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- Dec 16, 2012
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I have completed the dual boot setup of Windows 8 and Snow Leopard 10.6.8 in my Acer Travelmate 3270. Even though some components are not working, pretty satisfied with the overall results. I decided to write this small post as a guide to any one attempt to run Mac on a Acer Travelmate 3270 series.
As a full time Windows and Ubuntu user this is the first time I have even use Mac OS X. I had no experience on it. After a Google redirect to this site I wanted to try to install Mac OS and get the experience. I planned to get a customac mini but can't wait until I get budget for it so went with spare Acer laptop lying idle.
I would like to thank this site, specially Tonymac, Macman and all other contributors for making my journey easy as cheese. I have referred Insanlymac.com and osx86.net too. I apologize for not putting the urls in this post as i didn't keep records of most of sources. But most of information below are collected via either from tonymacx86 forum or using Google search from above 2 sites.
Specs
cpu : intel Core 2 duo T5500 1.66GHz (Code name : Merom)
Busratio : 10
Motherboard : Acer Prespa1
Chipset : intel mobile 945GM
Southbridge : Intel 82801GHM (ICH7-M/U)
RAM : DDR2 333MHz 1GB (2x512MB)
Ethernet : Marvell Yukon 88E8038 PCI-E
Wireless : Intel 3945ABG
Audio : Realtek HDA
Installation
Bought the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail dvd and restored to a usb thumb drive using disk utility. I had to install SL to a vmware first and use it to access Mac apps since I had no access to a Mac.
Made the usb bootable with Multibeast for SL. A superb tool to make the installation easy. I wanted to go with a vanilla installation as much as possible. Installation went successfully and rebooted successfully to 10.6.3 with minimum setup with 1024x768 resolution and usb kb/mouse only. I haven't use any kernel flags other than -v.
Before update I used an Ubuntu Live cd to extract the dsdt and opened it using dsdte simple editor to decompile and correct all errors and then recompile again and installed with Multibeast for SL with DSDT method. I don't know what has been improved by it but i saw c and p stated being added to my chameleon.boot.plist after that.
Then began the upgrading to higher versions. First I went with 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 combo update which gave me kernel panics. At that time I was I didn't understand what to do or how to replace kext using installation disk's terminal.
So I start from scratch again and went with 1 by 1 as below;
10.6.3 -> 10.6.6 combo - Download from Apple and install/reboot without issues.
10.6.6 -> 10.6.7 : Download from Apple and install/reboot without issues.
10.6.7 -> 10.6.8 : Stuck at booting. Replace the 10.6.8 AppleACPIPlatform.kext and IOPCIFamily.kext from 10.6.7 version and system booted properly. This has been done using installation disk's terminal prompt and after fix the permissions using chown/chmod/touch method.
One key thing is remember to do full cloning of boot partition before update and make it bootable to rollback to your previous working state if kernel panics are unresolved after some effort. Also it helped a lot to rollback of kexts to previous version. I used SuperDuper to clone hard disk and make it bootable. The idea of bootable cloning is marvellous and impressed me a lot since I come from Windows and it uses one active partition only to boot as I know.
Initially graphics was 1024x768 even though installation had Intel GMA950 (AppleIntelGMA950.) kext. Used a EFI boot string in org.chameleon.boot.plist to obtain the 1280x800x32 resolution. It worked perfectly but only 32 bit mode supported with this resolution. So had to add arch=i386 as a kernel flag in org.chameleon.boot.plist. Double checked with OSx86tool about the lines.
Used below lines to get the resolution fixed.
I tried a lot to get the wireless and ethernet working. Wireless was no success at all and ethernet I tried with edited plist in AppleYukon2 kext but never successful. At the end used a DLink DWA125 wireless dongle with a dmg file of DWA-125A2 v2.3.8. As I remember I got this from DLink web site. Then installed Ralink airport installer to get the native apple wifi icon in top upper right of menu bar. Then had to create a manual profile to make it connect automatically to wireless ssid. Anyway the profile didn't connect automatically after reboot which suspect because the ssid is hidden. So I enable broadcating the ssid from my D-Link wireless router temporarly and create the profile and selected the correct ssid (Previously you don't see a ssid to select while creating profile). Now after creating the profile you can disable the broadcast ssid and profile works great even after reboot.
After that replaced AppleHDA.kext to VoodooHDA.kext for sound.
Installed VoodooBattery.kext to obtain baterry icon on top right status bar.
Next this was extending the desktop to my 24" LED monitor Dell "ST2420L" for 1080 resolution. I knew this need the VGA support from GMA950 and wanna test it.
Attaching my 1080p monitor was done as below;
I like the feature of Mac which allow me to select 2 different wallpapers for each display. One wallpaper for LED monitor and one wallpaper for laptop screen.
Then I began the windows 8 installation after cloning my mac partition to a usb hard drive and used Easybcd to select the OS list at boot.
This is the article I followed and it was great.
Now I can improve my Mac skills thanks to all of you guys and I would like to say Mac is a great robust OS with truly addictive features.
Cheers.
As a full time Windows and Ubuntu user this is the first time I have even use Mac OS X. I had no experience on it. After a Google redirect to this site I wanted to try to install Mac OS and get the experience. I planned to get a customac mini but can't wait until I get budget for it so went with spare Acer laptop lying idle.
I would like to thank this site, specially Tonymac, Macman and all other contributors for making my journey easy as cheese. I have referred Insanlymac.com and osx86.net too. I apologize for not putting the urls in this post as i didn't keep records of most of sources. But most of information below are collected via either from tonymacx86 forum or using Google search from above 2 sites.
Specs
cpu : intel Core 2 duo T5500 1.66GHz (Code name : Merom)
Busratio : 10
Motherboard : Acer Prespa1
Chipset : intel mobile 945GM
Southbridge : Intel 82801GHM (ICH7-M/U)
RAM : DDR2 333MHz 1GB (2x512MB)
Ethernet : Marvell Yukon 88E8038 PCI-E
Wireless : Intel 3945ABG
Audio : Realtek HDA
Installation
Bought the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail dvd and restored to a usb thumb drive using disk utility. I had to install SL to a vmware first and use it to access Mac apps since I had no access to a Mac.
Made the usb bootable with Multibeast for SL. A superb tool to make the installation easy. I wanted to go with a vanilla installation as much as possible. Installation went successfully and rebooted successfully to 10.6.3 with minimum setup with 1024x768 resolution and usb kb/mouse only. I haven't use any kernel flags other than -v.
Before update I used an Ubuntu Live cd to extract the dsdt and opened it using dsdte simple editor to decompile and correct all errors and then recompile again and installed with Multibeast for SL with DSDT method. I don't know what has been improved by it but i saw c and p stated being added to my chameleon.boot.plist after that.
Then began the upgrading to higher versions. First I went with 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 combo update which gave me kernel panics. At that time I was I didn't understand what to do or how to replace kext using installation disk's terminal.
So I start from scratch again and went with 1 by 1 as below;
10.6.3 -> 10.6.6 combo - Download from Apple and install/reboot without issues.
10.6.6 -> 10.6.7 : Download from Apple and install/reboot without issues.
10.6.7 -> 10.6.8 : Stuck at booting. Replace the 10.6.8 AppleACPIPlatform.kext and IOPCIFamily.kext from 10.6.7 version and system booted properly. This has been done using installation disk's terminal prompt and after fix the permissions using chown/chmod/touch method.
One key thing is remember to do full cloning of boot partition before update and make it bootable to rollback to your previous working state if kernel panics are unresolved after some effort. Also it helped a lot to rollback of kexts to previous version. I used SuperDuper to clone hard disk and make it bootable. The idea of bootable cloning is marvellous and impressed me a lot since I come from Windows and it uses one active partition only to boot as I know.
Initially graphics was 1024x768 even though installation had Intel GMA950 (AppleIntelGMA950.) kext. Used a EFI boot string in org.chameleon.boot.plist to obtain the 1280x800x32 resolution. It worked perfectly but only 32 bit mode supported with this resolution. So had to add arch=i386 as a kernel flag in org.chameleon.boot.plist. Double checked with OSx86tool about the lines.
Used below lines to get the resolution fixed.
I tried a lot to get the wireless and ethernet working. Wireless was no success at all and ethernet I tried with edited plist in AppleYukon2 kext but never successful. At the end used a DLink DWA125 wireless dongle with a dmg file of DWA-125A2 v2.3.8. As I remember I got this from DLink web site. Then installed Ralink airport installer to get the native apple wifi icon in top upper right of menu bar. Then had to create a manual profile to make it connect automatically to wireless ssid. Anyway the profile didn't connect automatically after reboot which suspect because the ssid is hidden. So I enable broadcating the ssid from my D-Link wireless router temporarly and create the profile and selected the correct ssid (Previously you don't see a ssid to select while creating profile). Now after creating the profile you can disable the broadcast ssid and profile works great even after reboot.
After that replaced AppleHDA.kext to VoodooHDA.kext for sound.
Installed VoodooBattery.kext to obtain baterry icon on top right status bar.
Next this was extending the desktop to my 24" LED monitor Dell "ST2420L" for 1080 resolution. I knew this need the VGA support from GMA950 and wanna test it.
Attaching my 1080p monitor was done as below;
- Remove VGA cable of monitor from laptop if it is already plugged.
- Go to system preferences -> Disaplys -> "Detect displays". nothing will happen this is to refresh only.
- Then plug in VGA cable of monitor and after few second the laptop screen goes light blue and then light blue will appear in external monitor
- Then the external monitor will come up with its native highest resolution 1920x1080. Sweet.
- Go Arrangement tab and press and hold white bar on top and then drag it to 1080 monitor to make it primary display
- Now you have a gorgeous screen to play with Mac OS.
I like the feature of Mac which allow me to select 2 different wallpapers for each display. One wallpaper for LED monitor and one wallpaper for laptop screen.
Then I began the windows 8 installation after cloning my mac partition to a usb hard drive and used Easybcd to select the OS list at boot.
This is the article I followed and it was great.
Now I can improve my Mac skills thanks to all of you guys and I would like to say Mac is a great robust OS with truly addictive features.
Cheers.