So… I had to switch from a MacBook Pro 17″ 2nd gen 2.33 Ghz with ATI graphics to a MacBook Pro 17″ 3rd gen (2.4 Ghz with NVidia graphics). One of the wonderful things about Mac OS X is that you can just copy all the files over from one install to another new disk, and it’ll just work. Very handy when you get a new computer.
Well, it seems that Apple busted that functionality. You’d think that a MacBook Pro 2nd gen would be compatible with a MacBook Pro 3rd gen, but they are apparently not. I did the standard copy, and upon boot, it kernel panicked once it got past the initial grey apple logo screen. Yeah, kernel panick on boot! 
So I thought maybe the copy corrupted some files, so I booted using the 2nd gen in target disk mode as the boot disk for my new 3rd gen, and low and behold, the same thing, it kernel panicked on boot, just after the grey apple logo.
So I boot in verbose mode (Cmd-V), now it gets further, I watch the computer start up, and just when it goes to start loginwindow, which means bringing up the graphics for the first time, WHAM! kernel panick. Aha! So it’s related to the graphics driver. Hmmm, 2nd gen has ATI graphics, 3rd gen has NVidia.
(Oh yeah, I should mention, Archive and Install didn’t work, it told me I had to format my harddrive…) So I installed a fresh copy on the 3rd gen in a partition I had set aside for Ubuntu Studio. Then I compared the list of drivers (aka kernel extensions, aka kexts) in the fresh install and my existing install from the 2nd gen. Aha! It’s missing some drivers. So I copy them over, and… WHAM! Still kernel panicking… ARG!
So I compared the results of kextstat on the 2nd gen (with my existing install) and the 3rd gen (with fresh install). Some of the driver versions were different!! WTF?!?! They machines were both running 10.4.10… looks like Apple is doing some bad hacks. So that this point I say fuck it, and just grab the whole /System/Library/Extensions folder from the fresh install, and swap it in on my existing install. Voila! My existing install now boots on the new 3rd gen!!! . But wait, why the fuck are the graphics sooooooo sssslllloooooooooooowww. I mean, it takes a second for a window to move across the screen! Arg, some other fucking issue.
So I download all the of updates starting with 10.4.10 (the fresh install was 10.4.9 from the DVD) and install them. Aaaahhhh, now it seems to work properly. For a while… except when my machine completely froze when I plugged in a projector and a USB mouse at the same time… I guess Apple still has some bugs to work out on the 3rd gen… arg, I hate being the early adopter. I guess I gotta ride Software Update for a while hoping for fixes…
