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Can I upgrade a D620 to run Mountain Lion?


TallGraham

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Hi All

 

 

First post so be gentle please :)

 

I have got my hands on an old Dell D620 laptop (Intel GMA video). Now we use Macs at work a lot so I know Mountain Lion won't go on the Core Duo CPU. This has been confirmed in other posts here as well.

 

I have read people talking about upgrading the CPU in the D620 to a Core 2 Duo, and I know it can take certain Core 2 Duo CPUs from Googling and other posts here. Also a great YouTube video pinned on another thread shows how to do it completely. Can anyone confirm that they have actually done this though and got Mountain Lion working?

 

The other thing is that the D620 does not have a wireless card. So this is where it might start to get a bit messy. This is what I plan to do:

 

1. Try and find an old working Core 2 Duo CPU from our piles of dead laptops and Mac Minis at work. Install that into the D620.

 

2. Upgrade the RAM to 4GB, new Core 2 Duo will allow 64-bit OS and access to all RAM.

 

3. Install the D620 hacked BIOS with the DSDT settings.

 

4. Try and find an old working wireless card from the dead Mac Minis at work, and install that.

 

Now here is the big question.

 

If I install the hacked BIOS in step 3 but then add a non-Dell wireless card, say from a Mac Mini or MacBook, will the DSDT settings in the BIOS now cause a problem?

 

Would I be better off using the standard BIOS and installing the EDP package?

 

 

Many thanks in advance

 

 

TG

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Hi and welcome to OSXL. Read up the various posts on the D6xx forum + Web site pages off top menu items, especially the EDP pages. You'll find compatibility chart + supported OS X versions per model, i.e. answers to your questions about ML on your D620 (but the short answer is: no).

 

Read-up pages about modified BIOS too. From memory, the modified BIOS for the D620 is fully working. DSDT tables would not interfere with Wifi cards, it's just a driver (kext) matter, provided the hardware is supported by Mac OS X (you probably know by now that Intel cards are not supported but Broadcom or Atheros cards are).

 

Bear in mind that the modified BIOS "only" includes the DSDT table + power-on Apple logo. So, whilst it removes the need of the DSDT table in the /Extra folder, it does not remove the need to install and run EDP, which is still required to install and load all the necessary kexts specific to the laptop model.

 

PS: The need of a 64bit version to access the full 4Go RAM (or above) is more a Windows matter. Only early Intel Macs had the same limitation, but more recent Macs can access the full 4Go, even when running in 32bit mode (SL or Lion, ML being 64bit only).

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Hi Hervé

 

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

I have been reading a lot in the forums here about the various bits and pieces. There are some people who claim to have Mountain Lion running on the D620 but they do not have any decent video drivers as it appears the Intel GMA does not have any hardware acceleration now in OSX 10.8. This does make me wonder if it would then work on a model with the nVidia graphics, providing you had a Core 2 Duo CPU installed as well?

 

Thanks for the clarification on the DSDT stuff. It is hard to pin down exactly what all that is about.

 

Looking again through the compatibility charts it does appear that pretty much any laptop with the old Intel video won't work now with Mountain Lion.

 

Apple certainly do like sticking it to their customers. I have no end of trouble with them at my work, and we have all their proper kit as well.

 

Mind you I have successfully managed to run virtualised versions of the OSes on PC hardware now. It isn't really the same though and I can't lug an ESXi server around with me everywhere :(

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This does make me wonder if it would then work on a model with the nVidia graphics, providing you had a Core 2 Duo CPU installed as well?

Unfortunately, that card is not supported either in ML.

 

If you want ML on a 'D' Series, you need a D630 or D820/830 with nVidia graphics.

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Unfortunately, that card is not supported either in ML.

 

If you want ML on a 'D' Series, you need a D630 or D820/830 with nVidia graphics.

 

 

Damn! Just my luck. I'll have to see if I can get a D630 somehow. Shame as this D620 is in perfect condition

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