Hervé

Got a low-profile Twintech nVidia GeForce GT610 2GB-DDR3 (Fermi GF119) and put it in the Vostro, using the 2 low-profile rear brackets. The card works OOB with Lion (10.7.5) and ML (10.8.3) with full QE/CI. No specific kexts or patching required. Too easy!

http://www.twintech3d.com/en/products_features.asp?num=322
 

In addition to its low profile form factor, one of the reasons for buying that card was that it was advertised as passive/fanless. The card I actually received is fitted with a very small fan (smaller than shown on above picture) on the heatsink. I was concerned this may be a problem for the small power supply of the computer (the card box says 300W min. when the Vostro's PS is only 250W), but no, all appears Ok so far (touch wood, it'll stay that way). The card is very quiet too and its fan cannot be heard over the Vostro's own fans.





The card does not work with Snow Leopard, it looks like native support for this Fermi card only got introduced in late Lion and early ML versions.

 Remember to remove ATI1300Controller + EVOenabler kexts from /Extra/Extensions if you do not run SL with Dell ATI X1300 graphics card; these 2 kexts should only be used in that particular context (Snow Leopard + Dell ATI X1300 card.)

In your case, I'd go for a full disk image that will basically make a complete copy of your HDD contents and store it in an image. You can then restore that image and you'll get an exact mirror copy of your current HDD setup.

Then, for more regular backups, use the Time Machine facility provided by OS X.

Well, 1st thing to check is what the BIOS says about your battery. It may indicate that your battery is nearing its life end and should be considered for replacement.

This being said, yes running Mac OS X does tends to drain the battery quicker than Windows.

Can't say right now...

Are your BIOS settings aligned with recommended parameters and which Ethernet kext do you have in /E/E?

All those manual boot flags and boot options are optional in the sense that you would not normally have to worry about them. The Chameleon boot plist takes care of that. You only use the manual parameters if you want to overwrite the boot plist settings.

And don't worry about seeing what appears like 4 CPUs; that's not where your problem is.

Just tried and there's no problem at all after wake on my D630 X3100 LoRes under 10.7.5. Wired Eth is active again after wake.

Shouldn't it just be "PciRoot=1" ?

Just look in the various available logs.

Consider the information of this thread too: https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/2186-random-ui-freeze-in-d630-intel-1440x900/&do=findComment&comment=17688

I'll verify that behavior; I never use the built-in Ethernet, only the wireless and that certainly has no issue after wake under Lion 10.7.5.

You can use an external display with SL or Lion on the D620 with Intel GMA (I'm positive for SL, for Lion I would have to test to be certain) . What we've noticed with Intel GMA models is corruption at the bottom of the display on external screen beyond a certain resolution. There's a fairly lengthy thread on the forum about it with screendumps.

On the other hand, I cannot get any external display to work with my D620 nVidia. It won't detect the 2nd/external screen. It's probably a DSDT issue.

Once OS X is installed, both wired Ethernet and wireless work (bearing in mind that Intel wireless cards are not supported).

Look in your logs: Apps -> utilities -> console

Does it seem to happen with any particular application or is it totally random? Did you install tools like iStats or HWMonitor to keep an eye on HDD/RAM/CPU/T°/etc ?

D630 with GMA X3100 graphics,  Mac OS X Lion and Intel 3945 wifi card, right?

Yes, you just need the correct BCM57xx kext in /E/E, followed by myFix (full). Normally, at the next reboot, Mac OS X pop ups a message about a new interface being detected. You then have to go to the Network pref pane and click on the + button at the bottom to manually add it from the list of available interfaces; that "activates" it.

2) Where should I put this? Link to a guide will be helpful.

When you see the bootloader delay bar, press a key and type what I indicated. You know, you can do a bit of research yourself too, don't just depend on babysitting...

Re: bootpack, start by reading the EDP web pages. Don't just rely on forum posts.

Would you mind sharing how you did it (the serial number)? Did you just manually modify the SMBIOS plist?

Try:

1) remove the Intel WLAN card (or disable it in BIOS) -> it's not supported by OS X and would have to go

2) boot with option: "GeneratePStates=No" and/or "GenerateCStates=No" -> may prevent the laptop reset

Ok, well, I don't want to ruin your early enthusiasm, but this is highly unlikely to work on our hacks. And no, no-one made any GMA950/GMA X3100 kexts for ML.

This is a rather dirty, not to say completely fu**ed up method (!):

1) it basically replaces the entire /S/L/E folder of mainstream ML by /S/L/E of DP1, to which 32bit graphics kexts from Lion have been added

2) it replaces the entire /S/L/F OpenGL folder of mainstream ML by an edited one (from DP1?)

2) it replaces mainstream Mach kernel with DP1 kernel (to support 32bit mode)

Simply open up the install.command script with a text editor and you'll see... This leads to some sort of seriously degenerated 32bit version of ML! 

The result is that some real Mac can boot ML in 32bit mode and, thanks to Lion graphics kexts, then fully supports those GMA950 & GMA X3100 graphics chips dropped by mainstream ML.

However, there's no guarantee that our EDP add-on kexts will load under DP1 kernel or that certain applications or utilities will even work on such bastardized installations. One of the replies in the thread mentions that Disk Utility no longer works and others mentioned losing networking too... One could argue that running ML DP1 itself would probably work better!

I'm going to test this on D620/D630 Intel, but this may just end up as a red herring... This is very very different from the proper job done by Nawcom & Co on SL legacy kernels where each particular version of kernel was patched or the myHack clever way of bypassing /S/L/E vanilla kexts to load replacements from /E/E. /S/L/E should always be left untouched!

On top of that, it's not really sustainable:

• you lose any new kexts provided in any mainstream ML that's not included in DP1 list
• you would have to repeat the task after every ML update, again losing all potential new kexts brought by the update

It's probably kind of lucky that it worked at all on 10.8.1/10.8.2 installations (and it looks like it does not on 10.8.3). I guess, this has a better chance to work on older Macs than later ones dropped by Apple for ML. But calling and locking on DP1 kernel + kexts is just kind of stupid to me...

Even with GMA support, you'd find ML quite slow on a D430. Lion is already kinda slow on the D4x0. Best OS X version on those is SL...

Yes, definitely something to be tested!

But caution, it seems to require the DP1 kernel, so that may lead to losing quite a few apps...

Try and select a different SMBIOS plist to pretend your Hackintosh is one of the Mac models officially compatible with ML

Good stuff. Once you get to SL 10.6.8, you should then be able to use the latest legacy kernel 10.8.0. It's available in the Precision 670 boot pack if I remember well. If not, you'll easily find it on the web.

Mmm, legacy iboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded)...

Maybe the Pentium D is not compatible with Mach kernel (I thought it were), although, usually, you get a kernel panic and a system reset in such case... What you could try to do then, is add one of Nawcom's legacy kernels to the root of your myHack USB installer and specify it when you boot it (just type , eg: Darwin_10.8.0). If that works, you'll have to copy the legacy kernel to your HDD after your initial installation and specify it in your Chameleon boot plist.

Try with the attached kernel.

Darwin_10.4.0.zip

You're not very clear. Are you or are you not making use of a proxy, i.e. do you have one to control access to the Internet? If you do, you probably need to configure your SVN client to make use of your proxy. You can look it up on the web, there are tutorials.

Are you in an office environment?

The Optiplex SFF uses a Q965 Express Intel chipset with GMA3000 integrated graphics. That graphics chip is totally unsupported by Mac OS X so you basically need to add a supported PCIe x16 graphics card to get anywhere (without graphics support, a Hackintosh is hardly usable...). Your choice in that respect could be limited since I believe the SFF model can only accept low-profile cards. I have some experience on that front: my Vostro 200 is the Slim Tower version.

Low-profile cards that will work in SL include:

• ATI Radeon Pro X1300 (Dell fitted a fanless version to some of their Slim PCs (I have it). Available cheaply on ebay)
• ATI Radeon HD5570
• nVidia 8400GS
• nVidia GT520? -> needs confirmation

I believe all those exist in passive/fanless form, which is probably what you need on your Optiplex 745 SFF (Dell's documentation mentions 25W max. on PCIe x16 slot and a 275W power supply). Be careful though, as they may take up 2 slots due to heatsink height/depth.

Intel Q965 chipset operates an ICH8 I/O controller. That is normally supported by the IOATAFamily kext, but if using that kext does not help in seeing/detecting your HDD, you ought to check the PCI device id for your on-board controller as it may differ from the id(s) specified in the kext plugin.

If you open up IOATAFamily kext and browse to the PlugIns folder, you'll see a kext called AppleIntelPIIXATA. In that kext, you'll find a file called Info.plist. This is where details of the I/O controllers can be found.

For instance, this is the sort of things you should find in the plist, for ICH8 controllers:

        ICH8 ATA/100
        
            CFBundleIdentifier
            com.apple.driver.AppleIntelPIIXATA
            Controller Name
            ICH8 ATA/100
            IOClass
            AppleIntelPIIXATARoot
            IOPCIPrimaryMatch
            0x28508086
[...]

        ICH8 Serial ATA
        
            CFBundleIdentifier
            com.apple.driver.AppleIntelPIIXATA
            Controller Name
            ICH8 SATA
            IOClass
            AppleIntelPIIXATARoot
            IOPCIPrimaryMatch
            0x28208086
[...]

        ICH8 2 Port Serial ATA
        
            CFBundleIdentifier
            com.apple.driver.AppleIntelPIIXATA
            Controller Name
            ICH9 2PTS SATA
            IOClass
            AppleIntelPIIXATARoot
            IOPCIPrimaryMatch
            0x28258086
[...]

        ICH8-M Serial ATA
        
            CFBundleIdentifier
            com.apple.driver.AppleIntelPIIXATA
            Controller Name
            ICH8-M SATA
            IOClass
            AppleIntelPIIXATARoot
            IOPCIPrimaryMatch
            0x28288086
[...]

The lines reading provide the full PCI id of the hardware: the 4digits number right after '0x' is the device id and 8086 is the vendor id for Intel.

If you still have Windows running on that Optiplex, you can easily retrieve the device id of your controller: open-up the Device Manager, select your ICH8/SATA HDD controller and right-click to Properties. In the 'Details' tab and you should see PCI device id + vendor id in a line that looks like: "PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_xxxx&SUBSYS_--------------". The number displayed after DEV is your PCI device id.

Alternatively, use Terminal command lspci -nn (need kext lspcidrv loaded though).

If the above plist does not contain your particular device id, you need to add it: you can either copy/paste an existing ICH8 section, rename it to something like "ICH8 3" (or whatever you like) and replace the device id by your particular number or you could just overwrite an existing PCI id. You can use a simple editor like TextEdit to make your changes. This process is called patching the plist/patching the kext. No guarantee that it'll work afterwards though...

Note that, to be able to edit the kext plist, you'll probably have to copy it (not move it) away from /E/E before you make your changes, or you're likely to meet a Write access issue. After making and saving your changes, copy the kext back to /E/E (replace the existing file if prompted to) and re-run myFix (quick).