MY T61 OSX Journey

[junoboy]

I have been using Macs for about 12 years. I know them pretty well to say the least. I have fallen out with Apple to be frank, long story. I sold my last Mac a few months ago and picked up a T61 2.2 Core 2 Duo 14" GMA 965 (7659). I tried several times to install OSX with many different distros but failed and on my last chance I finally got it working the Retail image. My current config is fine bar a couple of things. No PCMCIA and bluetooth is flakey. No external Video and I am also on full brightness. I ended up buying a dongle which works 100% but my Magic Mouse acts like it's on downers! So I will stick with USB mice for the mo. I am on Snow Leopard 10.6.4 and software update is 100%. My question is with regards the processor. If I disable one core in the bios, the machine runs better and appears as a Core 2 Solo 2.19. If I enable both cores it shows as Core 2 Duo 2.01Ghz? It actually runs better as core solo. I record and sequence a lot of music with Pro Tools, Logic and Ableton and there are no probs with the solo config but it is a no go as core 2 duo. Excuse my ignorance but have I to patch the DSDT etc? I would like some help if possible with regards to this one issue please. I also have Windows 7 installed on the second drive as I recently purchase a 2nd hard drive bay. I bought Mac Drive 8 for Windows 7 also and running so swapping files between OS's and drives is great.

Any help would be much appreciated.

My next project is the Custom Mac Pro.

[JKK]

I've same problem, the Core2Duo speed has been lowered... But did you really felt it was much slower than when you state it as CoreSolo? I didn't try heavy apps so i couldn't tell, just surprised to hear that... I thought the only the text specs changed, not real speed! Even if so, 200mHz shouldn't be felt that much... I used a DSDT found in an OSX X61 Tablet archive (if i remember) but it's not perfect like you...

[junoboy]

I have tried a few different configs recently. I have gone back to Leopard 10.5.8 for the moment. It just feels like my old macbook pro and I have just installed RC5 Chameleon. System Profiler shows as 2.19 Core 2 Duo and 4GB Ram shows as 800MHz but hard ware still shows one core. I run quite intense apps for Music Production such as Pro Tools, Live and Logic. Very snappy and working fine.

My last attempt with regards to Snow Leopard for this Thinkpad will be: Install 10.6.3 Retail booting with iboot. Once installed. Run 10.6.4, Multibeast, Atheros Fix kext for the wireless, and RC5 - The ram shows as the correct speed but the processor shows as 1.47 core 2 duo

I am saving for an i7 system at present which I'm looking forward to.

[20charactersusername]

@junoboy
Since you are usng your T61 for audio production, you might be able to help me. Do you have any experience with using firewire audio interfaces on your T61, good or bad?

I'm running Snow Leopard on my T61 and using it to process live audio input. I get actually good performance and somewhat low latency from the built in audio, but I'd really like to use my Behringer firewire interface (FCA202). The problem is that when using the Behringer, I get frequent pops and clicks, and they don't seem to be related to the latency settings (I've tried raising it), or to the CPU load at the time.

I've read a lot about laptops often having poor firewire chipsets. The T61 uses Ricoh, and not the preferred TI. (The Behringer works fine under Windows on a PC that I have which does have the TI chipset)

[edit] I read a lot about the importance of IRQ settings, and I noticed that one of the USB controllers shares the same IRQ as the firewire controller, and I'm running OSX off of a USB hard drive! So I switched the hard drive from the USB ports on the left to the one in the back right, and there are now significantly fewer dropouts. (I would try the Behringer using the internal hard drive to confirm this, but it is running Windows 7 64-bit, and Behringer does not provide 64-bit drivers)