Dec 16 2008
Mac OS 10.5.6 on the Samsung NC10
Well, good news and bad here…
The good news is that, with the DSDT fix (although in all honesty I’ve not tried without) the 10.5.6 upgrade does the right thing and reboots correctly. Even better, a modified SystemConfiguration is no longer needed in /System/Library. May be due to this, the screen is also no longer stuck at full brightness… although due to the following issue, I don’t know whether it can be modified.
The bad news is that neither of the ApplePS2 replacement kexts I have load correctly, and so I’m stuck using a USB mouse and keyboard 🙁
More as I discover it…
16th December 2008 @ 7:59 pm
Additionally, IntelCPUPMDisabler.kext is no longer needed – previously, darwin would segfault on boot due to an unknown CPU type.
(Evidence that Apple has an Atom-based machine in the works, or just that they’ve updated their model lists from Intel? Time will undoubtedly tell…)
16th December 2008 @ 8:52 pm
Sorry to hear that you have to use USB keyboard + mouse at the moment. I’m sure sooner or later someone will come up with a fix for that issue. Maybe the Dell Mini forums are a good place to monitor I’d guess since they had the working kexts in the first place.
Meanwhile I’ve written a little script to interface to the somewhat raw “reggie_se” utility when setting the LCD brightness. I don’t know if it would be of any use to you since you’re saying that 10.5.6 does allow for the brightness to be changed?
17th December 2008 @ 9:58 am
It seems that whereas 10.5.5 and below were happy with AppleACPIPS2Nub or ApplePS2Controller, 10.5.6 needs both.
I found a working set of kexts here, but these turn out to be identical to what I already have… but together they work.
17th December 2008 @ 10:00 am
The great news about 10.5.6 is that, since it no longer requires a modified SystemConfiguration bundle in order to get working power management, it is now possible to run Mac OS on a PC without modifying the install at all!
Everything can now be done from the EFI partition 😀
18th December 2008 @ 11:01 pm
Stuart, did you get the new GMA950 drivers to work that came with the 10.5.6 update? Also my NC10 seems not to be able to wake up from sleep properly anymore. If you’re not experiencing those issues it would be greatly appreciated if you could share your kext collection and/or any EFI strings you use. Since I’ve also done an install from retail DVD I feel that any solutions from your side would be more helpful than Mysticus’ ideas since he’s using a patched up OS.
Thanks,
Timo
19th December 2008 @ 1:46 am
The existing 10.5.5 GMA950 drivers still work just fine for me (save for the occasional bit of corruption) – but when using modifying 10.5.6 drivers, I get a blank screen on boot. I’m sticking with the older drivers for now, but will continue to try to find a way to get the updated ones working.
My NC10 doesn’t hasn’t had any problem waking from sleep ever so far (although from day one, it’s seemed to have needed two presses of the power button to wake…)
I’ve had no luck getting Mysticus’ AppleHDA kext to work – I always get no sound and ‘AppleHDA.kext failed to load: unable to locate ‘layout-id’ property.’ in my system log (which doesn’t sound to me like an issue with the EFI partition method of running Mac OS).
I’ve had a quick browse of the concepts behind EFI strings, but have not yet devised any myself. Unless I’m missing something (which is, admittedly, highly likely 😉 ) it seems to be another of those cases where someone posts ‘use these numbers’ without saying how they came about them…
26th December 2008 @ 3:59 pm
I’ve identified that the problems with failing to awake form sleep are due to a bad AppleACPIPlatform or AppleACPIBatteryManager extension – and that in fact, with 10.5.6, the former is not needed at all!
The extensions I’m currently using under 10.5.6 are:
… and the three modified extensions are simple edits to the default System extensions.
In addition to this, the UK keyboard layout from here gives a usage UK layout with no missing keys.
The only real problem I have now, save for brightness changing being a bit kludgy and headphone output still not working, is that the Trackpad preference pane has disappeared since the 10.5.6 upgrade, and plist edits haven’t brought it back. This makes me thing that an (ACPI?) extension which is no longer required somehow remaps the input device sufficiently to fool the Trackpad utility, explaining the wide degree of reported success of this method.
The other, possibly related problem is that none of the SMBIOS overrides currently work with 10.5.6… but these are also planned to be integrated into the next versions of the standard bootloaders.
Finally, this is my com.apple.Boot.plist, with the correct EFI string to prevent the GMA950 drivers from requiring natit.kext in order to work:
(Please remove any line-breaks in the string above – it should all appear on a single line. The boot-uuid value is system-specific, and can be found in the ‘dmesg‘ output)
28th December 2008 @ 11:07 am
all I want to know – being someone that is frothing at the mouth at the thought of running OSX on a small form factor machine like the NC10 – is “does the WiFi out-of-the-box now work with the current/latest” methods available to get OSX on … I have read numerous threads and its getting more confusing as there is no ‘updated’ list of working/not-working things.
28th December 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Nope – I’m afraid that the stock WiFi card isn’t (currently) supported. Any Dell TrueMobile card should work as an alternative, and it’s relatively easy to open the machine. The 802.11b/g (1390) and 802.11a/b/g (1490) cards are apparently best supported.
What still doesn’t work
The TrackPad Preference Pane under 10.5.6.– Update: Fixed!30th December 2008 @ 11:11 am
I have placed an order for the NC10 (finally!) and am going to be looking into “dual-booting” the included operating system with OSX at some stage. I presume this is possible?
Also (and more importantly!) what I have at my disposal for getting files onto the unit will be ‘network sharing’ (from my main desktop PC) and external USB Hard Disk Drive. I presume with either one of these combinations I will be able to install a variation of OSX without having to have to use some USB-Memory stick or external DVD drive (that I do not have) that often gets mentioned?