OS X on Dell 500m laptop graphics RAM problem

[ablewisuk]

I am trying to get OS X working on a Dell inspiron 500m laptop. The problem is that the maximum resolution it can run at is 800x600 at 256 colour due to the on board graphics, Intel 855GM integrated graphics. The graphics card should be able to run at a higher resolution than this, but the BIOS reports around 800KB of graphics RAM.

 

To run Linux on these laptops you have to run 855patch from http://www.chzsoft.com.ar/855patch.html which corrects the amount of graphics RAM allocated at startup. The BIOS has no options to change the graphics RAM allocation. OS X runs fine apart from this problem. I downloaded the source for 855patch, but I can't get it to compile even with the BSD patches - is it useless to try doing this? (I know nothing about compiling stuff on OS X.) I can post the compilation errors if that would help. I have done a fair amount of searching on Google and I can't find anything useful.

 

Has anyone managed to get OS X running on this laptop? Is it worth booting into another OS (e.g. Windows) then doing a normal reboot to see if the graphics RAM allocation stays the same or will this not work?

 

I would be extremely grateful for any help!

[d11wtq]

I'm using an Inspiron 1100 with the same problem. Anything higher than this is black & white and fuzzy. I'm tampering with the .kext files for the AppleIntel830 and AppleIntelIntegratedGraphics. It's certainly chging the behaviour... I now get color at 1024x768x24 bit but then everything crashes into a small thin blue line on a black screen

 

If I find the correct changes to make to these files I'll post back