install guide for manual install.

 

To get video working:

1) Go to http://macvidia.starchaser.org/ (great site)

2) Download the 1.0.8 INSTALLER

3) Run the installer but DO NOT REBOOT

4) Once the prompt comes up that says you need to reboot:

Open up a Terminal window

Type: sudo –s

And press enter, the system will ask for your admin password, type it, and

press enter again.

Now we are going to set the correct permissions to the 2 MacVidia kexts that

we just copied some moments ago, to do that, you type:

chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/NV* &&

chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/NV*

Pay attention that even that the line is broke in 2 parts on this document, this

is a SINGLE LINE and must be entered at once.

I HIGHLY recommend copying the text from this document, and paste on

terminal, to avoid typos and errors.

If everything was ok, you should not get any answer after pressing enter, just

the blinking cursor, if you get any error regarding “File not found”, etc, you

must double check again that you copied the macvidia kexts on the right

place.

We have the kexts with the right permissions, and we are almost done.

Now we are going to clear the kextcache, I’m not going to explain on this

guide what the kextcache is or what it does, let’s just say that you need to

empty / delete it for the system to load the new drivers.

To do that, still in the terminal application, you type:

rm -f /system/library/Extensions*

And then press Enter.

NOTE: It will say Extensions is a directory. That is OK. MAKE SURE YOU USE -f,

NOT –R.

As a final step, we are going to remove any screen resolution info that could

be left by applications, to do that, you type:

(you may recieve an error, if so, just move on to the next step)

rm -f ~/library/preferences/byhost/com.apple.window* &&

rm -f ~/library/preferences/byhost/com.apple.pref* &&

rm -f /library/preferences/com.apple.window*

Again, this is a SINGLE LINE, not 3 different lines.

In theory, if you reboot the system right now, the driver should load and

everything should work, but we can do some extra steps to make sure that

the drivers really load.

You can type:

kextload –t /System/Library/Extensions/NVidia.kext

And press enter, if you get a message stating “successfully loaded”, then you

are in a lucky day

We are going to do the same now for the other kext, type:

kextload –t /System/Library/Extensions/NVDriver.kext

You should also get the same message, stating that the kext was successfully

loaded, if you get errors about permissions, etc, most probably you typed

something wrong, so please, recheck what you did and try again.

Now it is time to reboot the system.

 

Then you can go in and adjust your video resulution like you would on any Mac, and your good to go. Its that simple, you should now have a perfectly working E1505.

[ChuOSx86]

does the wireless and sound work after installation??

[thetwos]

I know a lot of people have been having trouble with sleep on their books, atleast I think still. I'm pretty sure I got it to work

 

 

bias->enable system password

system preferences->require password from sleep and disable automatic login

system preferences->energy saver->put hard disk to sleep

 

when lid closes and to sleep all thats required to bring system back up is opening lid pushing power button and typing two passwords to wake it back up, no boot up and nothing lost on desktop. this is the only way I found sleep to work

 

dell inspiron e1505, 10.4.4

 

any sound work arounds yet? or ethernet?