S20/S20II laptops (Hasee, Advent, Haier...)

[coconup]

Hi, I'd like to have a topic for laptops like mine that come from the same model but have a wide range of brands. What I know is that they are all produced by a warehouse called ECS and they are all called S20 or S20II in the bios. They are all 12.1" and so far these are the ones I found:

 

- Hasee: WQ250, WQ251, WQ280, W230R, W230N and many others (all the 12.1" branded Hasee I guess)

 

- Advent: 9212, 8112

 

- Haier S20 (the original layout)

 

- maybe some Medion laptops

 

(If you know other ones please post)

 

pic:

 

 

Apart from the fact that my WQ280 laptop, being white, looks like a MacBook, I think it has a quite good compatibility with OS X.

 

specs:

 

Processor Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 800Mhz FSB)

Chipset Intel® GM965

Memory 2GB DDR-II (I upgraded to 4)

Hard Disk 250GB SATA

Optical Drive DVDRW Drive

Graphics Intel® GMA X3100

Screen 12.1" Glare WXGA (1280x800)

Network Interface 10/100Mbps LAN Wireless Connection Intel® Pro/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g)

I/O Ports VGA out, IEEE 1394, 3 x USB2.0, Express Card 4 in 1 Card Reader

Battery 4 Cells 2200mAH

Dimensions (WxHxD) 296×227×26.3mm

Weight 1.83KG (battery included)

Others Fingerprint, Camera

 

So far I've got everything working except fingerprint sensor and 4in1 card reader and maybe other little things I've never used. The system is stable and I can run without significant problems Adobe CS4, Logic Pro 8, Final Cut, Office and so on, I've never had problems with the software so far.

 

The soundcard (ALC883 address 0) is working flawlessly with some Legacy kexts I made. I've got audio in and out from every port and even the digital out working with the SMBIOS values I'm using.

 

This is what I have installed, I hope it will help somebody and that somebody could help to improve some things:

 

- Leopard retail 10.5.6 retail with munky's efi partition method on GUID disk, Vanilla kernel and chameleon 2.0

- Extensions.zip, these are some extensions you may need: ApplePS2Controller and ACPIPS2Nub, dsmos, HDA, IOUSBMassStorageClass and IOUSBFamily by Slice, VoodooUSBEHCI.

However, I now use only three kexts: HDA, dsmos and VoodooPS2Controller. I got rid of the USB kexts by deleting all the USB devices in my DSDT. In this way, all the USBs are shown as 'Expansion Slot' and not 'Built in' in system profiler and they don't break sleep.

- Webcam working with Camtwist, but I hope to find a better solution... however, if you set camtwist as a startup item and you set it to automatically hide it won't be that annoying.

- 2 finger scrolling with VoodooPS2Controller.

- VoodooPower and VoodooBattery in /S/L/E. These have to be there since otherwise VoodooPower will use a wrong FSB.

- For the wifi I replaced the built-in intel 4965 with a dell dw1490 and it works out of the box.

- Sleep/Restart/Shutdown working. However, after sleep I can't restart the laptop (it stucks at S1), while shutdown works. I think this could be fixed through DSDT but I haven't succeeded yet. Strange thing: sometimes when the laptop wakes the '7' number is stuck and repeated, when this happens I can restart the laptop after sleep .

- HDA enabled through DSDT.

 

DSDT.zip

 

What I can't get to work:

 

- Webcam without camtwist: the webcam works also with the sonix webcam monitor, so maybe modifying sonix drivers could lead to something. look here and here

- Fingerprint: I dunno why this doesn't work, since with the same product and vendor id many people don't have problems, look here

- Card reader: I haven't tried much but here's a possible solution

 

 

NEW 10 october: Snow Leopard

 

So with this laptop you can upgrade to snow like you would on a macbook if you already have a retail Leopard installation on a GUID disk. All you need is HERE (boot and install CD)

 

follow these steps to upgrade:

 

1) Boot in leopard and plug your snow leopard dvd in

2) double click on OS X Installation, then continue

3) the pc will reboot at some point, so plug your boot cd in and boot your install partition from it

4) the installation will go on and you'll be without trackpad at this point, but keyboard will work so there's no need to do anything except clicking the tab and space bar to go on

5) your pc will reboot again, boot your snow leopard install with the boot CD and run the /after install/install.sh (type in terminal 'cd [to the after install folder]' and then 'sudo ./install sh'). do this only if you are booting from the EFI partition, otherwise it could screw up your whole hard disk and you may lose your data. if you are booting in another way just copy the kexts from the resources/extensions folder to where they have to be.

 

btw you may also try this other method:

 

1) boot in leopard

2) plug your boot cd in and run the install.sh script

3) plug the leopard DVD in and begin installation from leopard, booting without the need of the boot cd at restart

 

this should prevent you to boot from the boot cd and you'll probably have trackpad during installation, let me know if it works

 

 

Some other pics:

 

If anybody with the same 'kind' of laptop would like to share his experience I'd appreciate, and I hope this topic will be useful, cheers

 

NEW: Boot/Restore CD

 

Edit 14/04: The installation script now installs VoodooPS2Controller as well and it autodetects your drive number. I also added a readme file

 

Get it here: Boot Disk

 

This allows you to boot the Retail DVD, install OS X and then set your EFI partition up with Chameleon 2.0

 

How it works:

 

Boot the Retail DVD:

 

Boot your laptop from the Boot CD

press ENTER when it asks if you want to perform that rescan thing

press f8 when you are at the boot screen

swap the cd with the OS X retail DVD

press ESC

when the OS X retail DVD appears, just boot it

 

After install or for restore (Boot your OS X partition):

 

Boot your laptop from the Boot CD

Press any key except from enter when it asks for the rescan thing

Press any key when you are at the boot screen

 

To set up your EFI partition after the retail installation:

 

IMPORTANT: This script can be run only after a clean install of retail Mac OS X on a GUID partitioned disk. This means you must have re-partitioned your disk before the installation from the Mac OS X disk utility. It won't work if you are using a patched version on an MBR partitioned disk.

 

Open terminal

Type 'sudo -s' and then your password

Go to the cd After Install folder (just type cd and drag the folder from finder to the terminal)

Type './install.sh'

Done

 

This script will also create an Utilities folder in your home directory. Inside you'll find some useful apps and an EFI folder. When you want to change something in your EFI partition, just change the Extensions in ~Utilities/EFI/Extensions or everything else that's inside there and run ./update.sh as root (sudo -s).

 

Please check what's inside the CD before burning it. For example, you may have to change the DSDT.aml in the cd Extra folder or the Extensions.mkext in the cd Extra/Preboot.dmg with the ones you are using. Also, you should put your DSDT.txt (decompiled) and all the kexts you are using in the After Install/EFI folder, if they are different than the ones I use (After Install/Resources/EFI/Extensions)

 

These are the kexts that are in the CD:

HDA.kext

dsmos.kext

VoodooPS2Controller.kext

 

(ACPIPS2Nub and ApplePS2Controller are used for the booting from CD instead of VoodooPS2Controller)

 

 

The install.sh and upload.sh script will basically build an Extensions.mkext file from what you have in your ~Utilities/EFI/Extensions folder, compile a DSDT.aml from your ~Utilities/EFI/DSDT.txt (it must be named DSDT.txt and nothing else) and put everything in your EFI partition including the ~Utilities/EFI/Themes folder and the other plists.

 

I haven't tested the install script yet but I believe it works, still there may be some errors (just typos but I don't think there are) so try it at your own risk and please report if it works

[mestle]

I'll tell you my experience:

 

I live in Beijing and I regret having bought a Hasee laptop. Only one year after I bought it, a small piece inside the computer broke and no one could fix it because it was very difficult to buy a replacement piece. It took me more than 1 month until I found a dodgy repair guy that was able to find the piece for the laptop. And the piece - where the VGA port is located - was unbelievingly expensive.

 

Until it broke I thought I had made the perfect buy because it was small and cheap although a little noisy but I should have listened to my Chinese friends not to buy anything from this brand because of its cheap/bad quality. Now besides the bad quality I can add poor after-sales customer service...

 

This happened in China were the computers are made, imagine if anything happens to your laptop in Europe! Don't buy a Hasee, in the end it's not as cheap as it seems.

[tormentor]

I own a hasee wq 250.

 

Basically, you can install OSX easily with any "distribution" disk because it is a Centrino 2

 

Problems are with the wireless card, that I replaced with a Dell/Broadcom found on Ebay

 

Another problem is the Webcam, U can use that using a program that I don't remember exactly the name "Twistcam" maybe

 

BTW, I uninstalled OSX and switched back to Windows XP mainly because no matter of the guides that i followed on this site, deleting or replacing Kexts, the cooling fan is always on whatever you're doing and I use this little laptop only for Office, mail, internet and for reading ebooks, with XP the cooling fan rarely turns on. Using OSX the battery charge won't last long. The system works perfectly with OSX anyway, but as I said, it doesn't fit my needs.

 

I would also be glad if some expert would show a step by step guide that can solve my problems...

 

P.S. I've just read the guide two post above (blush) I'll make another try...

[cairb21]

Hi coconup, don't you have any issues at all with this laptop ? Full QE/CI working on x3100 ? I've got a rebranded version of the w230n, very cheap, the only difference is the proc: a Celeron instead of Core 2 Duo. I managed to make it work with kalyway 10.5.2 but no QE/CI, with more recent versions of OsX I get a very good working video driver, with video playback and everything, when it does boot up... Because most of the time I just get a white screen with stripes just after the grey loading screen with the apple. Have to restart the computer 3-4 times to get the screen load correctly ( like it would have to heat up or something - other people with this card have had the issue on the forum ). I have found somewhere a driver which does work correctly, loading everytime I boot, with qe / ci and everything, but... only on an external lcd plugged in. This driver gives me a blue screen on the laptop. I can still use it as if it was a desktop I guess... My x3100 device id is 0x2a02 and rev is 0x0003, do you have the same ?

[coconup]

yes it's the same, I've never had problems with graphics.. dunno how to help you sorry

[kidalive]

Hi, I'd like to have a topic for laptops like mine that come from the same model but have a wide range of brands. What I know is that they are all produced by a warehouse called ECS and they are all called S20 or S20II in the bios. They are all 12.1" and so far these are the ones I found:

 

- Hasee: WQ250, WQ251, WQ280, W230R, W230N and many others (all the 12.1" branded Hasee I guess)

 

- Advent: 9212, 8112

 

- Haier S20 (the original layout)

 

- maybe some Medion laptops

 

(If you know other ones please post)

 

pic:

 

 

 

Apart from the fact that my WQ280 laptop, being white, looks like a MacBook, I think it has a quite good compatibility with OS X.

 

specs:

 

Processor Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 800Mhz FSB)

Chipset Intel® GM965

Memory 2GB DDR-II (I upgraded to 4)

Hard Disk 250GB SATA

Optical Drive DVDRW Drive

Graphics Intel® GMA X3100

Screen 12.1" Glare WXGA (1280x800)

Network Interface 10/100Mbps LAN Wireless Connection Intel® Pro/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g)

I/O Ports VGA out, IEEE 1394, 3 x USB2.0, Express Card 4 in 1 Card Reader

Battery 4 Cells 2200mAH

Dimensions (WxHxD) 296×227×26.3mm

Weight 1.83KG (battery included)

Others Fingerprint, Camera

 

So far I've got everything working except fingerprint sensor and 4in1 card reader and maybe other little things I've never used. The system is stable and I can run without significant problems Adobe CS4, Logic Pro 8, Final Cut, Office and so on, I've never had problems with the software so far.

 

The soundcard (ALC883 address 0) is working flawlessly with some Legacy kexts I made. I've got audio in and out from every port and even the digital out working with the AppleSMBIOS I'm using.

 

This is what I have installed, I hope it will help somebody and that somebody could help to improve some things:

 

- Vista x64 and Leopard retail 10.5.5, chameleon with EFIv9 bootloader on GUID disk, Vanilla kernel

- , this is what I have in Extensions.mkext the Extra folder and it includes these kexts: ACPIBattery, modified AppleSMBIOSResolver (to get spdif-in), dsmos, HDAEnabler + Legacy, IntelCPUPMDisabler, IOATAFamily (better burning), VoodooPower (Battery lasts longer with this), IOUSBMassStorageClass and IOUSBFamily by Slice (USB was already working but I had some 'wake caused by EHCI' when I tried to make the laptop sleep... I haven't noticed any difference with these kexts but at least that message disappeared)

- Webcam working with Camtwist, but I hope to find a better solution... however, if you set camtwist as a startup item and you set it to automatically hide it won't be that annoying.

- Almost perfect 2-finger scroll using this guide and this plist to put in /Library/Preferences : (while setting the trackpad speed at the minimum in system preferences)

- for the wifi I replaced the built-in intel 4965 with a dell dw1490 and it works out of the box.

- Sleep working by disabling the fingerprint port in dsdt (it doesn't work so who cares).

 

What I can't get to work:

 

- Webcam without camtwist: the webcam works also with the sonix webcam monitor, so maybe modifying sonix drivers could lead to something. look here and here

- Fingerprint: I dunno why this doesn't work, since with the same product and vendor id many people don't have problems, look here

- Card reader: I haven't tried much but here's a possible solution

some other pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If anybody with the same 'kind' of laptop would like to share his experience I'd appreciate, and I hope this topic will be useful, cheers

 

Can you compile a ALC883 CAd 1 KEXT for me? I still cannot get them all working. Please help.

[coconup]

kidalive, you keep on asking this since november.. I can't do anything more than redirect you to my kexts so you can modify them by your own since I haven't got your laptop in front of me.... btw yesterday I made my sound card work on 10.5.6 so you can give it a try: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=143697

 

also, read this post to be sure you understood how these drivers must be used: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=157096

[kidalive]

kidalive, you keep on asking this since november.. I can't do anything more than redirect you to my kexts so you can modify them by your own since I haven't got your laptop in front of me.... btw yesterday I made my sound card work on 10.5.6 so you can give it a try: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=143697

 

also, read this post to be sure you understood how these drivers must be used: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=157096

Sorry for bothring you. But I`m kinda of tired of get this card working. I`ve compared your kexts with mine and did the change you did about changing the 99 to 00 but still not working. I also compared KING`S M50SVALC888ST.kext and Mine I noticed he modified the NOD ID 0X19 VERB DATA to the same with MacBook Pro but it didn`t work within my card. I`m not sure what to change and test now. It`s frustrating. I`m not sure I can do it now. I hope any of u can find out the part I missed to modify. One more thing I don`t understand is that why I cannot change the Layout ID from 12 to 883 and get it displaying correct in the Audio ID section. Every time I change the Layout ID to 883 the Available Devices section just won`t load. Did I missed sth?

The King seems not likely to write a guide about solving the Internal Mic. I still don`t know exactly how u get it working after checking out ur kexts. Would u help me find out the solution?

[cairb21]

OK, it seems I finally managed to get my X3100 working correctly! I have 10.5.6 x3100 original drivers which were (nearly always) making osX freeze on first boot (and sometimes second, third, etc.) after the grey screen with the apple, making the screen become white with stripes. I got AppleIntelGMAX3100FB.kext and natit.kext from that page and it seems that everything is working correctly now (just those two files, not the other ones). If people have the same issue I had with a S20II variant laptop, they should try this solution. I tried other natit.kext files I had found on the site without result. Thanks coconup for comforting me in the fact that this laptop was supposed to work perfectly with OsX : )

[cairb21]

To people who have this kind of hardware, what works and what doesn't update

 

- S20II based laptops don't always have the same wifi chipsets. I thought it wouldn't work on mine so I used a wifi usb key, which didn't give me very good results. In fact it was conflicting with my internal wifi which used the same chipset, RT73. I could be sure of that by seing that was the driver ubuntu loaded for wifi. The driver to be used in case you have the same internal wifi is here. It works close to perfect for me (sometimes it takes a bit of time to react and I know it's not coming from my internet connection as it is pretty good - but no kernel panics). A bit tricky to configure, it needs to be activated as an ethernet connection in system preferences > network (it appears in the list in yellow and "Apply" must be clicked, then it should turn to green meaning it is working - then it must be configured with the horrible Ralink "usb wireless utility" by creating a new profile, unfortunately it is not recognised as an airport device...). Had some issues at first, in system preferences > network it was telling me it only had access to local network but I managed to get it right (not sure how, though)

 

- If you use the drivers I gave a link to for the X3100, never turn the "Mirror Display" on if you plug in an external monitor, this would result in a scrambled screen when an external display is plugged in, and the only way to revert to wide desktop is to delete all preferences files relating to the display - it took me some time to figure that out... Otherwise it works perfectly...

 

WHAT DOESN'T WORK

 

- two finger scrolling isnt't really two finger scrolling as on real macs but "one finger pressed hard to scroll". I didn't like it at all and uninstalled it. I'm used to the PC system of tapping on the touchpad to drag and to select, it works well on mac os too.

 

- I couldn't get any of the O2micro devices to work (card reader, pccard and firewire).

Firewire does show up in the system information ap, it shows me the correct speed and detects if a video camera is plugged in. However, controlling the video camera is possible but capturing the video and previewing it is not possible... Strangely, video out to the dv camera does work, but not video in... I found some information about reinstalling quicktime, but it was useless. I didn't try a firewire hard drive, maybe that works...

For the PC Card I didnt care, it doesn't show up in system information but I don't have any...

For the 4 in 1 card reader I tried Chun Nan's drivers (IOPCCardFamily and IOPCIFamily) thinking maybe it could solve my firewire issue too. That was a no go - the system didn't load up anymore, The grey starting screen with the apple became a grey starting screen with a cross.

 

- Shutting down the computer doesn't work : hard drive and screen turn off but the power button has to be pressed during four seconds afterwards for a real shutdown. Restart does work correctly however.

Deep sleep / safe sleep doesn't work even with EFI v9, I always get a corrupted sleep image message on boot. But normal sleep does work, so it's not a big deal (but I'm used to windows hibernate function which I find very good for laptops)

 

If anybody has a solution to the firewire issue I would be grateful. Fortunately these are only small drawbacks, I can consider having a fully working OsX and the only reason I keep a dual boot is for video capturing. By the way I use leopard 10.5.6, EFI v9, vanilla kernel, original ACPI drivers.

[.:LoZar:.]

Anyone can confirm that the fan remain always on?

 

@cairb21: coconup seems dosen't has problems like you... did you asked him?

[.:LoZar:.]

up:

 

Anyone can confirm that the fan remain always on?

[coconup]

my fan is quite always on, but it doesn't make that noise and I never felt like it was a problem... btw I now have only os x on my laptop so I can't make a comparison with windows.

 

for me shut down works, while deep sleep used to work on a previous install and now doesn't but I haven't tried yet to use it with chameleon 2.0.

 

for the wifi, I replaced the built in one with a dell dw 1490, but now it seems that mercurysquad is about to release a driver for the intel cards

 

firewire: I still haven't tried

 

2finger scrolling: there's a driver in development on the msi wind forums, hopefully we'll see something in a month. btw 2finger scrolling works pretty well, just follow the guide in the genius bar, put the plist in the first post in your lybrary/preferences and put ffscrollstarter in the login items (you can find it somewhere in that topic). I found out that even if ffscroll starts at startup, scrolling is awful if you don't run that app

 

o yea in this way it's more like 2 finger scrolling than one finger pressed hard

[tormentor]

The fan issue: it could depend on the bios you've loaded. As said in the first post there are many brands that sell the exact same hardware. I was able to find two bios , one from Hasee (1.04) and the other one from Advent, both of those bios can be loaded, the main difference is that with the advent bios the fan is always on at low speed on each operating system. With the Hasee Bios the fan stays quiet for a while, on Windows and XP it rarely turn itself on, especially if you're doing something like browsing the internet or reading an ebook.

 

I was able to install OSX only using a distribution disk because no one of the boot132 disk that I found or made myself worked (maybe some of the experts here could release one >hint<), a whatever distribution disk , kalyway, ideneb etc.

 

Last time I wanted a Vanilla installation from the 'original' leopard disk, so the only solution that I found was to unplug the HD and plug it to my desktop PC, install the system and come back to the laptop. with the system installed I was able to boot with a whatever boot132 disk. Next step was to install EFI/Chamaleon, now I've the new Chamaleon 2.0RC1 and used mkexttool in order to build the extension.mkext to put into the EXTRA folder, the very necessary files are a decrypter and a disbler ( I used appledecrypt.kext and disabler.kext) and Openhaltrestart.kext then something for the battery, like acpibattery text, then the wonderful coconup kexts for the sound: HDA.kext and HDAEnabler.kext ) . You can even add voodoopower.kext but it doesn't seem to work withthe vanilla 10.5.6 kernel . Once done and rebooted I suggest to setup the tablet in system preferences for double tapping, because you won't be able to do it when you upgrade to 10.5.6 if not installing a special program that is on the forum that adds the tablet in the system preferences.

 

With EFI/Chamaleon + the decrypter and the disabler installed you can start the upgrade process, you'll have no problems.

 

Once upgraded the system I changed the Kernel with the new Anv_XNU 9.60 kernel v1.4, cleared all the caches with osx86tools (or it will start only with the -f option) With this kernel I don't have to load appledecrypt, disabler and openhaltrestart and with the chameleon bootloader 2.0rc1 I don't even need a smbiosresolver kext, the informations are correctly shown in system profiler, shutdown works and should be some keys combination that I pressed because even if I've not set it up, the hybernate works. Sleep should be interferred by the fingerprint sensor as said before. voodoopower seems to load but I don't know how much... In any case with wifi on the battery lasts for a coulpe of hours. No need for dsdt.aml

 

Like coconup I chanced the wifi card with a dell so airport is perfect.

 

Camera works only with camtwist

 

The rest I've not yet tested but actually I'm pretty satisfied on how the laptop is going and it looks like people are working on drivers for the hardware that is not working (thank you again coconup) This mini laptop is a wonderful machine.

 

Ok, I've only to find a different kind of fan because the original one is annoingly noisy...

[coconup]

woot, 2 hours .. mine lasts for little more than one hour on battery.. voodoopower works if you put it in s/l/e, just use genericcpupmcontrol or cpu-x to see it. to build your own boot132 just follow the instructions and put your extensions or extensions.mkext where it should be on the cd

[tormentor]

My voodoo is not working, I've it in /Extra, I'll try to move it in Extensions...

 

Yes, the time should be about 2 hours on battery with wifi on, I was browsing the internet, not heavy duty btw, after 1 hour battery was at 54% so I think that about 2 hours is a right value... Not really much as far as I'm concerned, maybe there are batteries with more than 4 cells compatible with this model...

[Daniel Gustavsson]

My voodoo is not working, I've it in /Extra, I'll try to move it in Extensions...

 

Yes, the time should be about 2 hours on battery with wifi on, I was browsing the internet, not heavy duty btw, after 1 hour battery was at 54% so I think that about 2 hours is a right value... Not really much as far as I'm concerned, maybe there are batteries with more than 4 cells compatible with this model...

Yes there is batterys for sale on ebay with double power strength.

[tormentor]

Thank you, I'll check.

 

For who is interested, it looks like the 'original' model is the Uniwill S20II, here is the drivers page (for windows..)

 

http://www.uniwill.com/UserDownload/s20ii/s20ii.php

 

Obviusly NO Bios, it seems impossible to find one on the net...

[.:LoZar:.]

I've the 1.11 bios on my hasee q250. This week end I'll try to install leopard I'm new so I hope it will be easy...

 

Tormentor if you find a way to reduce the noise with a different fan tell me please!

 

Anyone tried to install an internal bluetooth module?

[coconup]

lozar, I'll upload an installations disk on this post in these days. it pretty much does everything: boot the retail dvd with the correct drivers for trackpad/sound etc and install everything you need on your efi partition with chameleon 2.0 and so on after the installation through a script. It's already done I just have to find a place to upload it

 

EDIT: uploaded

[.:LoZar:.]

Thank you very much coconup! I'll appreciate so much!!

[cairb21]

@ Tormentor : my laptop was sold with an eight cells battery, and it's supposed to last four hours. I never really checked but it does last quite long. However the battery is pretty uggly (half of it is outside of the laptop) but I prefer that than having less working time. It takes a long time to fully charge.

I managed to install two distributions on this laptop : Kalyway 10.5.2 (which worked perfectly but without qe/ci : no video playback, no 3d because there is no graphical acceleration) and Ideneb 1.4 (10.5.6) (with the graphic issues I described earlier, hardware acceleration OK but white screen on first boot most of the time which can fortunately be solved with 10.5.2 X3100 framebuffer and Natit)

THe key is to chose everything (nearly) as it would be on a normal disk.

Here is what I chose in Ideneb :

- Languages : my language (obvious, I know : ) )

- iDeneb Essential System

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Alternative essential patch (for a system compatible with original ACPI)

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > ALC > ALC 883 (not sure if that is useful as I replace them afterwards)

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Kernel > NOTHING SELECTED (means Vanilla kernel)

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Fix > AppleSMBIOS > NOTHING SELECTED (means 1.0.13 by netkas)

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Fix > IoUSBFamilyFix

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Fix > EHCI USB sleep enabler

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Fix > Battery manager

- Patches 10.5.6 ready > Fix > PowerOff_openalt_restart (didn't fix shutdown but worked for restart)

- Video > Intel > NOTHING ( very important : the X3100 drivers are in the standard osX installation and those which can be chosen here just don't work and prevent OsX from loading up. The same applies in Kalyway. If you get a cursor stuck on the top left of your screen and another one which can be moved but on an empty black screen, don't search any further, that is the reason )

- Applications > EVERYTHING ( not mandatory but things like kexthelper are pretty useful )

 

And that's it...

Then after first boot I install coconup's ALC883 drivers to have speakers / headphones working properly, some of the other drivers he gave in his post (iousbmassstorageclass, ioatafamily, smbiosresolver, voodoopower), AppleIntelGMAX3100FB 10.5.2 and the natit version I gave a link to.

The system is very stable, and maybe the issue with the AppleIntelGMAX3100FB has to do with using Ideneb or Kalyway (with OsX graphics update), as everybody doesn' have it.

 

@lozar : My laptop came with bios 1.02 and I upgraded because I had an issue with the memory (nothing to do with OsX, I just can't get a stable system with 4gb of memory on this laptop, ubuntu's memory test just gets stuck, and OsX seems to work, until a graphics heavy application is launched, such as a 3d videogame). It didn't solve my memory issues, but I immediatly got rid of Advent bios 1.11, with which the fan was always on and pretty loud, silent mode not making the slightest difference. After searching hard I found Hasee 1.04 bios, I didn't really see a difference with my original bios, but for sure the fan was much more quiet than with advent 1.11 bios, and pressing silent mode button did make it even less noisy.

 

@coconup : is your 4gb memory perfecly stable ? Have you tried graphic intense applications such as games ? I tried three different brands with three different frequencies, and for me the result was always the same, stable with one memory (2gb total), unstable with two... If I'm the only one to have this issue maybe it comes from the outdated cpu I have ? But I saw on the ECS website that the S20II is not supposed to be abble to use more than 2 gb of memory ?

[.:LoZar:.]

I don't think to have the advent bios, I think to have the hasee bios (1.11). Later I will check and I tell you... However pressing fhe boot to access the bios I noticed there are very few options in the bios, maybe I hit the wrong key (F2)...

 

My system is very stable with the t5750 core 2 duo 2.0GHz, 4GB of DDR2 667 and 320GB hard drive, I tried crysis warhead on xp sp3 with no problems.

 

edit: I checked with everest and I found to have the phoenix bios 1.11

 

@cairb21: I don't understand what distribution are you now using and if the graphic card is ok or not... and what else are not working?

 

Also: there is many distribution, kalyway, ideneb, iaktos, etc... what of these can you suggest to me? I searched the forum but is so confusional that I don't know from where start and considering that my internet connection is very slow and downloading a distribution will take very long I want to download the right distribution!

[coconup]

lozar, download the retail dvd (no modifications) and follow the instructions in the first post with the boot cd

 

I forgot to mention, if you use the retail dvd you must re-partition your hdd with a GUID partition table and install os x on your first partition.

 

btw I never had problems with ram, and my bios is hasee 1.11

[tormentor]

@coconup thank you very much, I'm going to try your new files

 

@cairb21

 

What I can suggest to you is to follow the coconupìs guide that he wrote a couple of posts ago, he is "da man" of these laptops.

 

I'm only an amateur and simply "try" things, in any case with a distribution like ideneb, kalyway etc. I just selected nothing additional, and as you said the support for the X3100 should come with the retail install without modified kext (mine works just fine with all the features)

 

If you guys are able to make a backup copy of your bios and load it to rapidshare, it should be useful if someone wants to try the difference, 'cause no one of the companies that sell this laptop is officially releasing it

 

I'm using this one

 

url=http//rapidshare.com/files/122159405/s20ii8_1.04.7z.html

 

I think it's safe to use it even because the phoenix updater makes a compatibility check, anyway it's on your own risk

 

I tried the Advent bios, as I said, and at the boot the screen shows "ADVENT" instead of "HASEE", the features are almost all the same, but as I said, the fan behaviour is different

 

The Advent Bios, however is here

 

http://support.thetechguys.com/layout.aspx...3-c9491816a68c}

 

again, use at your own risk, this one is an ISO file and it starts from a CD, directly, while the phoenix utilities needs a DOS CD or a boot pen, I made it searching on the net, it was a little complicated and really I don't remember HOW I MADE IT, in any case I'll load on rapidshare the DOS disk ISO that I have (when I find out where I left it the last itime I used it...)

 

There is really something that I've to know more on EFI partitions and the rest, yesterday I tried the new (official) chameleon 2.0 RC and the coconup sound kext stopped to work, I had to come back to PC EFI v9

 

As coconup suggested, voodoopower worked only in the /System/Libraries/Extensions folder and not in the /Extra/Extensions.mkext , now it's ok.

 

I'm going to read some documentations on chameleon, EFI partition etc. 'cause I'm doing things that I don't know even what they really do and why one is working and the other one doesn't