[GUIDE] Alienware M17xR3 : It's almost there!

[djjosh16511]

Hey everyone, great posts and love the success and the thought of getting my m17x r3 on Mac OS!

This post is VERY confusing, however I think I'm ready to give it a shot.

I have a Snow Leopard disc, and my Alienware m17x is used with 2 hard drives, 256GB SSD for gaming and personal use, and the 750GB HDD for mobile and club DJing. Love it. However, Serato Scratch Live and Serato Itch do NOT run flawlessly on Windows. The concept of being able to use a Mac OS on my Alienware is exciting. Would my system be able to perform this upgrade?

Alienware m17x
Unlocked A08 BIOS
Core i7 2760QM
8GB DDR3 (2x4GB DDR3) - aftermarket
AMD 6990m 2GB - aftermarket (I also have a nVidia 560m GTX sitting around the office, it's what came with the system, but I REALLY prefer the AMD obviously)
256GB SSD with Windows 7 for gaming and personal use
750GB HDD with Windows 7, dumbed down and strictly DJing software. (no internet)
Killer 1103 WiFi

Would it be stable for music and music video mixing?
Interested in giving this a shot. Thanks, and great work thus far!

 

[minicello]

Would it be stable for music and music video mixing?
Interested in giving this a shot. Thanks, and great work thus far!

@djjosh16511:
I don't know about the specific programs Serato Scratch Live and Serato Itch, but I have had success using Logic Pro on mine. However, in 10.7.4 the audio kexts are not fully functional as of yet (Jim989 is working on it - see the earlier post on this page) - but I have had much success with an external audio card (Creative X - Fi SB1090). It records and plays back well, but make sure to save frequently. I was working on an awesome piece but it crashed on me . It has only happened once, so it looks overall pretty stable.
I have not been able to get my killer wifi working yet.. But Ethernet works fine.

What I did was take one hard drive out, install mac on it, then took that drive out and put the other one in, and install Win 7 on it. Put them both back in and then I just select to boot from one or the other hard drive in the bios.

I'm not the expert here, but I thought I'd chime in because I am using mine for music production If you are going to do this then I suggest book mark this thread, because these people are awesome and really know what they are talking about.

 

[Jim989]

Jim, what kind of microphone quality are you getting with your dsdt + modded kext? As one of the major flaws of using voodoo is the terrible microphone quality.

It seems to be pretty clear. The flaws so far with the modded kext is the output messages and only does internal speakers+mic.

Would it be stable for music and music video mixing?
Interested in giving this a shot. Thanks, and great work thus far!

The system itself is stable. I have only ever had 1 random hang but I think that was more likely something that I have been messing with rather the underlying OS.
The biggest problem you will have is that audio is not perfect at the moment, which is why I am trying to mod the AppleHDA to be compatible with our system.

Best thing for you to do is to use another HD and try it out. This should always be viewed as a bit of fun rather than a mac replacement/substitute. Then anything else is a bonus

 

[leerleer]

How would I do this on an R4 model. I can't install Snow Leopard because I have an Ivy Bridge CPU. I tried to do this guide with UniBeast and BridgeHelper (10.7.4) but I just go a no symbol over the apple. when I booted verbose I just got stuck at "Still waiting for root device". Can you help?

 

[Jim989]

I'm not too sure on Ivy Bridge.

The only suggestion I can give is for you to try typing these kernel flags on boot "npci=0x2000 PCIRootUID=0".

 

[Midoo]

Please upload your SSDT files of 10.7.4 for closer look

 

[Jim989]

Please upload your SSDT files of 10.7.4 for closer look

You do realise that my SSDT files will only work on 2670QM chip on the Alienware M17xR3 laptop with A08 bios?

Trying to use them in another system is not a good idea. This is why I try to document what I do to get a system working, then others can duplicate the work and make it specific to their system.

MacMan has made a blog post on editing SSDT here... http://macmanx86.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05 ... ement.html

 

[Midoo]

thanks for your advice

 

[Midoo]

please i try to edit my SSDT table by my self but i got error in dsdt editor please do it for me i have the same CPU: Intel core i7-2670QM

 

[djjosh16511]

Only question I'm still finding is how to get this to work with the AMD 6990m. Serato Video does not run on the Intel 3000.