(guide) Dell D820 Core 2 Duo laptop

[pseudomaniac]

All these disorganized threads of driver this, driver that - sudo rm this and chown that....what a PITA.

 

I thought it might be a nice challenge to get OsX running on my new dell D820.

 

Here's a beginners guide to getting this running on a Core 2 Duo laptop.

 

 

1. Go into bios and turn a core off. If you don't know how to get into bios, or what this setting might look like - you're already way too far over your head.

2. You'll need a means of installing OsX. I used the JaS 10.4.6 install DVD.

3. Once installed, you'll need to make the partition bootable. I used a Hiren disc with Partition Magic.

4. Mac OsX should now be bootable.

5. I downloaded the 10.4.7 JaS and 10.4.8 JaS patches and installed. Reboot - works fine.

6. Now the confusion and fun begin

 

 

A. My Dell D820 has a broadcom 57xx NIC in it. I've tried all the KEXT patch, permission repair, move here, move there, yaddaadada stuff on the forums. It doesn't work. As a matter of fact, it kernel panics darwin most of the time.

 

fortunately - YOU CAN START DARWIN WITH THE -X SWITCH AND BOOT TO SAFE MODE.

Sadly, this is something I had to figure out on my own - and didn't find in the forums anywhere.

 

B. The wireless is a Dell 1400 Wireless card (Broadcom). It acts like it sees it, as on startup, it knew the SSID of my AP - however, that's just it, it gives no indication of working from there. Again - lots of "fixes" but nothing that seems to work.

 

C. The sound is a sigmatel 9200 series. I don't know what flavor of 92xx it is, nor do I care - I just want it to work. I've tried the tortua fixes - and great idea there, however, every codec dump I've tried (and I've tried them all) just blows up the driver - kernel panic - reboot.

 

So - as a plea for help from someone very obviously frustrated - and maybe a call to organization....

 

How about a collection of KEXT files being posted in a singular location (perhaps this exists already - but the layout on this forum is abyssmal for finding anything pertinent without loading screens over and over and over again.

 

As a secondary favor - perhaps anyone who has this working properly on a D820 or similarly configured machine would be so kind as to share the secret?

 

The thing I've always enjoyed about the mac is the lack of the hassles in drivers, patches, files, etc. It appears now when you try to put it on something besides the extremely overpriced apple hardware, that it's nightmarish getting it to a running state.

 

Thanks in advance to any kind enough to assist. It's nice to see so many working together to get these things working - just frustrating not having luck finding any results...

[siddharth]

For the Sigmatel 9200 you will need v1.10 or v1.11 of Taruga's AppleHDA patcher and this codec dump from linux. Be aware though that currently the internal speakers aren't disabled even with something in the headphone socket.

[dogbert75]

I also have a d820 and wanted to let you know the wireless issue you mention was easily fixed. Mine did exactly like yours and was seen the first time but then after reboot did not work. All I hade to do was change the device from en0 to en1. There are plenty of tutorials that explain how to get this to work. As for the sound, Tartuga released 1.16 of his patcher to work with 10.4.9. I used that one and it worked fine for me. I wish I had an answer for the broadcom ethernet...so far, i've tried everything that has been mentioned, and no success on that front... yet. however, there are some people working on it, so i keep my fingers crossed.

[pseudomaniac]

My driver loads up with the en1 already set - but does not work. That's the weird part.

 

The audio stuff - even after trying that - also seems to just kernel panic. Any ideas?

[Maccidental]

Here's a [Lattitude] D820 Guide for you:

 

The inbuilt wireless (Intel 3945 A/B/G) will never work.

Your second core will never work

Your 57xx will probably never work, and there are about 25 different Vendor IDs for this card, (I have a rather rare 0x1600).

Your GMA945 (if you didn't shell out for a better card) will actually work mostly as a G950, but Mozilla will screen tear.

If your computer goes to sleep it will never wake up.

If your screen blanks it won't come back unless you plug in an external monitor briefly.

Half your USB connections will probably vanish.

You will probably lose the use of your CardBus (no PCMCIA Atheros for you!)

 

On the plus side?

 

Sound works great, even the volume controls (bar mute), speakers/headphone/internal mic all A1 (haven't tested mic jack), and the ICH7M is standard MacBook so at least you can access your hard drive. And that Firewire and Bluetooth work perfectly! For what it's not worth.

 

And lets not forget Dell's excellent warranty program - wrong combination of components? Why not throw it out a window and a new one!

[sNAFU] - just realised why my Broadcom doesn't work anymore - Dell replaced the mainboard to solve a screen issue "just in case".

 

PS. Use iATEKAKTUS 1.0r2 for Leopard install, it works pretty good, Firewire/USB Ether for high speed net, and a DWL-122G or similar USB for wireless.