Mac OS X Mountain Lion on Alienware?

I was just wondering if any of you guys ever tried installing Mac OS on you Alienware M17x R1/R2/R3/R4 machines?
If yes, how was the performance and what were the issues faced?

 

I'm working on it... Until then, check out tonymacx86 - Home

 

I run it as a virtual machine all the time. With the newer CPUs that have both VT-X and VT-D it runs extremely well in a virtual machine. Your specs are basically matched to mine, so you can certainly virtualize it and have excellent performance.

 

I was talking ofcourse of a triple boot configuration with Windows 8 x64 Enterprise RTM / Fedora 17 x64 / Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

 

I think it would be easier with a virtual machine. You should have no problems with the performance but I can't say the same for gaming

 

Gaming might be issue in Mac OSx but only those can tell who have tested it on their Alienware.

 

Currently got it working perfectly on my R3, other than wifi or dedicated GFX as neither card is supported.

 

So No gaming then.

 

You wanna do what!? And risk getting sued by Cupertino?

 

Gaming on OSX? You have to be joking, I use it mostly for garageband and FCP.

You can't get sued for breach of EULA, it only comes into play if its directly related to a crime (If I illegally downloaded OSX). EULA can't do anything about the software I bought legally.

 

Why would anyone try to game on OS X? As far as I know there are exactly zero exclusive Mac games, and if you have a windows based Alienware laptop anyway you might as well game in Windows.

I use my virtual OS X for IOS development and it works great. Seems as fast as a real Macbook to me and it gets the job done.

 

I'be got no intentions for gaming on OSx, was just clear some doubts. It runs smooth or not, that was the issue and seems like it does.

 

Actually there are a number of games written for Mac OS X now. Steam has been on Mac OS for quite some time now and has been very successful. Having a platform to release on developers have been encouraged even further to take the effort to make their game work on Windows and Mac now.

 

Yes there are few recent titles supporting Mac and EA games are also releasing their new titles with Mac support.
Featured Mac Games

 

but none are OSX exclusive, and honestly most steam games etc do take a hit outside of windows anyways excluding a few blizzard titles

 

do you have a guide for installing on mx17? i have been looking everywhere

 

i tried installing snow leopard once but could never get it working in my r2 every time it got to installing the graphics driver thingy it would screw up on me. i think it was because osx didn't like two graphic cards.

 

I would better check for 'Hackintosh' if I were you that means running Mac for real, not virtualized. Performance are hugely better that way, well they are as good as a real Macbook

Hard to say about your compatibility as I ihave no detailed specs of your computer but

The processor must be an Intel, NO AMD, and greater or equal to Core 2 Duo
Wireless/Network/Sounds/Bluetooth : Please post your cards name so we can tell you if it is compatible


Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

i have an intel core i7-2720 qm with 6gb ram. my graphics card is a nvidia 460m

 

Which virtual machine are you able to run mountain lion in?

 

i am offended LOL JOKE but i cant understand why you would want to be honest

 

To me the allure had more to do with the challenge than anything else, but I had also invested a good couple hundred dollars on software on OSX so I wasn't about to waste it.

For guides on hackintoshing head over to tonymacx86 as both I and jim989 have install guides. Both of our guides rely upon having already installed lion so that would be the first thing you should work on if you wanted to get it working. It is possible to install without an already working install on the computer but you will either need a real mac or virtualised to create some of the install files. (I can't add links to the threads for fear of being banned for it)

 

no i dont have a copy of mountain lion yet. my internet is slow so i havent had time to try

 

I think the m17x r4 (with a few mods) is a perfect candidate for os x mountain lion. I have tons of exp with hackintosh, so right off the bat here is what WILL work:
1. Everybody should download and run intel XTU, and disable package C state lock. That will allow native use of Mac OS X's AppleIntelCPUPowermanagement.kext without kernel panics
2. Intel HD 4000 IGPU works find fully acclerated ( i have written the DSDT patch for this, as well as the SMbios.plist and org.chameleon.boot.plist)
3. Function keys/media keys also work

Here is what will NOT work
1. ATi 7970m. No support currently exists for any ATi 7000 series card. I do NOT have any idea about the GTX 680m, because I do not have a card to test with. Theoretically, simple device injection might work since nvidia 6xx support exists in mountain lion, but I don't know. Current MBPs use mobile nvidia cards, so injection may work. If anybody wants to donate a card for me to experiment with let me know

2. Any intel wifi card or killer wifi card. you will need to buy a replacement wifi card (cheap, about 7$). I use Atheros AR9280 from ebay, works great.

3. Switchable graphics will NEVER work. You WILL need an unlocked bios to switch between dedicated and integrated graphics cards. Also, the 6970m/6990m would NOT work in mac os x lion because of the muxing scheme which directed the video signal on the LVDS connector. I do not know if this is the case with the m17x r4 since they use a muxless switch design. Also, 3d systems use eDP, so anybody with a 3d display should get their 6990/6970 and possibly 580m/675m/680m working.

4. Sound does not work, unless somebody can help me with patching appleHDA. voodooHDA is garbage, and I refuse to use it.

Everything else tends to work great. If anybody can input more info, that be great too.

 

Great post..... As a long time hackintosh user myself I would totally agree with your assessment. I'm in the process of getting ml on my r4 now...... Hopefully the 120hz screen won't be to much of a bother, but I'm not sure if OSX supports
120hz?

Sent from my HTC One XL using Tapatalk 2

 

120hz should work fine. Be more worried about your GPU.

 

works fine here in vmware 9 with hardware acceleration of video en internet working.
only thing yet to be done is sound.

 

could you share your progress if there has been any?

thanks

 

status update guys: mountain lion is running great on the R4. even better, is the 10.8.3 update. I looked at the beta update, and checked the new radeon drivers..... and the 7970m id is present in native kexts....
we could be looking at a fully accelerated dGPU in 10.8.3, meaning the most powerful mobile OS X system ever may be attainable.

 

you think i'd have problems running OSx on my system? (sig)

 

The only issue I can see with that is that OSX doesn't support Crossfire in mobile cards, so you may only be able to get one of the GPUs working.

 

only having one card wouldn't matter. i wouldn't game on OSx anyway.
going to have to look into this

 

I would love it if you could make some guide, or steps to set it up on the m17x R4 (i've a GTX 680M btw), It's my firs non-mac computer and i'm kind of lost on how to install osx in a PC (i would not install it if weren't that I want to keep my job as iOS developer )

Thank you beforehand

 

Congratulations on successful installation of ML on R4. Was wondering if you could please share some guide to help other R4 users in setting up OS X on their laptops. Did you use any specific distro? If you could please share your kexts, that would be great! Thanks!

 

Yeah some sort of a guide would be great =D

I've got over a terabyte of hard drive space that would be a pretty cool little adventure to go on and I love macs, had one for the past 5 years until my M17x... would be awesome seeing the difference

 

while your waiting you could play with a linux distro. I'm messing with ubuntu right now, but I need to figure out the best drivers for the video card. With a 6990m, the desktop animations shouldn't be lagging.

 

I will see if I can come up with a guide, but just saying, you should be prepared for the following:
1. A LOT OF TIME. This is heavily a trial and error based thing.
2. A second hard drive, don't use your primary hard drive. I just have 2 hard drives in my system, one for windows and one for macintosh. RAID users stay away.
3. Download intel XTU (doesn't matter if your CPU is non-ocable, you NEED to turn off package C state control lock through XTU. This allows Mac OS X to set up speedstepping for your CPU, without the need for a patch. Much cleaner)

As of right now, only Intel HD 4000 is working fully acclerated. You will need a third party wifi card. I recommend AR9280 or ar9285, since these cards WILL work with OS X. Killer or intel WILL NOT WORK. EVER. PERIOD.

Sound will also never likely work w/o an external sound chip, but we can try voodoohda, unless somebody is very good at paching applehda (which i am NOT.)

GTX 680m support is unkown, as I said I do not have a card to work with unless somebody wants to donate. I will try first with the 7970m, since kexts will become available for those. I may even put up a video on youtube of general OS X usage.

I DO NOT use distros or anything of that sort, stock apple 10.8 image. However, I have a custom kext folder that I can share, as those are not copyrighted. You can go on your own and find a distro, the guide should be the same. If no distro, you will need access to a mac to put install the chameleon bootloader to the installer USB, or use unibeast.

 

Has there been any progress with this? I have a 17xr4 with the 680m and would kill to get mac running on it. i have a little expireience with hackintoshing so i can test things or provide info if anyone wants to help figure this stuff out...

 

I haven't messed with this in a while, but you could try installing and injecting 680m device ids into the chamleon boootloader (request it) or inject into natit.kext

10.8.3 has been released, radeon 7970m owners should test. I currently don't have the ability to, but I'll get on it as soon as my school load lightens up.

 

I feel you on the school load but I may give it a go.... if I get anywhere Ill definitely post here.

 

To me the Alienware M17 x R1 would be a good fit for Mac OSX . The nvidia 9400m was used by apple so thats graphics sorted , Cpu should be fine , It would all depend on wireless and audio drivers for it to work perfectly .

 

I wouldn't see any problem with that, give it a go...

 

Alienware M17X - Hardware Components and Drivers - InsanelyMac Forum

This is a description of how to install Snow Leopard on an M17X R1 .

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/254104-install-guide-alienware-m17x-r2-with-ati-radeon-5870/

A guide for an Alienware M17X R2 installation .

 

Had a go at it with my 460m a while ago and couldn't ever get it working. might have to give it a shot later this summer though If I find some time to mess around with it.

 

ok possibly dumb question but i cant even get this dang installer to boot. Here is where i stand..... have a unibeast install usb for ML and when i run it -x -v -f i either get a "still waiting on root device" or some really quick crash that goes to black screen. but i think it said something about incompatable cpu detected maybe...... idk maybe its c states? what exactly do you mean turning off the c-state locks? btw i have a i7-3630QM

 

Still waiting for root device is the result of the kernel not loading/not being found. Usually get this error if using a USB 3.0 bus, but since this is ML on a 7 series chipset where usb 3.0 is native, i'm a little confused. The only thing I can think of, is make sure your SATA controller is set to AHCI instead of RAID/IDE, and if that doesn't work, try plugging into the esata usb port

For the crash, make absolutely sure you have NullCPUPM in your /Extra folder, you will need it to prevent initial kernel panic. Install Intel XTU in windows and look for an option talking about C state package lock or something of the sort (the value modifies a hidden bios value, so it will stick when you boot into OS X). you need to turn that off to use vanilla unmodified AppleIntelCPUpowermangement.kext, so you don't get kernel panics anymore.

 

sata is on ahci and ive tried both the 3.0 ports and esata 2.0 port and same story. as for NullCPUPM, its in there. i cant find anything that says anything about c states in xtu, however there are alot of options in my unlocked bios but none mention locks or anything i remotely comprehend for that matter. but i tried disabling all c states and no difference. See what i mean its like everything is there but it still is hanging on something...

 

Make sure to not use -x. safeboot disables 3rd party kexts. -f may also cause hangs as force rebuild cache shouldn't be used unless you have kextcache enabled. I suggest extracting a dsdt, although it may not compile as dell can't write DSDT's for (on first compile had 37 errors and several nonexistent devices for me without any edits). Can you post contents of boot.plist and the kexts you are using?

I also have a thread over on tonymacx86 which I dealt with some of this stuff (on my r3 though) there were also some other great threads about it such as: http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-lion-laptop-support/61470-guide-alienware-m17xr3-lion-strikes-back.html

 

ok so as far as what I'm using its an unmodified unibeast 10.8.3 pny 32 GB flash drive. no extra kexts or boot flags in boot.plst just -v and this is what I get... looks to be a USB issue?

 

Doesn't seem like usb issue, seems to be stuck on kextload. CPU and PCI devices are being picked up, and it is booting past root device errors. Here is a link to the extra folder I used for getting a bootable usb: tonymacx86 Forum • Information