Dell Inspiron 17R N7110: Alps Touchpad help?

[Rytz]

Hi:

I have a Dell Inspiron 17R N7110 running OSX 10.8.3 Mountain Lion that is a solid hackintosh with a few minor issues.

One of the minor issues that I am finally getting around to addressing is the ALPS touchpad. Currently, I can use a very specific version of ApplePS2Controller.kext that allows the touchpad to work, but only as a simulated usb mouse.

Using this approach I don't get any trackpad (touchpad) options through OSX. The problem with this is that I would like to disable the trackpad when an actual bluetooth or external usb mouse is present. I also have sensitivity issues with the trackpad, where I sometimes touch the top corners of the touchpad while typing and the mouse cursor jumps. Really annoying. I have some tape put down to help with this right now.

Does anyone out there have any good leads for a working alps touchpad driver for OSX Mountain Lion? I have tried kexts from all the major sites, new and old, such as:

> ReHabMan's voodoo variant
> Standard Voodoo kexts
> kexts from other "popular" hackintosh sites

I appreciate any leads. Thanks.

 

[RehabMan]

Hi:

I have a Dell Inspiron 17R N7110 running OSX 10.8.3 Mountain Lion that is a solid hackintosh with a few minor issues.

One of the minor issues that I am finally getting around to addressing is the ALPS touchpad. Currently, I can use a very specific version of ApplePS2Controller.kext that allows the touchpad to work, but only as a simulated usb mouse.

Using this approach I don't get any trackpad (touchpad) options through OSX. The problem with this is that I would like to disable the trackpad when an actual bluetooth or external usb mouse is present. I also have sensitivity issues with the trackpad, where I sometimes touch the top corners of the touchpad while typing and the mouse cursor jumps. Really annoying. I have some tape put down to help with this right now.

Does anyone out there have any good leads for a working alps touchpad driver for OSX Mountain Lion? I have tried kexts from all the major sites, new and old, such as:

> ReHabMan's voodoo variant
> Standard Voodoo kexts
> kexts from other "popular" hackintosh sites

I appreciate any leads. Thanks.

bpedman has enhanced the ALPS support in a fork of my code. I'm working on integrating his changes (bpedman_merge branch in my repo), but still waiting on confirmation. See tracking issue: https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-Voodoo-PS2-Controller/pull/2

For bpedman's fork, see: https://github.com/bpedman/OS-X-Voodoo-PS2-Controller

 

[Rytz]

bpedman has enhanced the ALPS support in a fork of my code. I'm working on integrating his changes (bpedman_merge branch in my repo), but still waiting on confirmation. See tracking issue: https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-Voodoo-PS2-Controller/pull/2

For bpedman's fork, see: https://github.com/bpedman/OS-X-Voodoo-PS2-Controller

Hi RehabMan - nice work on the trackpad drivers. Unfortunately, I did try both your release and bpedman's release of the voodoo drivers but neither worked.

I can try them both again tonight but I went through all the installation steps correctly. If I recall he had a separate program called "synapticsconfig" that I was a bit confused on. The rest was similar to yours. Maybe I missed something.

 

[RehabMan]

Hi RehabMan - nice work on the trackpad drivers. Unfortunately, I did try both your release and bpedman's release of the voodoo drivers but neither worked.

My release should work, but only with basic functionality for ALPS. Unless your ALPS is different or the kext was not installed properly. You should get, at a minimum, mouse emulation.

It could be that bpedman did his version for a different version of ALPS, although I'm pretty sure he had a Dell.

At any rate, further investigation/debugging would be required.

I can try them both again tonight but I went through all the installation steps correctly. If I recall he had a separate program called "synapticsconfig" that I was a bit confused on. The rest was similar to yours. Maybe I missed something.

Biggest thing is to make sure you don't have any old versions of the PS2 drivers loading (AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext, ApplePS2Controller.kext).

synapticsconfig is only needed for per-user settings (I currently don't bother building it or installing it -- it only makes sense if there is a prefpane, and the prefpane code is currently too buggy to bother with). Eventually, I'll get around to fixing it all....

 

[Rytz]

Thanks for the info. I will try again tonight with both your and his versions.

Biggest thing is to make sure you don't have any old versions of the PS2 drivers loading (AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext, ApplePS2Controller.kext).

Always.

What logs should I be checking after the installation? Submit to your github page?

 

[RehabMan]

Thanks for the info. I will try again tonight with both your and his versions.



Always.

What logs should I be checking after the installation? Submit to your github page?

Check system.log. You can filter for 'ps2' which will get most of the startup and other debug messages. There is more information with the debug version than release, of course.

Not sure what you mean by "submit to your github page?"

 

[Rytz]

Not sure what you mean by "submit to your github page?"

If I still have issues getting the driver to work - should I submit any important debug info to your github contact / page?

 

[RehabMan]

If I still have issues getting the driver to work - should I submit any important debug info to your github contact / page?

No. Here instead.

Github issues are only if you find a bug and can identify it in a way that I can reproduce the bug locally on hardware I have.

 

[Rytz]

No. Here instead.

Github issues are only if you find a bug and can identify it in a way that I can reproduce the bug locally on hardware I have.

Sounds good - thanks.

 

[Rytz]

I tried again and this time I'm able to get both the mouse and keyboard working (both rehab and bped versions work). However, the pointer speed is really slow (unusable) and the vanilla trackpad prefpane still gives me "No trackpad found". When I try using the synaptics trackpad, it gives a popup saying "ApplePS2SynapticsTouchPad not found" and when I try to change any settings in it, the pane crashes. Both versions give me the same problems.

To be honest, what I'm really looking for is a way to turn down the sensitivity of the touchpad so that it doesn't randomly jump when I'm typing and also have it auto-disable when an external mouse is used (USB or bluetooth). If the voodoo driver just gives me basic mouse functionality without being identified as a trackpad on the system then I'm not really solving my original problem.

Will I able to solve these two issues with the voodoo drivers? Is there a way to get the vanilla trackpad prefpane to work and allow me to use its options?