Here we are at the fifth, and most probably final, installment in this series! This article in this series which succeeds the first, “HOWTO: Mac OSX + Dell Latitude C840 - Part 1”, the second “HOWTO: Mac OSX + Dell Latitude C840 - Part 2“, the third "HOWTO: Mac OSX + Dell Latitude C840 - Part 3" and the fourth “HOWTO: Mac OSX + Dell Latitude C840 - Part 4“. We're going to tackle something fun today, your on-board 32-bit 128Mb nVidia GeForce 440 GO graphics card. An archaic relic with more variations than a chameleon can turn colors? Yes. Unfortunately, from word of DiegoMax, the probability of QE/CI being supported on these laptops is pretty remote. Alas, we need to at least get a larger resolution so let's get at it! Quickly, once again, allow me to just state that theReformed and/or it's contributors are not responsible for any loss of data, systems, equipment or other unnamed damages and cannot be held liable pursuant to your actions taken in conjunction with those outlined in this article.
I've sat on this article for awhile because I simply couldn't find time or motivation to finish it up. Recently a reader, Mike Lapp, wrote in a comment to Part 4, a concise set of instructions of how he got it to work on his 8200 series Dell, which does have very similar characteristics in the hardware in our C840s. Being a man of my word, I promised to publish his explanation in Part 5. Hooray! Let's swap in some MacVidia genius and off we'll go:
- To download MacVidia drivers, you need to register on their site at http://www.macvidia.com. Proceed to their download section and stay away from the installers. Let's just go directly to the driver releases.
- Download the MacVidia NV Driver 1.0.7 (beta 2 build 2) to a folder you will create called macvidia in your root " / " directory. (NOTE: As previously stated, there is no QE/CI support in this version or any other for this videocard)
- The files we are looking for in our new macvidia directory are NVidia.kext and NVdriver.kext. They need to go in /System/Library/Extensions/ directory, and the IONDRVSupport.kext needs to find a new home somewhere else. So right now, go ahead and open up Terminal on your desktop.
- Type sudo bash and when the prompt comes up asking you to authenticate, enter your administrator password.
- We'll move the NVidia.kext and NVdriver.kext to /System/Library/Extensions/ by typing mv /macvidia/NVidia.kext /Systems/Library/Extensions/NVidia.kext and do the same for the other.
- The next step is to move IONDRVSupport.kext to someplace safe - remember our directory /kext_store that we created back in Part 2? Well, we're going to move this driver there, because if this doesnt work for you, you’re going to be glad you saved it!
- So here is what we need to do. Type mv /System/Library/Extensions/IONDRVSupport.kext /kext_store .
- Now, as we've explained in previous articles, it is important that we repair permissions in terminal when moving files. So, type cd /System/Library/Extensions/ to move us to our chosen directory.
- Now, you'll need to type chown -R root:wheel ./NV* (the * functions as a wildcard allowing you to globally cover a range of files starting with NV and ending in whatever else might come after; this can be a very helpful for a very dangerous command so use it wisely). We'll do the same for the chmod, so type chmod -R 755 ./NV* .
- Now that we’re sure that the permissions are right, we'll clean up the extension caches so this baby will fire up when we reboot. Here, we need to type rm -f /System/Library/Extensions* (ignore the directory error).
- From here, although others have suggested to test the kext, it won't function just properly because of the dependencies needed to bring the drivers online and therefore it will drop you into a black screen. It is best to reboot at this point and on-boot, our dependencies should load just fine.
- When we reboot, do so in verbose mode as you've been previously instructed to do in another article of this series. What we’re looking for is anything in the terminal that suggests the kext will or will not load. If you any have dependency errors, in all probability it is a permissions error so go back and follow the explicit directions about permissions exactly.
- Now is the moment of truth. Take your cursor after your screen has come online and you've logged into your desktop, and navigate to System Preferences > Displays and set your resolution to 1600*1200 or any other you wish to use - if you can do this, you've succeeded where many others have failed.
- In the event you cannot do this, we want to make sure you can still use your machine and we're going to reset you back to the way you were before you ventured into this.
- Reboot into single user mode by hitting F8 and enter ” -s ”. This screen looks quite familiar huh? When the prompt comes up, type /sbin/mount -uw / . Now, you'll want to type cd /System/Library/Extensions/ . We're back in the extensions directory now.
- Type mv /kext_store/IONDRVSupport.kext/ ./ to drop it where we need it.
- From here, type rm -rd ./NV* to remove all traces of the NV prefixed files.
- Now you're chown and chmod, type chown -R root:wheel ./IONDRVSupport.kext then type chmod -R 755 ./IONDRVSupport.kext .
- Ok, time to clean up our mess - we'll type rm -f /System/Library/Extensions.* (ignore the directory error).
- Let's reboot normally. You should be good to go from here!
And that is it my friends! As I stated before, this is probably my last article on how to navigate, modify, install or otherwise manipulate OSX 10.4.8 for the x86 platform, specifically on the Dell C840. I want to once again thank Mike Lapp and all those whom he culled his information from to generate a solid set of instructions which enabled me to create a concise set of steps for success.
Hey,
Thanks for the guide, I already made it this far, but now I seem to be stuck on the MacVidia drivers. The official website looks to be down, can someone show me a link where I can download the 1.0.7 driver package?!
On the other side, I think I have found the 1.0.81 package, but will this work with the MX440 card?
Thanks
I cna’t get the MacVidia files, site is down due to maintenance…
Hi,
Here is how I made the MacVidia 1.0.81 package worked!!!
1. D/L the package from one of these location.
http://rapidshare.com/files/55901229/Ma … g.zip.html
http://www.tsone.info/MacVidia_1.0.81.pkg.zip
2. Run the Installer in MacOS (extract the ZIP, then run the .pkg)
3. Reboot. You should “crash” at this point.
4. Boot with F8 and -v -s options. Then the “/sbin/fsck -fy” and “/sbin/mount -uw /”.
5. Follow the instructions presented in this guide.
NOTE: I moved the both NVidiaGA.plugin and NVidiaGLDriver.bundle from the Extensions dir. I don’t know if it’s affecting the system, but I can set the resolution to 1400×1050.
NOTE2: Is 3D accelaration is supported???
I got it worked!!!
I D/L the 1.0.81 package and I installed it from Mac OS X. Upon reboot, I got the error message saying that we need to reboot the system (grey screen with the 4 languages messages - power button logo in the background).
I booted with the -v -s options. I mounted the drive (as you instructed us in part 2 or 3). Then I followed your instructions. I kept both NVidia.kext and NVdriver.kext (Step 5). I moved 2 other NV* directory (called NVidiaG… and NVidiaGL…) to the “backup” directory.
For the rest I followed all your instructions up to step 13.
NOTE : I didn’t had “IONDRVSupport.kext”… Since, I hadn’t it, I did not bothered about this.
The only thing I still need to test and Validate it’s 3D support. I would like to install my Blizzard Games on that Laptop (StarCraft, WarCraft III and World Of WarCraft).
=== PRESONAL NOTE FOR J. Longoria ===
Your tutorial are very clear. I must admit that I’m familiar with Unix and Linux. I often used shorter commands to achive the same results. I really appreciate that you took the time to put all these instructions together. I think you should add this directly to the OSx86 Project WiKi. So anyone would be able to add stuff or clarify things. Like my MacVidia 1.0.81 “patch”.
And I need one more thing, but it is more “personal”, I need to map Keys to get an effective French Canadian Keyboard layout, for the moment some keys/characters are not working at all. I need to use the US keyboard layout and I don’t like that, because most of my writing is done in French. It’s probably easy to to… I’ll look into that… For now, I got to work!
@LEKO
I’m glad this series helped you in your quest to get this working and thank you for your kind words. I have added the links to the wiki @ the osx86project, but I didn’t see a need or method to post them to the wiki as a whole.
I do prefer to spell out the commands so that people can become more familiar with the MACH subsystem as a whole. It an indirect form of education I guess,
.
You can, however, view these guides in the HOWTO section of the OSx86Scene @ http://www.osx86scene.com along with many other beneficial guides. The OSx86Scene isn’t as political as some of the other online communities and it’s information stays fresh/current. A vast majority of individuals that have been put off by the other communities have joined this community, which also happened to merge with MacVidia a few months ago.
As for the French keyboard layout, I don’t know if I can be of help on that one, but I will check around and see if I find anything. Cheers.
Hi J
Have followed these articals in the past and they have been worth there weight in gold. Has there been any more luck with 3D support for our old graphics card ? have been checking the forums and everyone else has newer laptops so no-ones really interested in making drivers for our laptop .
The only other question i have is that of Leopard , can it be intalled on our machines? . I have a Packard bell K series laptop which has basicly the same spec as the c840 except for 512 memory and a 2.8gig p4 processor , do you know if theres a chance i could install it ?
Thanks
@Dickinstein
So far as I know, the hardware is CAPABLE of running Leopard. Whether or not it will run efficiently is another question. I wouldn’t run Leopard with anything under 1Gb of memory, so you might want too bump that up. Performance will of course be lost in the video department though, I don’t believe Leopard natively supports the card and you’ll either have to do some major hacking of kexts or be subject to VESA. These laptop formfactors are considered highly obselete, I wouldn’t expect any major gains or innovation for them by the driver authors in the future. Sorry.
Thanks anyway dude
Lots and lots of thanks to Jon for the tutorials. Having no related experience or training, I did manage to get it all up and running perfectly, and I most certainly couldn’t have done that without your tutorials, Jon. So, again, many, many thanks and a big thumbs up for you.
As for the last part, I did find and downloaded the Macvidia 1.0.81 package, then took it apart (sho package contents), incompressed another package inside it, found the two files you’re instructing us to use and went on as per instructions. The first time around, it didn’t work, but I suspect I had mistyped some command. The second time, it worked like a dream and allowed me to set the resolution to 1280X960. I have not tried the 1600X1200 setting, because I’m scared (… (-: ) and because I think it would be an overkill for this monitor. 1290X960 seems a bit on the too-high side, but it the best possible for me.
Also, I think Leopard would be a gross overkill - even some Apple hardware struggles with. And I remember an old friedn who kept using Windoze 3.11 even after XP had been launched, saying that he was not prepared to do MS’s debugging for them. (-:
As a conclusion, being able to use the Dell machine with OS X, cancels the dilemma as to whether my next Apple purchase should be a MacBook or an iMac: iMac it is, with as many goodies as financially wise.
So, thanks a lot again and keep up the good work.
Best