Attempt at Osx86 on Acer Aspire 9500

Well over the weekend, I tried setting up Mac OS Leopard on (iPC 10.5.6 iso) on an Acer Aspire 9500.  This took probably 5-6 re-formats, and I was defeated.   I was hoping that I could get this particular hardware setup working with Mac OS.  But unfortunately I don’t know my way around kexts well enough and ended up scrapping the project.

Here are some of the issues/hurdles I encountered with the hardware:

1. Intel Pentium M 1.73ghz SSE2 – No problem, the Voodo kernel worked fine with this (read about this setup just before I began, just to be sure the the Intel M’s were supported).
2. Intel 915GM Chipset – unsure if this was setup correctly, it could have contributed to the lack of keyboard/mouse control (see below).
3. ATI Radeon Mobility X700 (not supported by any kext), I was unable to get the Video card running at any level.  There is just no driver for this ‘older’ generation ATI card.  I seen some reports that some users had partial success, but I didn’t even get to it (more about that lower in the post). I got this working at 1024.768 resolution, and was unable to change any settings.
4. Wireless Intel 2200BG, altho supported with hacked kexts, did not function well enough.  I could not get WPA2-Personal running, and it would cut out periodically (not sure if any fault of mine, or just kext).
5. Loss of laptops keyboard and trackpad – this was just a royal pain in the butt, I read different notices on this, and I could not resolve the issue (/conflict).  Some people speculated it was a conflict with the USB drivers?  However, I was able to plug up a USB keyboard / Mouse to get going, so just a minor annoyance.
6. Realtek RTL8169 LAN – was recognized just fine, too bad I didn’t really get to use it for anything.
7. Intel 82801 FBM ICH6 – audio I got working, even tho I investigated another codec.  Turns out the Apple Azalia drivers (AzaliaAudio.pkg.zip) work just fine.  This was one of the only few kext installs that made me happy, as it was a very noticeable change (we got sounds after all!).

I got pretty far with this project. I was hoping to get Mac OS running on the laptop just for testing, as I already own Leopard and a fantastic Mac Mini which I use as a media pc hooked up to my LCD in the livingroom.  But unfortunetly the hardware was either way over my head or skill level, when it comes to modifying MacOS installs (kexts and all that jazz).

The moment when I gave up came when I installed the WRONG kexts based on a forum suggestion/research post.  This kext killed the USB ports and disabled any keyboard / mouse access (I was using the USB devices as the built in trackpad & keyboard did not work).

All in all, I enjoyed tinkering with the hardware, and I’m just dissapointed that Mac OS is not an option for a PC enthusiast (yet) without shelling out the big bucks for a nicely build Mac hardware system.

If you have an Acer Aspire 9500 model laptop, maybe this will help you.  At least it will give you a starting point of what hurdles to expect as I did.