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OS X 10.7.3 is working well on Dell Inspiron 6400. Everything works except sleep. I could not test sleep as my power button is broken and I use the MediaDirect button to start my laptop. I have not used any DSDT or injection. I have not had a single KP so far. Please note that upgrading to 10.7.5 and above will break the OS, it will boot to a blank screen. if you patch the AppleIntegratedFrameBuffer.kext, it will panic as the patched version is not supported beyond 10.7.4. To get it to work on 10.7.4, you need to patch AppleACPIPlatform.kext with the one from Snow leopard 10.6.8 and also patch the AppleIntegratedFrameBuffer.kext. Since I was happy with the performance of 10.7.3, I decided to stay on this version. All the native OS X softwares like Aperture, iWork etc and third party softwares like Adobe products, office for Mac etc. run without any issue. My Inspiron 6400 configuration is as follows: Intel Core2Duo 7200 with 64bit support; Intel ICH7 family chipset optimized by Dell Onboard Intel 945GMA video driver with 64MB shared memory; (1680x1050 full resolution, QE/GL everything works including mirror) : patched with AppleIntegratedFrameBuffer.kext (version 1.4.20.28) 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM, RICOH R5C822 memory card reader (in-built), (works well with patched VooDooSDHC.kext) 2-port UBS 3.0 ASMedia 1042 Express Card in ExpressCard slot; (works with native AppleUSBHub.kext and patched CallDigitUSBxHCI.kext), CallDigitFastO.kext is optional but recommended) 500GB SATA HDD; Onboard Broadcom 440family ethernet; (works with AppleBCM400.kext) Broadcom BCM4322 mini-wifi card, (works Out of the Box, no need for any additional kexts) Sigma Tel Stac9200 onboard Audio Device : (Works with VooDooHDA (version used 2.7.2) Trumobile 350 bluetooth card : (Works OOB) Slot loading CDwriter/DVD ROM I will attach a list of kexts that I have used and also the Extra folder which includes my edited chameleon.plist and smbios.plist. For the patched kexts, you may need to patch with your Dev-id and Ven-id of your hardware. Prerequisite: You need to find a working OS X Snow Leopard machine to create a bootable USB stick of OS X Lion patched with AppleIntegratedFrameBuffer.kext from here. Any windows software like MacDrive to access OS X partiton from windows to edit the Extension folder after fist install. You will need to edit the info.plist of some of the kexts to insert the Ven-id and Dev-id of your hardware for full compatibility. I can post a full tutorial on request. I am multiboot (chameleon, stolen and rebranded)ing with Lion/Linux/Windows 8/Windows 7 and Windows XP from a single drive. Regards OS Lion on Inspiron 6400.zip

I apologize in advance for the length of this post... I suspect that may immediately turn off some people. Forgive me, but I tried to include all the relevant info I could. I have an Inspiron E1505 (aka 6400) running SL (10.6.8) and I'm investigating various hardware upgrades. I probably won't do ALL of these, but I'd like to know if there are any OS X compatibility issues with any of the proposed hardware upgrades before I start spending money. I'd also appreciate any "performance" related responses, ie "not worth it" or "definitely worth it" or hardware compatibility issues, ie "you can't put that CPU in an E1505"... unless of course those go outside the scope of this forum. My goal with these upgrades is obviously to increase performance, but also just to get some experience swapping out various bits of hardware and making them work with SL. So... borderline "performance" improvements may be worthwhile from a "just for the experience" point of view... depending on the upgrade cost that is. My current configuration (as best I've be able to determine) is: Model: Dell Inspiron E1505 System: MM061 (not exactly sure what this is) BIOS: A17 Chipset: Intel 945GM (FSB: 533MHz/677MHz) Motherboard: MD666 CPU: Intel T2050 (1.6GHz/2M/533MHz) Memory: 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800MHz (PC2-6400) SDRAM SO-DIMM 200 pin non-ECC Video: Intel GMA 950 (integrated) Display: WXGA Wireless: WLAN (Dell) 3900 802.11/b/g Hard Drive: 120GB Seagate Momentus 7200.2 (ST9120823AS) NOTE: I'm not exactly sure what the "MM061" is referring to. It's displayed on the boot screen just above the BIOS revision and I've seen it in relation to the BIOS itself (not the BIOS revision) and the model number and maybe a few other things. I suppose the model number makes the most sense. My optimal configuration (again, best I can figure) would be: ... Motherboard: YD612 (required for video upgrade - includes PCIe slot) CPU: Intel T7600 (2.3GHz/4M/667MHz) Memory: 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 667MHz (PC2-5300) SDRAM SO-DIMM 200 pin non-ECC Video: ATI Radeon X1400 Display: WSXGA+ Wireless: Atheros AR5B91 802.11/b/g/n Hard Drive: some SSD 80-120GB I think my rough order/importance of the upgrades would be: wireless (cheap network performance increase) CPU (faster and 64-bit) memory (seems like it should help) motherboard/video (better video processing) display (increased resolution) SSD hard-drive Wireless - Based on one of the threads in the R&D forum it looks like the Atheros AR5BXB112 and Dell DW1505 would also work OOTB with SL. I listed the Atheros AR5B91 because I assumed it would have the same/similar 802.11n performance but wouldn't cost as much (I haven't priced any of them yet). If that's an invalid assumption, please let me know. For reference, my current wireless router is a "D-Link 655 Xtreme N Gigabit" and a "Hawking 300N Ranger Extender (HWREN1)" which helps on one side of the house. I don't plan to replace either of those any time soon, so whichever wireless card works best from a compatibility/price/performance point of view is probably how I'd like to go. CPU - Apart from the performance increase I assume I'd see by going from a T2050 to a T7600, I'm hoping I'd be able to run 64-bit SL. I've run into some software packages that only provide 64-bit versions, so I was hoping the T7600 would solve that issue. If there's some reason I won't be able to run 64-bit SL with the T7600 please let me know. Memory - I'm assuming there's no point in going to PC2-6400 (800MHz) memory since the FSB for the Intel 945GM only supports up to 667MHz. Also, I'm assuming with the T7600 cpu @ 667MHz, it would be optimal to have the memory match that? Also, the E1505/6400 doesn't "officially" support 4G of memory, but I've seen several references to people saying it works although you may only be able to see 3.2G. I'm not sure if the 3.2G limit is hard or depends on the chipset and/or CPU and/or OS being used. Most of the discussions I saw related to Windows. If anyone can clarify what I should expect with the Intel GMA 945 chipset and T7600 (64-bit) CPU and SL, I'd appreciate it. Video Card - From what I understand, in order to upgrade the video, I would need to replace the motherboard with one that includes a PCIe slot (YD612). Assuming I did that, I have 3 options: the ATI x1300, the ATI x1400 or the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300. From what I've read, the ATI x1400 is better then the NVIDIA even though the NVIDIA was originally a more expensive add-on. Hard Drive - The SSD drive may be one of the better upgrades from a performance point of view, but from an "experience" and cost point of view it's pretty low (ie, easy to do and costs a lot). I haven't really looked that much at SSD drives, so I may find I can get one cheaper then I thought. As mentioned at the top... my primary goal in posting this on the OSXLatitude site is to verify OS X compatibility. But I'd appreciate corrections to any assumptions I've made about hardware compatibility and/or performance expectations. Thanks for any help.

I have an Inspiron E1505 running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 that was originally installed via iFail_S3_v2. Most things seem to work fine (I haven't used it enough yet to be sure)... but I seem to be spinning my wheels trying to get the graphics to work. Right now I'm stuck with a basic display at 1024x768. I'd really like to get 1280x800 and I assume some kind of graphics acceleration needed for videos (VLC complains about GL support). In order to get the display to work at all I had to move the kext's related to the GMA950 under /System/Library/Extensions, specifically: AppleIntelGMA950.kext AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle AppleIntelGMAX3100.kext AppleIntelGMAX3100FB.kext AppleIntelGMAX3100GA.plugin AppleIntelGMAX3100GLDriver.bundle AppleIntelGMAX3100VADriver.bundle AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext If I don't move those, all I get is a black screen. I've tried a few different kext's for the GMA950, but nothing seems to work. According to lspci (using live linux distro) the display controller is: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) I can provide more details about the entire system (complete lspci output, system profiler info, /Extra kexts installed, etc) if necessary. Any help appreciated.