Acer Aspire 6930G - What to install ?

[elgranoti]

Hey there, I have an Acer Aspire 6930G notebook running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (a distro), but I want to upgrade it to Yosemite or El Capitan. Based on my system info, what do you recommend ? I want to start fresh with a vanilla installation... This are my system details (hope they help).

 

mint@mint:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98M [GeForce 9300M GS] (rev a1)
07:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 5100
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet (rev b0)

 

Specs:

• Core2Duo P7350 @2.00GHz

• Motherboard: Acer Makalu

• ICH9M I/O controller

• 4GB DDR2-667 RAM
• 250GB HDD
• GeForce 9300M GS graphics (G98M)
• Fingerprint reader
• Realtek USB2.0 multicard reader
• Acer Crystal Eye Webcam
• Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet
• Intel Wifi Link 5100 wireless card

 

Thanks so much in advance !!!!

[Hervé]

Core2Duo P7350 is Penryn-3M and GeForce 9300M GS is Tesla G98. This kind of platform should fully support El Capitan but also Sierra and High Sierra since the CPU has SSE4.1 instructions set. I'd go for the latter.

 

You could even push for Mojave with Tesla-specific special patches and Catalina with Dosdude1's patcher. You can read about those in our Graphics section. But that's maybe for a future stage as it gets a little complicated when High Sierra will fully and natively support your graphics card.

 

Download a copy of High Sierra off Apple (via AppStore or Apple download links) and make your USB installer with basic settings. Look at "Our Picks" side panel on forum main page for that.

 

You can look at fine tuning your build for Ethernet, wireless, audio, card reader, etc. once you've finished the macOS installation. You may consult these old guides for general guidance in the process; obviously the pack are not for you but you can extract the core kexts from them (FakeSMC, Lilu, WEG).

• https://osxlatitude.com/forums/topic/12479-dell-latitude-d630-with-core2duo-nvidia-quadro-nvs-135m-el-capitansierrahigh-sierramojavecatalina/
• https://osxlatitude.com/forums/topic/10370-dell-latitude-d830-with-core2duo-and-nvidia-quadro-nvs-135m-mavericksyosemiteel-capitansierrahigh-sierramojave/

 

The one thing that will not be supported for certain is your Intel wireless card and it'll have to be replaced by a supported model. Plenty to choose from and you may consult our inventories published in the Wifi section to that effect.

 

Good luck.

[elgranoti]

Glad to hear all this Hervé !!!!

  One more thing: do you think I'm gonna have to do some DSDT patching ? Cause I have no clue about that ( no clue bout anything, but mostly about that... )

 

Thanks a lot !!!

[Hervé]

Maybe, no way to say for sure.

[elgranoti]

Ok Hervé, I followed your guide for Sierra on Dell D830:

https://osxlatitude.com/forums/topic/10370-dell-latitude-d830-with-core2duo-and-nvidia-quadro-nvs-135m-mavericksyosemiteel-capitansierrahigh-sierramojave/

 

When trying to boot, I get this kernel panic right at the beginning

I guess I did something really wrong... any idea what might be ?

 

[Hervé]

You're gonna have to tell us more. You're trying to install Sierra but with what? What bootloader (Enoch? Clover?)? What pack? Can't see why you'd use boot arg nv_disable=1 on a laptop with a Tesla dGPU expected to be natively supported...

[elgranoti]

Like I said, I followed your D830 guide, so I used Enoch 2922 ( it's the one I could get... and installed it on the pendrive with just the bootloader on the partition, default option, nothing else ). Then, from D830n_10.11_Pack, I added to extra folder everything but the DSDT.aml, and then created the Kernel folder and added the 10.12.6 kernel to it.

When booting with -f -v, I get the kernel panic ( dart=0 and nv_disable=1 just tried those bootflags, cause they worked for me on my snow leopard installation, otherwise I could have never installed Snow Leopard, couldn't find the way... ).

 

I don't understand what might be wrong...

[Hervé]

No, no, no, that won't work. 1st I don't even know why you'd use the El Capitan pack for Sierra but, most importantly, you just can't take a bootpack tuned for a Dell Latitude D830, apply it to a totally different computer and expect things to work. There's far too much stuff specific to the D830 in that pack that's neither relevant nor suitable for your Acer computer. I only made reference to the Dell guides for the general steps involved with regards to the installation process, not to use their bootpacks!

 

Go for High Sierra and we'll try to work out a dedicated Clover pack for you. Do not use any Clover version from r5123 to r5126, these are troublesome.

[elgranoti]

Sorry, my bad, I used the correct pack ( D830n_10.12_Pack, just copied the name of it from the other pack for el capitan, which I also tried to install in the meantime.. ).

Ok, listen, I can't go for high sierra cause I don't have a real mac ( I only have the snow leopard with no internet connection, and horrible graphics resolution, and a Sierra installed on a full AMD system with, of course, no ethernet nor wifi ). I already have a High Sierra downloaded from windows 10, but is "not mountable" on my Sierra AMD ( don't know why )...

What I'm trying is to install a fully working Sierra, or El Capitan ( those two are mountable versions in my crappy systems ) and then be able to download High Sierra ...

What do I need in the Extra folder, besides the basic kexts, for Sierra to load ?

[elgranoti]

OK Hervé, I managed to build a Virtual machine on Ubuntu ( macOS Catalina ), downloaded High Sierra, created the USB installer, and installed the latest Clover version ( 5127 ) on it with the customised settings ( Installed Clover in the ESP, Boot Sectors -> Install boot0af in MBR, Clover for BIOS (legacy) booting -> Clover EFI 64-bits SATA, BIOS Drivers, 64 bit -> FSInject-64 / ApfsDriverLoader-64, BIOS Drivers, 64 bit -> GrubEXFAT-64 / GrubNTFS-64 ). One thing to point out is that I don't have the chance to mount the EFI partition with Clover Configurator, I can see EFI straight on the USB ( don't know why, and I hope it doesn't affect the process... ).

At this point I have to set up the config.plist and I have no clue... what are the basics I should set up, in order for this to boot ? Is there any guide I can follow to set it up based on a given system ?

 

Thanks