Vostro 1400 Yosemite 10.10.5

[griftopia]

Going to try installing Yosemite on a Dell Vostro 1400 laptop. Details in signature, still trying to figure out more exact information. Will get DSDT, try patch it and then try USB with FakeSMC and NullCPUPowerManagement and see if can get to language selection screen. 

 

Starting this thread right now before I did that in case someone can help me out and possibly point me to a similar Dell laptop hardware for which there may be info on the forums. Will save me lot of time (like it did for my Inspiron 1720).

 

[griftopia]

It turns out Vostro 1400 very similar to Inspiron 1720. He he. I just popped in the USB stick I created for the Inspiron and it installed. Ethernet, Wifi, Bluetooth working. I'll look at other stuff later.

 

Right now one major issue is laggy graphics. Resolution is 1024x768. This tells me QE/CI not working. Can anyone help? Graphics says "Intel Crestline Graphics" in the BIOS. In Mac OS says "Intel 965 GM" Now that I have an install I'm also going to try building DSDT for the vostro 1400 itself and patch it. Trying to find Vostro Chipset. Maybe it is not ICH8 like the i1720 and is my issue. Thing is don't have Windows instaled so trying to figure out what Chipset I have. Then I can also try BIOS update (A08 currently to A09 I see available).

 

Didn't want to do damage beyond point of no return, so appreciate any advice.

 

EDIT: Stumbled Across this thread

 

https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/8218-64-bit-x3100-kexts-from-1062/

 

Can you please explain where to enable 64-bit?

[Bronxteck]

lion is the last OS for that graphics card in 32bit mode. same specs as the GMA D630 you would have to boot with arch=i386 flag

[Hervé]

Intel Crestline graphics of GM965 chipset = GMA X3100.

 

There is no GMA X3100 support in 64bit kernel-only OS X versions. The buck stops at SL and Lion in 32bit kernel mode, so forget about any recent version like Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan. You would only run those without graphics support, i.e. in useless limping mode as you've quite expectedly experienced...

https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/8238-unsupported-gpu-graphics-cards/

[griftopia]

lion is the last OS for that graphics card in 32bit mode. same specs as the GMA D630 you would have to boot with arch=i386 flag

 

Just so I understand. You are actually saying I shouldn't use arch=x86_64 but use arch=i386 to get it to work. AND this is a kernel flag in my chameleon plist? Right now I don't have any flag so I gather I'm running 64 bit.

 

Some people claimed to have got it running in 10.10.5 which is why I'm asking. Hope it is okay to post this link

 

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hackintosh-laptop-running-yosemite-10-10-1-w-x3100-graphics.1841061/

[Hervé]

No, you got it all wrong. Since ML was introduced back in 2012, no OS X version runs in 32bit kernel mode so boot option arch=i386 is useless and will not allow you to boot the OS. Furthermore, you cannot -and never will- get GMA X3100 graphics (or GMA950 or nVidia GeForce 7xxx) fully supported under any OS X versions with a 64bit-only kernel. There are no drivers and those 32/64bit drivers provided in SL 10.6.2 are buggy in 64bit mode.

 

Again, and as you've already experienced yourself, you certainly can install ML, Mav, Yos or EC without problems on your GM965 / GMA X3100 laptop; no issues on that front; but you never will get graphics acceleration, which renders the system more or less useless due to the (poor) performance issue.

 

For SL or Lion, you would indeed need to ensure 32bit kernel mode with option arch=i386; that's what Bronxteck meant. Don't waste your time on this machine with anything past Lion 10.7.5. There is just no point at all.

[griftopia]

@Herve - Hearing you loud and clear. However, just for my education. Something is not making sense to me.

 

I extracted DSDT for Vostro 1400 (I know I did this properly because I know I did it properly for my Inspiron 1720 few days back), then proceeded to patch it with ICH8 chipset patches. When I did this for 1720 worked like a charm. When I did it for 1400 which also has ICH8 mainboard, it didn't work.

 

I actually have 10.10.5 installed on the Vostro 1400 with the 1720 patched DSDT. How ?!?!?! The only issue (besides graphics of course) is Sleep and Shutdown don't work. Not surprised at all. I would expect those to work if I patched 1400 DSDT correctly. 1400 DSDT with ICH8 will not even boot and fails randomly.

 

Appreciate any insight.

 

PS - I am certain I'm not doing any "user error". 1720 DSDT is working for me on 1400, 1400 DSDT not working on 1400.

[Hervé]

Well, the 2 x systems are very closed in terms of specifications, hence why the 1720's DSDT loads Ok on the Vostro 1400 but the 2 x DSDT clearly differ. Compare them. There's clearly something missing or incorrect for OS X in the Vostro 1400's default DSDT table.

 

Remember that you do not extract a DSDT from BIOS to just use it "as is". That's useless as OS X is perfectly capable to read the raw table from BIOS. You only specifically use a DSDT file/table because you've patched it.

[griftopia]

Yeah I understand unpatched DSDT is useless. The only thing I can think of is this. My i1720 has A09 bios, the v1400 has A08, I didn't update to A09. For both DSDTs I extracted, I applied the same exact set of patches. So I'm stumped.

 

In any case, since graphics is shot for v1400, I think enough time spent on this.