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Dell XPS 1340 under OSX 10.6, including boot-132 install cd

bcc9

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aliveli123
aliveli123
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First of all, thanks bcc9 for this excellent tutorial. By this guide and through so many hours of research, I now have Snow Leopard without any major problems.

 

My only minor problem is the battery life. I'm guessing that most of the drain is because of the discrete gpu g210m (same case is also in ubuntu, in which hybrid-sli is no go). Is there any way to disable the power to the discrete gpu completely? I checked bios settings but there isn't any option about disabling or powering off PCIe slots.

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bcc9
bcc9
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First of all, thanks bcc9 for this excellent tutorial. By this guide and through so many hours of research, I now have Snow Leopard without any major problems.

 

My only minor problem is the battery life. I'm guessing that most of the drain is because of the discrete gpu g210m (same case is also in ubuntu, in which hybrid-sli is no go). Is there any way to disable the power to the discrete gpu completely? I checked bios settings but there isn't any option about disabling or powering off PCIe slots.

This question has come up many times in reference to the 9500m, I assume the answer is the same for the 210m.

I don't know anything new since :

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...amp;pid=1464473

Anyone try gfxCardStatus? Nobody reports back around here :)

 

Or perhaps this solution could be adapted to OSX:

http://luizfar.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/ho...-card-on-linux/

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aliveli123
aliveli123
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Anyone try gfxCardStatus? Nobody reports back around here :angel:

 

Or perhaps this solution could be adapted to OSX:

http://luizfar.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/ho...-card-on-linux/

 

It says that I am using a system that gfxCardStatus does not support. Interesting though, as it still opens and shows g210m as 9600m gt, but "switch gpu" option does not do anything.

 

 

Or perhaps this solution could be adapted to OSX:

http://luizfar.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/ho...-card-on-linux/

 

This looks like a very promising idea, I can only hope somebody would take his time to actually implement this for osx since I have neither enough knowledge nor time for that right now.

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bcc9
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Anyone help me?

I responded in post #824. Only thing I can add is that dell typically provides installers for flash updates that run under windows.

 

I don't know why this forum's BB software merges replies together when they are posted in quick succession. It does make it difficult to follow separate topics.

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bcc9
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I have just successfully upgraded from 10.6.4 to 10.6.6 and i have everything working, though after i did the patch for the HDA and rebooted to get my sound working, I encountered a problem with my trackpad not working.

 

Did anyone else have this problem? If so, is there a known solution?

 

Sometimes my trackpad stops working, and I have to rebuild my kext cache, and then it's working again. I'm not sure why this happens. Luckily I have a bluetooth mouse so opening a terminal window to rebuild the kext cache is not an ordeal.

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bcc9
bcc9
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Guys, I have a question not about a mac. I have the problem with laptop dell 1340 - it's beeping randomly from internal speaker. It finally kills me! Please help, how to fix this problem, and where is this noise beep from?

Really loud like the internal piezo speaker, from the actual stereo speaker ports, or is it perhaps the disk drive (Some laptop disk drives can beep error indicators; have had this happen on disks when there is too much pressure on the surface of the drive)

 

Does the problem happen under windows?

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bcc9
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this happens at windows more frequently, but I had it in mac os x too... I'm really not sure that it's hard drive :/

 

sometimes as I remember that it looks like sound is from hard drive. but not always, only when beeping is little longer than often

That doesn't really parse in english, and you didn't provide enough information for anyone to diagnose remotely, so I can do little more than assume the problem is with your disk drive. smartctl would probably confirm this with some SMART errors being logged, or even disk errors in /var/log. Try not to rest your palms on the keyboard, it puts pressure on the disk drive :)

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bcc9
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this is what I can provide now: the sound which I recorded.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?t8ppz4bhxt43y75

 

I have only windows 7 now, mac os x was deleted temporary.

 

Smart is ok, but there ~195 remapped sectors. I never had problems with HDD actually.

195 unrecoverable defects that had to be remapped is pretty bad in my book but google around if you want more opinions.

The drive beeps and the remapped sector counter incrementing probably happen concurrently I bet.

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olegpronin
olegpronin
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195 unrecoverable defects that had to be remapped is pretty bad in my book but google around if you want more opinions.

The drive beeps and the remapped sector counter incrementing probably happen concurrently I bet.

 

no. I have this SMART information for around 9 months and it was never changed. Counter stopped and I never had problems with HDD at all.

 

Just this beeping kills me. The question is: IS it really HHD problem? or not?

Does anybody have this problem?

 

I googled a lot, found many people with our laptop with absolutely different HDDs and with beeping.

 

I have no problems with laptop's work at all, all perfect, never had problems with performance when it's beeping.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-s...-else-have.html

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forum...8/19732618.aspx

 

More than this, if I'm using HDD drive, it never beeps. When it's without usage, it starts to beep.

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aliveli123
aliveli123
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Today, I saw a solution for the time zone problem switching times between Windows and OSX. By setting time zone as Reykjavik and unchecking time synchronization automatically from the internet, time disagree situation between Windows and OSX is resolved. I dunno what will happen after Dayligt Saving changes though :)

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bcc9
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Today, I saw a solution for the time zone problem switching times between Windows and OSX. By setting time zone as Reykjavik and unchecking time synchronization automatically from the internet, time disagree situation between Windows and OSX is resolved. I dunno what will happen after Dayligt Saving changes though :)
For about a year I've been running Windows7 machines with their system clock set to UTC via the registry change, works great & works across daylight savings changes et. all, which is more than I can say for Apple's iphone :)

 

Make a .reg file containing

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
"RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001

Click on it under windows and your registry will be fixed.

 

Far cleaner than kludging your timezone.

 

What are the odds these kexts and directions will work under OSX Lion 10.7?

Well at least the patch scripts would have to be updated with new addresses as per usual, unless Apple fixed their GPE block bug in AppleACPIPlatform and reworked AppleHDA to work with non-apple codecs without patching.

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alsheron
alsheron
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I just wanted to post a reply to say that I've successfully followed this guide and now have OSX 10.6.7 running very nicely on my xps 1340.

 

Thanks to bcc9 for all the effort put into the guide and also very much appreciate your time preparing and sharing the resources for others (like me!) to use. :D

 

I'm getting the wake-up issues with he disk activity light and sometimes, when woken from sleep, it will not shut-down.

 

Also getting the "FireWire GUID 0000000000000000 is invalid!" error - which I think is also preventing shutdown etc.

 

Would love for those errors to be fixed - but very happy so far!

 

A few questions:

 

I'm a bit of a tweaker and couldn't leave things alone so have been trying to find updated kexts here and there. I got FakeSMC 2.5 installed and working (needs to be installed in main kexts folder - not Extra) and also replaced OpenHaltRestart.kext with EVOreboot.kext which I have no idea if it's made any difference or not?

 

Can someone - bcc9 maybe - please tell me if there are any updated kexts for this set-up. Do you know if Evoreboot.kext is better than openhaltrestart.kext? I assume it is because it's newer?

 

Also - bcc9 - I've tried installing your updated acpiplatform patch (you said to do after updates) using your package installer and it comes up with an error on 10.6.7 (tries to open Microsoft Word! - think it says already installed) - Is that because it's already installed? Do only some updates replace the files it patches?

 

Oh, one more thing - I'm gettting a strange error with Spaces which I've found documnted elsewhere with genuine Apple users. When using the keyboard shortcuts to changes Spaces (Fn [left arrow] etc) the spaces graphic stays on screen and the keyboard often becomes disabled. I think there is the idea that it's a keyboard driver issue (with real macs) so maybe there is an issue with the VoodooPS2Controller? Any chance of an update or a new DSDT might fix this? Obviously this is a small issue - but hopefully might be simple enough to fix.

 

Many Thanks bcc9 and please keep this thread alive!

:)

 

P.S. To everyone who gets this up and running - I highly recommend a software called SuperDuper which can backup your entire hard drive to an external hard drive (needs to use the whole external hard drive though) and makes it bootable (remember to run chameleon installer on the external hard drive once backed up to make it bootable and then run SuperDuper SmartCopy mode again) This has saved my skin a couple of times because I can boot from the external hdd and restore kexts etc.

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bcc9
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Thanks to bcc9 for all the effort put into the guide and also very much appreciate your time preparing and sharing the resources for others (like me!) to use. :)

 

I'm getting the wake-up issues with he disk activity light and sometimes, when woken from sleep, it will not shut-down.

 

Also getting the "FireWire GUID 0000000000000000 is invalid!" error - which I think is also preventing shutdown etc.

 

Would love for those errors to be fixed - but very happy so far!

Thanks.

Ok, I've updated post #1 with the two known workarounds to the firewire GUID problem. These have been covered a few times in the thread but apparently no complete fix is forthcoming, and people are missing the workarounds, so now they are more formally documented...

I'm going to assume your resume from suspend issues are due to logging, otherwise I don't know what you're referring to.

 

I'm a bit of a tweaker and couldn't leave things alone so have been trying to find updated kexts here and there. I got FakeSMC 2.5 installed and working (needs to be installed in main kexts folder - not Extra) and also replaced OpenHaltRestart.kext with EVOreboot.kext which I have no idea if it's made any difference or not?

 

Can someone - bcc9 maybe - please tell me if there are any updated kexts for this set-up. Do you know if Evoreboot.kext is better than openhaltrestart.kext? I assume it is because it's newer?

The chameleon fix for restart has only been made for intel chipsets, so yes you still need openhaltrestart. Evoreboot (now osxrestart) was made as an alternative to openhaltrestart apparently soley because openhaltrestart prints an attribution message for the developers at boot time, and some users are religiously against those developers for illegally selling OSX systems. From a technical standpoint, I think openhaltrestart is superior as osxrestart is more of a platform dependent solution and apparently doesn't work in several cases.

 

Also - bcc9 - I've tried installing your updated acpiplatform patch (you said to do after updates) using your package installer and it comes up with an error on 10.6.7 (tries to open Microsoft Word! - think it says already installed) - Is that because it's already installed? Do only some updates replace the files it patches?
Sometimes software update doesn't update all the kexts that are updated if you do a full combo update (when the changes are basically just to the signatures of the kexts it seems). My AppleACPIPlatform was sure updated, but I always use the combo update. If you post the checksum from your AppleACPIPlatform as recommended by the diagnostic message, then it'd be easy to see what's going on in your case.

 

P.S. To everyone who gets this up and running - I highly recommend a software called SuperDuper which can backup your entire hard drive to an external hard drive (needs to use the whole external hard drive though) and makes it bootable (remember to run chameleon installer on the external hard drive once backed up to make it bootable and then run SuperDuper SmartCopy mode again) This has saved my skin a couple of times because I can boot from the external hdd and restore kexts etc.
superduper costs money, and you can do the same thing using osx's built-in ditto command for free. With existing OSX tools, simply:

mount -u -o suid /Volumes/<whatever>

cd /

ditto -X / /Volumes/<whatever>

chown root:admin /Volumes/<whatever>

update_dyld_shared_cache -root /Volumes/<whatever>

 

and a

dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk<whatever> to restore chameleon

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alsheron
alsheron
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Thanks.

Ok, I've updated post #1 with the two known workarounds to the firewire GUID problem. These have been covered a few times in the thread but apparently no complete fix is forthcoming, and people are missing the workarounds, so now they are more formally documented...

I'm going to assume your resume from suspend issues are due to logging, otherwise I don't know what you're referring to.

 

 

The chameleon fix for restart has only been made for intel chipsets, so yes you still need openhaltrestart. Evoreboot (now osxrestart) was made as an alternative to openhaltrestart apparently soley because openhaltrestart prints an attribution message for the developers at boot time, and some users are religiously against those developers for illegally selling OSX systems. From a technical standpoint, I think openhaltrestart is superior as osxrestart is more of a platform dependent solution and apparently doesn't work in several cases.

 

Sometimes software update doesn't update all the kexts that are updated if you do a full combo update (when the changes are basically just to the signatures of the kexts it seems). My AppleACPIPlatform was sure updated, but I always use the combo update. If you post the checksum from your AppleACPIPlatform as recommended by the diagnostic message, then it'd be easy to see what's going on in your case.

 

superduper costs money, and you can do the same thing using osx's built-in ditto command for free. With existing OSX tools, simply:

mount -u -o suid /Volumes/<whatever>

cd /

ditto -X / /Volumes/<whatever>

chown root:admin /Volumes/<whatever>

update_dyld_shared_cache -root /Volumes/<whatever>

 

and a

dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk<whatever> to restore chameleon

 

Thanks for all the info. I've did run the commands you gave to fix the firewire GUID issue but don't really know if it's worked or not! I might run the combo update and then re-patch. I'm not too savvy with the Terminal and also can't seem to find the hash symbol on my keyboard! Hmmm.... I ruined my installation recently messing with kexts and lost trackpad functionality - was interesting learning how to copy the old kexts back across using only the terminal. Quite interesting actually. I grew up using MS-DOS command line.

 

Thanks for explaining what evoreboot is - I'll re-place openhaltrestart. I thought the xps 1340 had an intel chipset? You seem to imply that chameleon fixes the restart issues if there is an Intel chipset?

 

As for updates - I probably shouldn't but I just used the normal Software Update menu to update - bad idea - forgot all about combo updates - will use in future. :-)

 

SuperDuper does cost money but well worth it I think - do the commands you gave do a "smart update" i.e. update only new and changed files? If so, might be worth checking that out.

 

Also - one more thing for other here might be useful to share - I've used pfix extensively to rebuild kext caches and get me out of a few sticky situations. Can bee downloaded from here. Once installed - you can run it from Terminal just by typing "pfix" and then following the on-screen prompts. Automates the whole Extention Cache rebuild thingy - highly technical.

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olegpronin
olegpronin
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I'm sorry, will post a question here not about mac os x, but about our favourite laptop dell xps studio 1340.

 

Does anybody try to install 1333 ddr3 ram? Can it be done or not? Need an advice.

 

I want to sell my current 2x2048MB ddr3 1066 ram and 2x4GB ddr3 1333. Will it work?

 

 

http://laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=4851

 

here I see that MCP79 supports 1333 ram.

 

Thanks

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bcc9
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Just wondering how is it possible to dual boot 10.6 and win7 if AHCI SATA controller is required for Mac based OS? Is it possible to run Win7 under this same BIOS setting?

Of course. In fact, when possible, you should always be using AHCI mode under windows so that you get performance improvements such as NCQ. Bios manufacturers should really have AHCI mode as the default at this point.

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txk
txk
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Ok, thanks for the info, I've tried to configure windows to use AHCI editing registry as microsoft web page says but my win7 don't boot.

 

I will google that problem, but if someone has advice it would be apreciated.

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