OSX86 on Dell Optiplex GX620

Putting OSX on the Dell Optiplex GX620 was the easiest installation I have ever done. Mostly this is from experience, but I had zero hassles. The two main problems are Ethernet and sound. I have fixed the Ethernet, but didn't get the chance to fix the sound. I have heard fixes for it, and I will look into them. If someone has a surefire way, drop a comment or an email to me.

First follow my first post about how to install OSX on a PC. You won't need to install either the NVIDIA or ATI options if you have a stock GX620, but you know your hardware configuration better than I do, so its up to you.

Second, the Ethernet problem. To fix this hassle you need to install a .kext file, which I have hosted here:

Broadcom Netxtreme 57xx kext

Third, you will need to know the MAC address of your NIC card. Hopefully you wrote it down somewhere for future use, but seeing as how this is doubtful, I'll discuss that in the last part of this post

Unzip the file and place it in the Extensions folder. To get there open the Finder and go to your hard drive/partition that has OS X installed on it, and click System > Library > Extensions.

Now, to get it to work you need to go to the Terminal by clicking Go > Utilities > Terminal. Once you get the opening screen you need to type EXACTLY these lines of code. Each line is a new line of code, which means you need to press enter after each line.

sudo -s

chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/

cd /System/Library/Extensions

chmod -R 755 AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext

OK, you're done with the hard part. Now would be a good time to repair your disk permissions. To do that click on Go > Utilities > Disk Utility, and in that screen select your hard drive/partition with OS X installed.

So, you've got your Ethernet card working eh? Almost. I never did test if it works at this stage, but there is one problem. Right now your MAC address is 00:00:00:00:00:00. You're going to need to change that, so here's the instructions for that:

Open the terminal again and type in:

sudo -s

ifconfig en0 ether __________

That ___________ is for your MAC address. it needs to be 16 numbers with a : after every two. I found one forum post that used a live Linux cd to find the MAC address, I will link to that list in my next blog post. One thing I never got the chance to test is just BS'ing the MAC address and typing in whatever you want. Try it. Let me know what happens so i can post the results.

OK, after all that junk your Dell Optiplex GX620 should have internet! Woo-Hoo for you!


Thanks to the following thread for information and the original file. Special thanks to Nisa-it
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=4987&st=180&p=129957&#