I am asking the good, super smart people of this site for your help. I am going to try to install a triple boot setup of snow leopard, ubuntu, and win7 on my dell D620. I have research this pretty well, and want some input before I dive into it. I current run a duel boot with ubuntu and win7. I have experience with quite a few linux distros, but none with Osx. My computer specs are as follows:
Intel T7400 2.2 ghz core2
4gb of ram
Broadcom netxtreme BCM5752 gigabit ethernet
nVida Quadro NVS 110M/Geforce go 7300
Intel N10/ICH 7 HDA audio controller
BIOS is A10 (latest)
I currently have an Intel 4965 wireless card, but read that it doesn't play nice, so I plan on replacing it with a Dell DW1500 (broadcom) that I read does work well. I also have a DW1490, but would rather try the DW1500 since it works on N networks. Will the DW1500 work fine ?
I want to go the iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded) & multifail route, but read where on the D620 the installation stalls with iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded). Some people have tried iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded) Legacy but it seems to stall as well. HOWEVER, I don't know that this is true with my configuration. Can anyone shine some light on this ?
I have read that D620SLV1.iso does work, but could I still use multifail ? Both D620slv1.iso and iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded) seem to be based on Chameleon bootloader. So I hope if iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded) can't work that multifail and D620slv1.iso are compatible.
Here is the closest procedure that I believe should work for me:
http://tonycrapx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded)-multifail-install-mac-os-x-on.html
One thing I have read on the D620's is that when you first install, wifi, ethernet, sound all work. But as soon as you do the 10.6.8 update, you have issues and have to go back and install old kext versions. Seems like every update since 10.6.3 causes issues. I ordered the snow leopard DVD from Apple and was worried it would be the 10.6.8 version. But when I received it this week, it was 10.6.3. So......Do I need to run the update and risk screwing things up ? What would I be missing if I just stayed with 10.6.3 ? The instruction say run the update and don't reboot, then run multifail. If I don't run the update, can I run multifail anytime ?
I do not know anything about kext. It appears to be a script that acts as a driver. I plan to follow the steps outlined in #7 here:
http://lifehacker.com/5672051/how-to-build-a-hackintosh-mac-and-install-os-x-in-eight-easy-steps
But I should install realtek.kext if I don't have realtek hardware ? Also during the install, do I get to pick 64 bit or not ? Because I have noticed that some of the kexts are for 64bit and some aren't. I found this site which is supposed to have a package with all the D620 kexts. But D620's are all different, some have Intel graphics, and some have nVidia. I guess I need to just pick and choose. The site for the D620 kexts is:
http://osx86.co/f57/dell-d620-630-830-kext-pack-t3840/
Assuming I make it to the point I have snow leopard installed and working, I feel pretty comfortable getting the other OS's installed. I was going to use snow leopard to make the other partitions, but I read where it will only make 4 partitions. A hidden boot partition and one for Osx, ubuntu, and Win7. However I want to create one more partition for media storage that all the OS's can share to save disk space. So to make the partitions after snow leopard is installed on the whole disk, I plan on using gparted to make the other partitions and format them as needed. Any foreseeable problems using gparted ?
Here is the procedure I plan to use for Triple booting:
http://lifehacker.com/5698205/how-to-triple-boot-your-hackintosh-with-windows-and-linux
This is very detailed and seems to make sense so I don't foresee any problems.
I know this is long-winded with a ton of questions, so I want to thank everyone in advance. I am trying to do my homework and keep from posting a bunch of “I need help†posts. The D620 is a great business class laptop that you can get for a couple hundred bucks. I have 4 of them. Hopefully this post will help some other people wanting to create a Hackintosh on a Dell D620.
Thanks again for this site , and thanks in advance for any help.