As most of you may already know, there was a recent breakthrough with one of the many (although the number is rapidly dropping) problematic hardware devices in the Inspiron 1525. Ethernet, which is essential for those of us old timers that have only a modem and no router or just want slightly faster speeds, was always a problem as not only were there not enough developers trying to make a kext for our model, but it was just pretty damn hard to figure out.
Thanks to the folks over at insanelymac.com and their recent discovery, ethernet is now working beautifully and pretty speedy too. The kext comes from the beta release of 10.5.7 and is possibly in there because of the new MacBooks? Anyway, this is definitely one of the easier fixes to install. Just kext helper it, repair permissions, and then reboot and you should be good to go.
Just note that it may take several reboots before the ethernet is running perfectly and possibly before it is even recognized. Also note that if you have more than one hackintosh on the same network then it is strongly advised that you do not install this because the MAC Address is listed as 00:11:22:33:44:55 and no two devices can have the same MAC address so that could cause some problems. Richard is currently working on a fix for this and it should be up soon.
So now that you know what to do, the only thing left is to download it.
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. Any amount truly does help.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:36 PM
Thomas,
If you’re SURE you’ve found the proper location for the MAC, figure out what the NICs real MAC is and have at it. Remember, you’ll only be working on a copy/backup of it, so if it doesn’t work, you need only to reinstall the original copy. (Just ensure to delete the old from the /Extension folder and KextHelper b7 the new one over, cleaning the extensions cache — and, of course, restart through all these events).
Having the MAC be correct is good (considering I’m getting more 1525’s on the network than the 00:11:22:33:44:55 MAC would allow). And, again, it’s not like you rip the internal NIC out of your laptop to often, so injecting it is a more than satisfactory solution.
— Wolfer
April 1st, 2009 at 5:22 AM
When running a search in HexEdit Fat 2.2 (newer version so not sure if that makes a difference), I do not find the offset you were referring to although I did find the 00:11:22:33:44:55 MAC address. Would it be alright to change those hexes (if thats a word) even though the 1AF20 is not there?
March 31st, 2009 at 10:38 AM
‘Sup All,
This is a GREAT achievement and GREAT kext, but it only becomes “super great” once you find out what your real MAC Address is and modify the Kext to make it applicable the NIC specifically soldered and screwed into your laptop. 00:11:22:33:44:55 ain’t gonna cut it in the “real world,” or if you just happen to have a few Hackintosh’s with internal Marvell-Yukon NICs in them. Duplicate MAC Addresses of 00:11:22:33:44:55 on your network and things are gonna start getting pretty nutty — quick!
Luckily, there is a way to change the guts of the Kext, injecting your REAL MAC Address into it. Once done, the Kext will act just as it should, albeit it’s not querying the NIC for its MAC, you are specifically telling the driver what the MAC is just like Apple did when they decided the beta version was going to be 00:11:22:33:44:55 until finalized.
So, here’s what you can do (I don’t take credit here, it goes to Slice and Adamsalac; I just found and exploited it.):
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=155935&pid=1099839&mode=threaded&start=#entry1099839
Get HexEdit Fat 2.0 and go crazy, but use sense and be careful.
Copy/Backup the original Kext and dump a copy on your Desktop. That will be the one to modify. Open HexEdit Fat and open the AppleYukon2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleYukon2 binary. Find offset 1AF20 and change the 00:11:22:33:44:55 to your real MAC Address.
If you need to find what you real MAC Address is (prior to modification), you can use Slice’s ‘Marvell.kext’ loading/unloading and referencing the system.log for your NICs real MAC or you can use most any Linux Live CD distro, Windows, etc., to find it as well. Once known, just replace away.
It’s not like your internal NIC will change often so “injecting” the MAC into the driver is not that big of a deal. And, it stops you from having to play games, randomize, spoof, etc. When done, it will work exactly as it should, except that the driver is again, not querying the NIC for the MAC, the driver is basically hard-setting one — YOUR REAL one.
Have fun.
— Dave
March 20th, 2009 at 5:06 AM
Got Ethernet working properly now. Thanks Thomas & Richard.. I used the DNS (opendns.com) listed in the screen shots on this page.. :) have very good speeds :)
March 19th, 2009 at 10:13 PM
Hell yeah. And i just love the shortcuts. I just type “d” and hit enter from any browser on any computer in my home network and I am brought straight to dailyblogged.com. Gotta Love it.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:45 PM
OpenDNS is awesome.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:34 PM
For me I sites are resolving much quicker on ethernet than WiFi. I also use OpenDNS and it has not only much more features than your ISP’s DNS server but pages load much quicker
March 19th, 2009 at 12:46 PM
I noticed that too. And torrents stopped downloading.
March 19th, 2009 at 11:25 AM
Come to think of it — the moment I plugged in to the built-in Ethernet and disabled AirPort, my connections to websites happened in about half the time than over Wi-Fi and I didn’t edit any settings.
March 19th, 2009 at 11:23 AM
I’ve noticed this too. Frontrow and a few other applications seem to always get “fixed” when you repair permissions. You might want to add OpenDNS to your DNS configuration for Ethernet to speed it up a bit.
March 19th, 2009 at 5:48 AM
Thanks, works for me. Dint even need to repair permissions. As soon i installed the kext it notified me of net ethernet hardware :)
But its painfully slow. Like the google homepage on Firefox takes around 15seconds to load up. Any solution?? Am i the only one with this problem??
Also whenever i repair permissions i get a pretty long list of changes from Frontrow and itunes to iphoto :( but the softwares work flawlessly.
March 18th, 2009 at 12:42 PM
I’m able to now randomize the MAC address, unfortunately Network and ‘ifconfig’ report two different numbers. I may need a 2nd laptop with this MAC or possibly spoof something in my house to that crazy MAC address to fully test it out. In the meantime, I doubt people would have more than 1 of these connected over wired at any given time. Personally, I’ve only run into needing ethernet once but it was big enough for me to buy the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter because the corporate network I needed to get on had very unstable Wi-Fi.