Dell Precision T7500 Lion 10.7.2 Running Beautifully

[dellio1]

Hi all,
I'm lucky to have got my hands on a Dell Precision T7500 workstation. If you have the Precision T7500/T7400, read on.

-Installed 10.7 with UniBeast via 8gb USB drive on an extra 15k rpm SAS sata hard drive - booted into osx right away. But first in bios made usb drive boot first then this hitachi drive. (A07 bios, haven't tried updating to latest a12 yet)
-Used DSDT editor with Precision T7500.txt file to generate DSDT.aml and saved to desktop. (Directions here.).
-Used MultiBeast UserDSDT, selected Drivers & Bootloaders->Kexts and Enablers-> Miscellaneous->NullCPUPowerManagement (else KP after multi beast) and KextUtility from OSX86Software. Ran KexUtility after MultiBeast and rebooted. Don't have to boot with usb drive anymore.
-For Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit, dragged BCM5722D.kext into kextutility to install gigabit ethernet, edited BCM5722D.kext info.plist to add <string>pci14e4,1681</string> rebooted and ethernet worked.
-Dropped NVEnabler 64.kext into KextUtility and rebooted, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 works but shows as "Unknown nVidia card 2048 MB". Will install Cuda support later.
-Updated to 10.7.2 via Software Update just to try out but everything worked (except doesn't turn off after shutdown now).
-Didn't install audio as I'm using a m-audio pre usb audio interface with rokits 8s and some m-audio bx5a. Will try later.

All works except won't wake and after 10.7.2 update, shut down doesn't work properly. Else, geekbench score of 10830. Getting bluetooth trackpad with bluetooth keyboard tomorrow.

Let me know how your have osx working on your Precision t7500/t7400 but as for me, this has been the fastest mac ever.

 

[Horse]

Dellio1,

Nice work, I loaded a Precision T7500 using Unibeast on a SATA Drive, with one processor removed and 3GB of RAM installed, however backed out as I was researching a patched DSDT before proceeding further.
A couple of question about your install: -

Is this a single processor T7500 or dual?
If dual, did you need to remove the second processor during the inital install?

For the SAS Drive, with controller did you attach it, was it on the eSATA port or the onboard 4 port SAS controller?


BTW I am using Bios A12 and it at least booted Lion 10.7.1

Given your success, I think I'll have another few hours playing

After that will try and get the ATI 5970 to be recognized

 

[dellio1]

Horse,
My computer has only 1 processor, 6 cores so didn't need to disable anything.

Sorry, not esata. Harddrive is plugged into motherboard SAS port with sata cable.

What's the result of you DSDT research?


Don't hesitate, get OSX installed. If you're unsure about dual booting, just install it on a separate hard drive. (Unplug your current hard drive then you'll be sure it won't get touched).

Also, get more RAM. Look around, I've seen 8gb for $40-50 bucks (not ecc though).

Get your workstation running. I'll be happy to help any way I can.

 

[poorcrip]

Congratulations dellio 1, and thank you so much for posting your method here.
I will be trying to install Lion on an a12 bios in the next few days if cowardice doesn't get the better of me.
Any luck with the CUDA support? The renderer I use doesn't use it but I have to work on a shoestring budget, and GPU plus software expense may be more cost effective than upgrading to something like two decent xeons plus riser board plus memory plus cooling (damn it all mounts up!).
Hopefully my next post will be bragging about my PrecisionLion success story.

 

[shibirian]

All works except won't wake and after 10.7.2 update, shut down doesn't work properly.

Using Darkwake 0 or Darkwake=1 can help sometimes in many cases with that problem.

 

[dellio1]

shibirian,

So i just add to my boot.plist?

<dict>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>darkwake=0</string>
</dict>


UPDATE: got my apple wireless keyboard and trackpad (connected together with magicwand) and jabra a320s bluetooth = works beautifully. Keyboard wakes on each boot.
No problems so far, this my main computer now. Doing my videos and audio in premier and logic. Haven't installed cuda yet.

 

[shibirian]

shibirian,

So i just add to my boot.plist?

<dict>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>darkwake=0</string>
</dict>


UPDATE: got my apple wireless keyboard and trackpad (connected together with magicwand) and jabra a320s bluetooth = works beautifully. Keyboard wakes on each boot.
No problems so far, this my main computer now. Doing my videos and audio in premier and logic. Haven't installed cuda yet.

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
<key>Darkwake</key>
<string>0</string>



Some people need to put an additional kernel flag into their plst to make it work, so it could also look like that;

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>npci=0x2000</string>
<key>Darkwake</key>
<string>0</string>

But always try to boot with these options first with typing them in at boot-screen, as usual, before you write them permanently into your boot.plst file. Good luck!

 

[agaida]

Hi!
What would you say about possibility of installing on to T7500 with Quardo FX 580 video card?

 

[moreqin]

my dell t7500 have two processor,start lion 10.7.2 is Stop,move with processor and start normal .

 

[Meixiao]

I also have a precision T7500 installed with Lion 10.7.2. i install with unibeast on the usb drive then install the multi beast with custom dsdt extracted and patch the same method as u.
During the multi beast custom dsdt installation, it adds the Darkwake=0 and npci=0x2000 by default. I have tried to use the darkwake=1 during the verbose boot, it still can not shutdown.

I highly suspicious the dsdt file is not perfect, since I have a x58 motherboard and has not problem at all.

My concern is how to use the dual processors, I can only manage to boot with one Xeon processor. I appreciate any suggestion and help! I have read online that some one manage to boot the dual processors with intel 5520 chip without problem in 10.6.