Asus UL80J - Successful install

[flexgrip]

Hello,

I successfully installed Snow Leopard, including the 10.6.4 update, on my Asus UL80J from best buy. It is a $699 laptop and in summary has these specs:

Core i3 330UM
4gb DDR3
Nvidia 310M
500gb HD

Here is a link to it. Best buy lists it as 2ghz but its really the low voltage 1.2ghz model with the nvidia optimus video card switching stuff. I turned off the switching before install because I figured it would just cause problems.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+Lapt ... &cp=1&lp=1

Anyway, now that I am installed I have a few questions.

1. My processor is listed under osx as a Dual Core Xeon. Is that ok? I ran multibeast and told it to use the 10.3.1 vanilla kernel but no matter what I try it still shows up as a xeon. Everything seems fairly quick so I guess its not a big deal.

2. I have zero networking. Ran multibeast again and checked both Intel and Realtek under networking but I don't even have a wired connection. Let alone wireless. I think I read no one has gotten the AR9850 Wireless chipset I have to work. I can buy a card, im not worried about it. But is there any way to get either wired or wireless to work with this hardware? The wired interface is a AR8131.

3. Is there any way to get grub to boot osx instead of using chameleon? I have Ubuntu and OSX on the same partition. Installed ubuntu before osx and grub is still the default boot loader, even though I initially partitioned with GUID. I am sure it got overwritten but I would rather use grub than chameleon.

Up until this install, I have only used ubuntu. ubuntu is on all 5 computers in my house. I wanted snow leopard so I could get access to the iOS4 SDK emulators. I have a few clients that want iphone/ipad apps and I need to be able to run the emulators. I don't mind having a snow leopard partition and running it natively, but I guess if I have to go out and buy hardware to get networking to work, it might be better to run under virtualbox. It seems nice and snappy though, so I guess the $30 wont matter.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. It doesn't seem like multibeast is actually doing or fixing anything. Nothing has changed or been fixed and it feels like it is running at the same speed as when I first booted into the new osx install. I am rebuilding cache and permissions each time I tell it to install any kexts.

Any ideas?

 

[flexgrip]

Just updated grub from ubuntu and it detected my mac partition. It actually detected "Mac OSX 32-bit" and "Mac OSX 64-bit". Tried both and they start to load and then reboot the laptop.

I am thinking I need to chainload chameleon from grub. But I have never had to do that before. I hope there is a way around that.

 

[tofuconfetti]

I tried that, and was not successful. It is said to work, I just wasn't successful. What you can do is boot back into linux and put grub on the boot partition (not the master boot record). Do not select the wrong one! Note you will NOT be able to boot back into linux until you rerun Multibeast and install chameleon back onto the MBR. That way chameleon takes care of the boot selections, not grub. When you run grub and tell it to do this is will gripe and warn you that it is dangerous, but it worked like a charm for me. That is how I had to get it to work.

Here are the instructions I followed:

http://www.dailyblogged.com/booting-ubu ... ootloader/

Here is some guidance on booting OSX from Grub2:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... pic=189079

 

[flexgrip]

Ok, well the only thing I have to figure out is the touch pad. I cannot get it to work at all. And I actually didn't see anything about touchpad in multibeast. Is there an easy or universal way to get a kext for this touchpad?

 

[surfstu]

in the bios of your laptop, does it say something about windows 7/vista vga driver? and the option to turn this onto reserved? Is this what you meant by turning off the switching?

i'm pulling my hair out trying to get video working on asus optimus laptop

what are the downsides to running in virtual? does it work well? do you get full graphics?

the particular software i wish to use requires quartz extreme

cheers stuart

 

[flexgrip]

No man, the ar9285 WiFi and the gr8131 gigabit Ethernet that come inside the laptop from the factory both work now. There are kexts to install them on kexts.com. so no need to take the laptop apart. If you have to install Windows 7 again your serial number is on the bottom so just get a copy of whatever version it came with and install that using your serial if you need to go back. Although I didn't lose my win7 install when I installed ubuntu and snow leopard. I just resized the partition. I have 100gb for win7, 100gb for SL, and 300gb for ubuntu my primary OS.

So as of today...

Working:
* graphics
* built in ar9285 WiFi
* built in gr8131 gigabit Ethernet
* audio (out of the box)

Not working:
* elantech Touchpad / trackpad (not working at all)
* 0.3mp webcam (shows up in photobooth as working but it just shows black)


So if I can just get that touch pad working I will be 100% usable by my standards. Everything seems fast and responsive.

Is there a way to see if quartz extreme is working?

 

[flexgrip]

Yeah I've been using a USB mouse. Its just a really big pain to carry it around all the time.

So the partitioning i did in Linux. I resized the ntfs drive and then installed osx. After that it killed the window7 boot loader. I did a windows repair, and was then able to boot it with chameleon. I then installed ubuntu and grub. Grub detected all of the installs for everything but will only boot ubuntu. That's what I'm tying to figure out now... How to get grub to load everything. But whenever I need to get into osx I just boot off the boot disc... So for now it's ok.

The ONLY way to get osx to install was to use iboot-supported and safe mode (-x). That and a SL DVD.

As far as I can tell, multi beast is useless. It hasn't done anything for me. I'm not even sure if it is installing the stuff it says it's installing.

 

[flexgrip]

Ok I ran an app to check quartz extreme and it said inhale it running. Which makes sense because the graphics are so smooth.

Overall this thing is usable... I just need to get the touchpad or trackpad working.

 

[plasticinedean]

Flex were you still having trouble with elantech touchpad? Mine is working with the attached kext installed in Extra/Extensions. Hope its helpful.

 

[bunnyfly]

I would really love to hear if Plasticinedean's kext or something else worked for you Flex. I'm really interested in the UL80JT...it sounds like everything works except the trackpad?!