Drivers Galore! (The Master Drivers Guide)

July 9th, 2009

Apple / Mac, Miscellaneous

Update Drivers

Over the past couple of months, many Leopard drivers have been released, updated, killed with OS updates, etc. To keep up with all of these changes, one must refer to 12 different posts, two encyclopedias, and a lawyer to go through all the fine. I figured “If people have to look in so many places, why not make one central location they can reference?

With that in mind, I collected the kexts from all of our other posts, and am posting them in this one guide for easy access. Note that this is not a repost of all drivers but simply links to those kexts/guides. To download a kext, just click on the name of the function you’d like to fix, ie. Audio, and you will be taken to the post for that device. In some cases, you will be taken directly to a download as there is no post associated with that driver. Is this happens then, unless indicated otherwise, Kext Helper the kexts, Repair Permissions in Disk Utility, and boot with -f on your next boot. So, in no particular order, here are the kexts that continually save your butt:

Hardware Drivers:

Audio:

DSDT.aml (Replacement for Hot Corner/Sleep Trick/Alternative to Sleep Trick):

SD Card Reader:

WiFi:

Battery Meter:

QE/CI Support on screen with Max resoluion of 1440×900 (not common):

QE/CI support for all other screens (Most common):

Ethernet (If not already working after updating to 10.5.7):

Trackpad Preference Pane:

Keyboard and/or Trackpad (Only if not already working):

Media Keys:

Miscellaneous Goodies:

10.5.8 Update:

10.5.7 Update:

Chameleon Bootloader Latest Version:

Updates to all your Apps:

NTFS Write Support in OS X:

Temperature Monitor:

Backup Software and what not:

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography, or by clicking on some ads around the site. Any amount truly does help.

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About Thomas

Thomas is a self-proclaimed guru (just ask him). He enjoys long walks on the beach, running Mac OS X on his Inspiron 1525, and tweeting about nonsensical life happenings. You can follow Thomas on twitter, email him, or search the interwebs for all his personal information. Neither should be too difficult.

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19 Responses to “Drivers Galore! (The Master Drivers Guide)”

  1. Kaya

    Would I have to reinstall any drivers/fixes? Also, can you provide a link to the best upgrade tutorial? Again, thank you for all your help.

  2. Kaya

    I do, but it’s severely limited. It’s listed as “Mouse” and only offers tracking speed, double click speed, and left/right click options. Is there some way I can get the full fledged version on 10.5.5?

    • Thomas

      Unfortunately there isn’t. I definitely recommend you upgrade to 10.5.6 however; it’s extremely stable, boasts a ton of upgrade, and fixes much more than it breaks (it doesn’t break anything!). 10.5.7 was also a fairly smooth update, but users started to run into issues at 10.5.8

  3. Kaya

    10.5.5

    I was going to update all the way up to 10.5.8, but I finally got a stable system and didn’t feel like tempting fate.

    • Thomas

      The Trackpad Preference Pane listed above is only for systems running 10.5.6-10.5.8. You should have a Trackpad tab in your Keyboard Preference Pane.

  4. Kaya

    The wifi works like a dream now, thank you. However, I still have one problem left; I installed the trackpad preference pane, but whenever I try to access it form the system preferences menu, it says

    “Preferences Error

    Could not load Trackpad preference pane.”

  5. Kaya

    I can’t seem to get my wifi working on 10.5.5. Any suggestions?

  6. Steve

    Hi Thomas,

    Yes I understood what you were saying however, I must add the line as proper code as there is no reference to resolution in the file.

    You gave me the answer, I just needed to locate the proper format for the file which was what I was missing.

    I’ve never modified the file before and I had to be sure I used the correct format.

    Below is what I’m about to try and I might also have to add the freq to this as well.

    Graphics Mode
    1366x768x32

    If the freq is required I’ll add it like this @75 behind the 32
    1366x768x32@75

    Thanks for your help so far, you got me on the right road.

    -Cheers

    • Thomas

      You most likely don’t need the frequency so try it without it first. Just make sure that when adding it to the com.apple.Boot.plist you include all the <’s and all that other funky punctuation

  7. Steve

    I’ll have to look around as the file you indicated above does not reference the included resolution and the actual file name has a cap B for .Boot.plist I don’t think that affects anything, but I’ll have to see what line actual needs to be added.

    I’ll search around and get back on the results.

    -Cheers

    • Thomas

      I told you to replace the line in the file with the bold resolution in my last comment. And the file you are looking for is called com.apple.Boot.plist with that capital B.

  8. Steve

    Any video fixes for the Dell i1545-3311 the only display option is 1024×768.

    Is there anything I can do besides the common one for 1366×768 posted
    here.

    http://deviato.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/howto-get-1366×768-resolution-on-dell-with-leopard/

    -Cheers

  9. Richard

    I second this. Hell, even though I use Time Machine on a gigantic 500GB drive, I still use my tiny “keychain” 8GB flash drive to hold the real keepers that I don’t want to lose in case my drive crashes and burns. Better to be safe than sorry!

  10. brendon

    very nice would you recommend downloading all these and putting them on a flash drive for future reference?

    • Thomas

      Sure. It would probably be a good idea as most of these kexts are likely to be the final versions. You can even burn then to a CD for permanent storage.