Samsung notebooks OSx86 10.4.3 compatibility

[Cortilein]

Hi all!

 

I am running OSx86 10.4.3 8F1111a/g natively (dual-boot with WIn XP Pro) on my Dell Dimension 8300 P4HT-3GHz/1GB RAM/ATI 9800 Pro rig without flaws (except for 1280x1024x32 60Hz resolution limitation). I need Mac OS X (and Mac OS 9 through SheepShaver) applications for work.

 

I am now thinking about buying a notebook (YES - I want to use Win XP in parallel too, and NO - I am not going to buy the expensive MacBook and wait for EFI to support Windows...). I have more or less narrowed it down to Samsung notebooks (either Pentium M Centrino (X20 series) or Yonah Dual Core CPU (X60 series), 1 GB RAM, min. 80 GB HDD).

 

The Wiki HCLs have very little information about Samsung notebook OSx86 compatibility so far. Could anybody who has succesfully installed OSx86 (natively) on a "modern" Samsung notebook give feedback about his/her experiences? Does the integrated ethernet NIC work? What resolution(s) is/are supported on your video chip/card? Do you have QE/CI support?

 

I would be very grateful for feedback - as I need this information for my final buying decision. Thanks in advance!

[R. Bear Helms]

I probably am spreading some corporate FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), but I think somewhere in all this reading I've been doing of both forums and both Wikis that the "M" series chips from Intel are gimpy enough such that everybody has (insurmountable?) problems getting OS X running on them.

 

A dual-core CPU should be no problem - the OS X kernel as is supports dual core (Intel Core Duo). I think if the CPU in question has the SSE3 instruction set, execute disable, PAE, the dual core should be fine.

 

If anything you'd probably need to use the BIOS to disable the dual core feature in case OS X doesn't know how to behave properly.

 

Technical details like graphics chipsets and IDE/USB controller chips also muddy the waters here. nVidia users seem to be waiting for a relevation in Quartz Extreme compatibility, whereas ATI users by far and large seem to be having little difficulty. Intel GMA 900 and 950 are known to be OK, at least by some reports; GMA 945 however has a confusing PnP ID which will at least need a plist file edited, if not a new kernel extension.