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D520 LAN/Ethernet not connecting


laserboy

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the D520 and D530 is 100% alike on the outside, except the D530 in some models can do 1440x1024 in resolution, where as the D520 only does 1024x768 if i recall correct

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the D520 and D530 is 100% alike on the outside, except the D530 in some models can do 1440x1024 in resolution, where as the D520 only does 1024x768 if i recall correct

Mine only does 1024x768. I'm not too worried about the outside. Its just got sentimental value. It was my first ever laptop ;)

 

The Inspiron 1525 is running Backtrack 4 and Windows 7. Thats how I got it. I'm considering leaving BT4 on it, and throwing Slackware on it also just to mess around with the new Slackware. The D820 needs a LOT of work. 90% of the keys on the keyboard are missing, it has no battery or charger, and the media keys feel broken. It does run, though. I used my D520 charger to power the thing up, and it booted Windows XP just fine.

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Laserboy, can you do me a favor? (Or, anyone with the BCM440x LAN card?)

 

Add this to your com.apple.boot.plist in /Extra/Extensions as a kernel flag:

 

Ddd max_valid_dma_addr=1024

 

I think I have this nailed down, honestly. It seems as though Broadcom LAN cards have a problem with DMA mapping when RAM is over 1Gb. I was looking in Ubuntu at the buffer overflow bounce rate, and they allocate for it to be over 1Gb, which is why it works in Windows and Linux just fine. But when I looked at buffer overflows for Mac, I couldn't find anything.

 

One way to stop it is to force OS X to believe you only have 1Gb of RAM, by using "maxmem=1024" as a kernel flag.

 

Instead of doing that, I decided that I'd try limiting DMA mapping over 1Gb. This allows OS X and all the applications to use all of your RAM, however hardware cannot. (Graphics, Wireless, Audio, etc...) Seems to have worked for me. Typing this from an overnight Linux torrent session over LAN, and still going strong. No kernel panics, odd behavior, or random LAN drops.

 

Dunno if you guys have heard about this, but it seems to be a working solution for me.

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btw.. do you use the network kext from EDP or another ?

I'm using BCM440x.kext from EDP1.8.

 

Seems to be working flawlessly to me. No hardware issues to speak of, sleep still works, as well as LAN after multiple reboots.

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sweet.. very good find.. i have added your solution the com.apple.boot.plist of EDP 1.9

Excellent, but before we do that, I'd like for it to be tested on other D520's or any other Latitude that has the BCM4401/BCM440x.kext. I'd hate to have EDP1.9 users flipping out because my addition to EDP is screwing up everyone elses setup lol.

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hehe.. well.. its gonna be a bit hard to test since there is only D520 users with that network card...

Ugh. Hopefully Laserboy comes back and gives me a report. The 630 doesn't have the BCM4401? Its almost identical...

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