DELL Studio XPS 1340 Laptop.

[maaarcooose]

Just thought I'd start a thread for my laptop that I've installed on.

So far I've done a plain retail install of SL from a USB stick to an external USB hard disk.
I've got no additional kexts installed yet.

Everything seems to be mostly working but with the following issues:

Wireless was not working until I did a software update to 10.6.2 and then it is detected and is working fine now.

Sound is not working. No hardware is detected at the moment.

Keyboard & Touchpad on the laptop do not work at all. I'm currentlly using an external USB keyboard and mouse, but this is a pain for a laptop.

I am currentlly booting from the USB key that I installed with as that seems to have a bootloader that works on it and the hard disk itself does not seem to boot by itself.

The main reason I installed to an external is that I did not want to have to repartiton my main hard disk to a GUID partiton table. During the installation of SL I unplugged the internal drive as I have noticed that the SL installation tends to hose the MBR on a windows disk even if you only edit the partiton at the end of the drive.

TODO
---------

1 - Get keyboard and Mouse working.
I have tried varfious ps2 kexts before but to no avail. The KB & Mouse are still dead.
2 - Get sound kexts. Not even tried this yet
3 - Clone SL from the external HDD to and partition on my internal hard disk and then
setup a boot loader for it
I'm not 100% sure whether I'm bothered about this as it does mean I can keep my
mac install seperate.

Need help on:
I am currently having most trouble getting the internal KB & touchpad to work.
Can anyone offer any advice on this? I will update here with all things I try.

!m!

[maaarcooose]

Just a small update.

I've tried using voodops2controller.kext and the ACPINub kext file and keyboard & mouse are still non functional.

!m!

[maaarcooose]

I have been attempting to clone the partition from my external USB disk onto a partition on my internal disk and run into problems.

It seems that Clonezilla has problems cloning to and from USB devices. I've been getting a timeout in the middle of the clone. It seem to be a clonezilla issue that was fixed in a kernel update.

So far, then still no closer to a simple working system.

!m!

[maaarcooose]

Keyboard and mouse update:

I tried installing the voodoops2controller package from:
http://chameleon.osx86.hu/articles/voodoo-team-proudly-presents-voodoops2controller

First time it got an error on install. Second go, it worked fine.
After reboot, the keyboard and mouse are still not functional.

I tried deleting ApplePS2 kext files and just got a kernel panic on the next boot up.
Luckily I made a backup of them and booted off my install USB key and put them back. No more kernel panic.

I have also deleted the ACPIPS2nub.kext wioth teh Voodoo ones installed and still nothing, but no kernel panic.

Still no closer to a solution.

!m!

[briankeats]

I'm running on a Dell Studio XPS 1640 Laptop and have found you need the
ApplePS2Controller.kext. I would suggest placing it in /System/Library/Extensions and issuing a 'touch' on the /System/Library/Extensions folder to force a rebuild of the Extensions.mkext library.

There are a few ways to do this, I didn't read all of your previous post to see your exact setup but I know you can run into a 'chicken-and-egg' situation with a non-functioning keyboard or mouse at boot-time and noway to physically copy the correct kext to it's location without an input device !

If you have any further questions, let me know and I'll see if I help post some helpful suggestions/alternatives

[maaarcooose]

Did you install the voodoo PS2 kext files as well as having the ApplePS2Controller.kext in /System/Library/Extensions as I have tried it before?

!m!

[maaarcooose]

I am now using the installer available from http://osx86.sojugarden.com/

It seems to work pretty perfectly.

I now have a working install on my external USB hard disk and the keyboard and touchpad both work.

I recommend following the instructions to the letter and it will work.


I even reinstalled using my old installer method, recreated my install USB key and then reinstalled again using the new method.

Perfect...

Next step for me is to try installing on a partition on my hard disk.

!m!

[maaarcooose]

I now have a Tripple boot lappy with Snow Leopard 10.6.2, Windows 7 & Ubuntu 9.10.

I managed to hose my Windows 7 install by moving the partition in Gparted.
It is on partiton 3 and I moved it to the begining of the disk, deleting the two partitons at the front.
Windows then wouldn't boot. I ran a repair from the CD and then it booted but I had no keyboard or mouse functionality. Probably windows wanted to do it's login to finish installing and detecting devices, but I had no way to login. An external KB didn;t work and the onscreen keyboard just crashed.

Anyway.... I reinstalled Windows7 keeping my old files on partiton 3. Works fine now
I thn installed SL on partiton 2 which is after the win7 partiton (I didn't think you could do that with partitions, but hey..)
I then installed Ubuntu 9.10 on some extended parttions and put grub on the boot partiton not the MBR.

I also had to install the latest beta of EasyBCD to setup my booting, as with the standard stable release, Ubuntu would not boot as grub2 is not supported.

All in all I now have a well usable lappy with all my OS requirements and functioning hardware.

The main things left are:

1. Fix sound in SL
2. Get a bettery meter in SL. Bit annoying not knowing how much battery I have left.
Luckily my dell has one of those batterys with the button you press and shows you
a meter.
3. Most of the keyboard stuff works, except typing a #. I've installed a keyremapper program to sort out the @ and " switch around.
4. Touchpad scrolling and other gestures still not working.


All in all, I still say use the MyHack installer, buy a SL disk and enjoy.

!m!