DELL XPS M170

[JTJ105]

I've got a Dell XPS M170. It's a Pentium M 2.00 Gigahertz Processor and 1 gig of Ram. Will this install work on my comp? I know the XPS M140 was approved for it to work so I'm assuming it will but I was wondering if anyone knows more details. Thanks! My first time doing this!

 

J

[drummerboy46]

Hi

 

Yep I have it working on mine!

 

My spec is 2Ghz Pentium M, 2GB RAM, 60GB 7200 HD. 256MB Go 6800 Ultra, Broadcom (Dell Truemobile Wireless), Dell 350 bluetooth, Sigmatel Audio.

 

DONT use a virtual machine like VMWare if you want full speed, I partitioned my PC with Acronis Disk Director and backup my partitions with True Image. Acronis includes a great boot manager, currently i have OSX, Windows XP and Vista each on sep. partitions! it ROCKS!

 

ADVICE: ALWAYS BACKUP FIRST BEFORE MESSSING WITH YOUR DRIVE!!

 

Here's my results....

 

1. Replaced my Intel PRO wireless G card with a Dell Truemobile module (a broadcom device), which is detected as an Airport Extreme.

2. Sigmatel sound works fine as AC97 on the stereo speakers but not the mini sub. 10.4.7 and 10.4.8. Although in the device information in about this mac, its says no audio which is odd!

3. NVidia video works fine in 10.4.7 with the macvidia drivers but NO QE. If you intend to use 10.4.8 dont install macvidia.

4. It took me ages to get 10.4.8 working and ages to get titan working, it's quite a headache! Install 10.4.7 first and then go through the various tutorials on the forums to get the 10.4.8 combo update running with the beta9 kernel, my advice is install the JaS one first and then overwrite it with the official Apple combo update using Pacifist. You will also need to replace some kexts that will cause the system to fail. I've now got full QE/GL acceleration on my 6800 Go Ultra. No dual screen (DVI output though). I'm sure theres a way around this though.

5. Trackpad works fine with kext.

6. Power management works fine with kext.

7. USB and Firewire works fine outa the box.

8. No PC Card support, if anyone knows how to get it working???

9. Gigabit Ethernet works fine, You may need to jig device order around if using a wireless and ethernet, i had problems here but eventually worked out how to get the two to work together!

10 Dell 350 Bluetooth module works fine.

 

Overall i've found the beta9 kernel and 10.4.8 pretty stable and general use of 10.4.8 fast with few problems. Things i have found a bit flakey includes...

 

Java apps bomb a lot - shame!

Restart doesnt work, even though its supposed to be fixed in this kernel?!?

Sometimes apps that use the SSE3 -> SSE2 conversions bomb, but its not very often. Safari is the biggest culprit!

 

Seriously though, if you want to minimise headaches get the Acronis toolkits! saved me loadsa time on re-installs.

 

Hope this helps.

[Dj Noop]

Hey, I'd like to join the club.

 

I've got an XPS M170, Pent.M 2.0ghz, 1gb ram, 100gb 5400rpm hdd, nVidia geforce go 6800 ultra, Intel Wireless 2915 a/b/g, so I think we've got simliar hardware.

 

I installed the generic patched mac dvd (10.4.1 I think) just to see if it'd work, and it did, without my graphics card's help. I wanted to try out 10.4.8 or .9 to get all my laptop hardware working, so far I can't get it to work. From what I've read around the web and here it's best to install 10.4.7 and upgrade to 10.4.8 through pacifist and whatnot. Is it definately a lost cause to try from the JaS 10.4.8 AMD Intel SSE2 SSE3 DVD? If I install 10.4.7, should I upgrade to .8 at all? The version doesn't matter much to me yet, I'd rather see it functioning at all first.

 

I've read the post before mine and it seems pretty detailed. I'll be giving that stuff a try, but I'd really appreciate any more info anyone has on installing onto the M170, or any advice one which kexts to use. I think I might be able to switch my wireless card with a dell one, but do I have to? I'd rather keep in the Intel one if there's a way to get it to work. I've installed and reinstalled so many times and I don't want to overheat my laptop. OS X turns it into an oven.

 

 

Thanks for any help from anyone.

[Dukrous]

I've had 10.4.8 working on my M170 for a month now. Dj Noop, you need to replace your Intel 2915 with a Dell 1490 Wireless card. The 2915 is still not working well enough to consider it stable, even with the driver being written. The 1490 works with some minor modifications and will work on any wireless network including WPA-PSK.

 

The only thing I'm still trying to get going is the media keys on the front of the laptop. There's no native support for the Play/FF/Rewind/Stop keys since they don't exist in Mac. However the mute/volume up/down keys work brilliantly without any extra configuration.