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Dell Inspiron 8600 success and questions


manta
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I've managed to get JaS 10.4.8 running on my Dell Inspiron 8600 pretty well. Since I wouldn't have been able to do it without the posts on here I decided to make a post of my experiences which might help some other people with the same system - this is because they didn't match exactly with the mostly very accurate guide in the Wiki HCL on portables for 10.4.8. I do also have a few questions (see later).

 

System:

 

1.7 Pentium M

1GB RAM (2x 512)

ATI Radeon Mobility 9600, 256MB RAM (device ID 4e50)

Dell 1400 Wireless

Broadcom 440x ethernet

 

Installation

 

1. Install JaS 10.4.8 on the main drive. This didn't take too long... maybe 20 minutes if I remember? It is a hell of a lot better than a Windows installer. Mad props to JaS obviously for making this possible!

 

2. After first boot, install Callisto b003 fixed exactly as described in the ins

ructions but do not reboot!

 

3. Make the change to ATIRadeon9700GA.plugin as described in the Callisto FAQ and fix perms just as you did with the Callisto driver files (if you read and carried out all the instructions correctly!).

 

4. Delete ATIRadeon9700.kext in the Extensions folder. Put the attached file there instead. Fix permissions on the file. I was not able to achieve the desired result with simply putting the recommended device ID list in my existing file. This file was taken from a zip file found on this page:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...50708&st=20

 

5. Delete the extension cache files if you didn't already and reboot.

 

6. You should now have the Radeon working with resolution change and QE+CI. There will be some mouse tearing, but I think this is unavoidable with the current Callisto driver. The well-documented Mouse Locator fix resolves the issue in a workable way. IMHO you're never going to get stellar OSX performance with a Pentium M machine, so a little bit of flickery mouse stuff isn't really going to hurt for web browsing/email/chat/simple apps, which is all this machine is going to be viable for. FWIW, I got best results using a 'cursor shadow' PNG that I found on another IM forum post.

 

Note: I have to give mad props to the Callisto team. I'm still in awe that someone wrote a driver for an old AGP laptop graphics card. It seriously made my weekend. Many hats off!

 

7. Disregard the AGPGart recommendation in the HCL. I couldn't get any version to do anything other than a. hose my install or b. remove QE+CI. I think effectively with the Callisto drivers installed, all AGPGart can really add is to show the Radeon properly as an AGP card in System Profiler. But obviously this isn't worth it if you lose QE/CI.

 

8. Follow the Truemobile 1450 instructions in the HCL, even if you have a 1400. The first time I tried to access my wireless network I got a grey-screen crash, but after a hard power-off and reboot, everything worked as it should.

 

9. Follow the Broadcom ethernet instructions in the HCL.

 

10. There is an additional tip somewhere in this forum about enabling 2D QE. I'm not sure exactly what it adds, but it certainly didn't make things any worse:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Quartz2DExtremeEnabled -boolean yes

 

11. Ignore the HCL tip for getting trackpad 'tap' clicking working - it will kill your trackpad functionality so you have to dig out a USB mouse and put the correct files back.

 

The rest of the HCL is accurate as far as I can tell with my particular hardware config.

 

Issues

 

I have 2 issues - anyone have any advice for these?

 

1. I don't get a battery meter - this can be a little annoying but I can live with it.

 

2. Certain system prefs aren't remembered - for example swapping round a couple of modifier keys, or changing the location 

within a time zone. Again, a slight annoyance but nowhere near as bad as running Windows =)

 

Question

 

I also have 1 more question:

 

1. I installed 10.4.8 because it's pretty well-documented. Are there any 8600 owners out there with success on Leopard? Either way I'm not too bothered since 10.4.8 will be fine for simple web/mail/etc - which is all I'm going to use this machine for.

 

Thanks again to JaS and the Callisto team!

ATIRadeon9700.kext.zip

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