Acer 3830tg TimelineX

Hello All,

I have been following the "Acer Aspire 5750g" thread for a while and using a lot of kexts and advice from that thread for my Acer 3830tg Timeline x and its been helpful but thought it was time for us 3830tg owners to have our own specific thread to share ideas and solutions.


Specs:

Intel Core i3-2310M CPU 3MB Intel Smart Cache, 2.10 GHz, 35 W
13.3” CineCrystal HD LED TFT LCD (1366 x 768)
4 GB DDR3 RAM (Upgradeable to 8 GB)
750 GB HD @ 5400 RPM
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
HDMI, VGA
Gigabit Ethernet LAN and Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n
Two Acer 3DSonic Stereo Speakers
1 x USB 3.0
2 x USB 2.0
Card Reader (SDHC, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD)
Ports: Headphone, Microphone, RJ-45


This is my Best attempt at a Guide, let me know if you have any ideas for improving my instructions.

Step 1. Prepare the Bios
1. Boot computer, immeiately press F2 to enter bios
2. In the "Main" section select Graphic Mode:Intergrated & Sata:AHCI Mode
3. Press F10 (save and exit)




Step 2. Prepare the Unibeast Install USB
I am not going to go thru all the steps as there is already a perfectly good guide to do this : HERE

You only need to follow the first two steps to make the USB then continue on with the instructions in this guide
Just make sure to choose "Laptop Support" and keep in mind the estimated time to prepare the USB is not correct, it will however take some time (30min ??).

After this has finished you should be able to boot the installer USB.

Step 3. Install
1. Reboot Computer and press F12 at Acer logo screen
2. Select your installer USB and press enter
3. choose your language
4. At the top of the screen choose "Utilities>Disk Utilities"
5.Choose your hard drive on the left and click the "erase" tab and leave the Mac OS X extended Journaled selected
6. Exit Disk Utility and click install (should take about 15min)

Reboot
1. Reboot computer and press F12 at acer screen
2. Select your USB installer again and hit enter
3. This time at the unibeast boot screen you should see your hard drive where you just installed lion too - select it
4. Your new lion install should boot without panics




***NOTE***
At this point you will probably be presented with a "No keyboard connected " screen, (pic above) if so follow these steps:
First you will need to place a copy of the ApplePS2Controller.kext on a usb stick with nothing else on it, and keep note of the USB sticks name EXACTLY.
Then follow these steps:
A. Reboot into your installer USB
B. select language then choose Utilites>Terminal
C. Unplug your usb mouse if you have one, and plug in the usb you copied the ApplePS2Controller.kext to.
D. In the terminal widow type the following commands EXACTLY! and press enter after each one. (CHANGE NAME OF "YOUR_HD" TO THE NAME OF YOUR HARDDRIVE and YOUR_USB as well)


cd /Volumes/YOUR_USB
(hit enter)

cp -R ApplePS2Controller.kext/ /Volumes/YOUR_HD/System/Library/Extensions
(hit enter)

chown -R root:wheel /Volumes/YOUR_HD/System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/
(hit enter)

chmod 755 /Volumes/YOUR_HD/System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/
(hit enter)

(*Note* the last two commands are all on one line with a space before the /Volumes... it just came out like that when I typed it here?)

E. Reboot computer
F. Press F12 at the Acer screen and boot from the installer usb, then highlight your hard drive, and press "-V -F" and press enter - your hard drive should now boot past the keyboard screen.

5. Finish install steps and you should now be looking at the lion home screen



6. Run Multibeast (v4.5.2) and select the following: easybeast, repair permissions,voodoo 0.2.72 (not 0.2.73!), system definition MacbookPro8,1, and also ApplePS2 (again if not keyboard stops working?)
7. reboot
8. You should have a fully bootable lion install now with Graphics, Sound, Trackpad (Full Gestures) at this point.
9. Place the following kexts from the kext pack (download below) on the desktop: IO80211Family9287.kext, VoodooBattery.kext, then run Kextbeast.
10. Reboot, and you should now have working WIFI (with auto connect) and a basic Battery monitor.
11. Download the 10.7.4 combo update from here and install it, there should not be any issues.

Thats it! you should now have 10.7.4 working nicely on your Acer 3830tg.



Working:
WIFI (with auto connect)
Graphics (hd3000 only full QE/CI)
Trackpad (with gestures)
Keyboard (some fn button not working)
Battery (without meter)
Sound
HDMI (Video)

NOT WORKING
Card Reader
USB 3.0
HDMI Audio
Sleep
Bluetooth
Brightness Control




Performance in my opinion is good, especially for the low price (I paid $430 cdn +tax + $50 for 8gb of ram) and battery life is about 4 hours.

I hope to get a DSDT for this laptop to fix the sleep and brightness and I think the battery life could greatly improve.

wow dude thank you so much for posting this I am sure a lot of others with the same laptop will have something to contribute to this laptop

and nice guide btw

regards,

sam

I will give it a try and get back with the results this week sometime

I've used similar steps when installing on mine. When you get to the Keyboard Screen, the easiest way to get past it is just to plug a usb keyboard. You can unplug right after it goes to the next screen and if I remember correctly and the laptop keyboard will be functioning.

@taumaz

Trackpad (with gestures)

Click to expand...

Do you mean basic gestures, like scrolling with two fingers? I'm able to get that to work, but no 3 or 4 finger gestures...

I hope to get a DSDT for this laptop to fix the sleep and brightness and I think the battery life could greatly improve.

Click to expand...

I've attached my dsdt. I'm not sure if it's 100% correct, but sleep and brightness are working. (brightness key is Fn+F12 and Fn+Pause/Break), but there is a way to change it. I've set mine to F1 and F2 but cannot remember the steps to do it, google should help.

Battery (without meter)

Click to expand...

To fix the meter, install SmartBattery kext (Attached)


Now, are you able to get power management working?
Have you installed NullCpu kext?
What's the battery life with lion?

PS: I'm only able to get ~4600 with geekbench, any idea why that might be(same specs)?

skilet,

Your right, the keyboard does work. But I still get stuck at that screen when using unibeast? BUT I did find a way easier way past this here:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=170&t=47916

(I used the delete from plist method).



Yes I meant basic two finger scroll, tap to click, scroll left and right (ex. launchpad)

Thanks for the DSDT and kexts I will try them out this weekend!

And no power management, I had battery meter before 10.7.4 tho.

Did I mention I have upgraded to 8gig ram and have a 7200 rpm HD? mabye thats why my score is a bit higher???

Thanks for your help, this is exactly what I was hoping for.

And no power management, I had battery meter before 10.7.4 tho.

Click to expand...

Try this kext, works with 10.7.4 for me.

And I guess it's the ram upgrade that contributes to the Geekbench score increase, since I have upgraded my hard drive too, to an SSD.

the battery kexts did not work for me? i see they say failed when the load in verbose boot? and the dsdt caused panic during boot?

are you using nullpowermanagement?
did u delete voodoohda? (think that was what caused the panic)

thanks,

I'm not using nullcpu kext, but I've deleted AppleIntelCpupowermanagement kext.
I haven't deleted voodoohda.
To fix the kp, make sure you install nullcpu kext and use voodoohda v0.2.72.

You're awesome for making this guide. I'm going to try it out right now! I'm not new to this, Hackintoshed a crap ton of computers before.

This is my main laptop and when I tried to Hackintosh it before, the Wifi never worked. Also, I'm glad to see that it is the same model as mine, 3830tg-6412 with the Core i3.. I think you bought it from the same place I did in Canada (430 dollars at Staples) I'll see how it goes and report back.

Yuvin.

Yuvin said:

You're awesome for making this guide. I'm going to try it out right now! I'm not new to this, Hackintoshed a crap ton of computers before.

This is my main laptop and when I tried to Hackintosh it before, the Wifi never worked. Also, I'm glad to see that it is the same model as mine, 3830tg-6412 with the Core i3.. I think you bought it from the same place I did in Canada (430 dollars at Staples) I'll see how it goes and report back.

Yuvin.

Click to expand...

Yup bought at staples when it was a saturday special for $430 - still never seen a better laptop deal since

Let me know if you run into any trouble, I have installed and re-installed many times on this laptop and have worked around many problems.

Since I made this guide I have also encountered that "No Keyboard" screen that prevents you from doing the setup (after install) on my desktop, but found an easier way to get past it provided you have another mac/hack/or virtual machine handy. You can view the thread here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=170&t=42317

To fix this plug your Hard drive that you installed to into an externel usb with a bootable lion/snow leopard install and Locate:

System/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/Info.plist

And delete these 2 lines and the no keyboard problem will be skipped:



I would have just edited the guide and added this method but I realize not everybody has access to another mac so I am trying to keep the guide useable to everybody.

As for the wifi, if you use the kext I provided it will work perfect.

good luck.

That works too, But I just Boot in -v -x and -f With a Keyboard plugged in and it boots fine. I got two issues though, My first being that the Wifi shows up but when I try to connect to my wifi and enter my Password, It says Connection failed. Tried with another network that was unsecured and the same thing happened. The other thing is that my trackpad doesn't work. I'm not sure why.. I followed the guide exactly.

Thanks for the help,

-Yuvin


EDIT: Ignore that.. Just turned off Wifi and re-enabled it. Now it works and I'm posting this from My 3830tg Sweet. This is the only Kext that works.. Great find bro

Time to update to 10.7.4 ... Damn this update takes long.. And I need to do it on my main machine too.. :/

Update went fine and the Battery thing worked. The trackpad still did not work.. Then I tried installing the dsdt.aml from above and it KP'd so I'm reinstalling.. I'll try the dsdt from the fresh install.