SD Card Reader Working On HackBooks

March 15th, 2009

Apple / Mac

Thanks to Thomas Piccirello for pointing this out, and for Genaro Bonilla’s original article.

Close, but no cigar. Until now. I’m sure you, like me, have been going around in circles replacing IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext with different versions in hopes of the card reader coming to life. It turns out you need two kexts: IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext and IOPCIFamily.kext. XBench is reporting the card running pretty fast and it automatically mounts when inserted. No more reboots, no more swapping kexts. This one works! I’m running XxX 10.5.6 but this should work with other popular versions as well, including Kalyway.

Mac Card Reader

Simply download the SD Card Reader Pack, install both kexts with Kext Helper b7, repair permissions and rebuild kext cache — reboot and you’re in action. Feel free to report your success/failure here. This may also work on other Inspirons and Dell laptop models including the Mini.

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Richard is a professional web developer and business consultant. He opened his first web hosting company at the age of 13 out of his bedroom on an ISDN connection and hasn't looked back since. Richard currently resides in sunny Florida.

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15 Responses to “SD Card Reader Working On HackBooks”

  1. Kannan

    RICOH Card Reader works well in Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on my Dell Inspiron 6400 with 64bit core 2 duo processor.
    Thanks for the link.

  2. Maria

    my sd card reader wont work on iatkos 10.5.8 i have a dell inspiron 1525. ive installed both kext and taged cache rebuild and repair disk permissions, still nothing happens. Some help would be greatly appreciated.

  3. jaxparo

    Not working for me under 10.6.3 or 10.6.4. The kext loads, but the card reader doesn’t work. Inspiron 1525 with Ricoh 822/852. I’ve also tried the VoodooSDHC.kext which doesn’t load.

    • Thomas

      This guide is for Leopard only. You can get a Snow Leopard version of VoosooSDHC.kext here. Just Kext Helper VoodooSDHC.kext found in the “Kext Helper” folder. Also be sure to run a Tag Cache Rebuild while in Kext Helper. Upon rebooting, your SD Card Slot should work.

      • jaxparo

        Still no go for MemoryStick or MemoryStick Pro with the Snow Leopard update pack. VoodooSDHC.kext loads. Everything seems to show up in ioreg. No idea on the problem, perhaps the wrong version of IOPCIFamily.kext? I just noticed I have two versions of IOPCIFamily.kext, a v.2.5 in the /Extra/Kextstore folder, and a v.2.6 in the /System/Extensions folder. For some reason the v.2.6 is loading, which I’m thinking may be the problem? I thought that the version 2.5 from the /Extra/Kextstore should override the /System/Extensions version, but perhaps that’s only if the extensions.mkext file is correct?

        • Thomas

          If I correctly understand how Chameleon works, it will load the 2.6 version of the kext by default because it is a newer version.

  4. Nathan

    Works great with no problems.

  5. Mark

    Well, doesn’t work for me. I’ve got iPC 10.5.6. My adata 4G SDHC cards will not read through my card reader on the HP printer, or through the usb card reader. Oh well. Thanks for helping the others.

  6. Thomas

    Everyone just note that for some (including myself), all you need is IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext although for those select few of you (including Richard), both IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext and IOPCIFamily.kext will be necessary. But, it makes no difference although when installing both kexts it would appear that it is more stable (such as not freezing when the SD card is not properly ejected) but whatever floats your boat….

  7. Alex

    Works like a charm for me.

  8. Richard

    It works great for me and unlike other posts and responses online about card readers — if you eject the card without ejecting it in your Mac first, it does -not- crash the computer. although it will appear the card is still mounted until you reboot your computer.

  9. David

    I was about to say that I never had this issue until I read the word laptop and realized that this would help a good bit. Thanks Tom for giving us this tip!