Some PC manufacturers choose to line with, but Dell has taken a slightly different approach. In a recent, the company has raised the bar above MacBook imitation and transformed its very own Dell XPS 15 into a laptop that combines OS X and Windows 8. The entire marketing video, released in December, shows a laptop that seamlessly switches between the Windows 8 Start Screen and apps running in OS X, all thanks to a flick of the wrist or a tap on the screen. While it might look like Dell has created the ultimate hackintosh, it’s all a giant mistake. Dell’s XPS 15 is a Windows 8 laptop that’s not designed to run Apple’s OS X operating system, and it’s clear the marketing team got a little too creative during the production of this particular video.
We’ve seen plenty of similar blunders before, but never a minute-long product demo of a Windows laptop that also 'runs' OS X. Update: the video was hosted on Dell’s YouTube channel for more than a month, but the company has now removed it.
• • • • • • • Specification Details of the system: Please keep the discussion as close to El Capitan as possible. [*]Sadly, due to my lack of time I couldn’t keep up with the changes and improvements found in the wealth of the thread to this guide. With Sierra out and the recent introduction of MBP’s nearly identical to this 2015 device (ah Apple, so sad) (minus our better discrete GPU) a Sierra guide will be done – but by someone more capable. I will update this guide with the latest changes to finalize it once the Sierra guide is out and I can incorporate the lessons learned since writing this up.
In order to boot the Clover from the USB, you should visit your BIOS settings: – “VT-d” (virtualization for directed i/o) should be disabled if possible (the config.plist includes dart=0 in case you can’t do this) – “DEP” (data execution prevention) should be enabled for OS X – “secure boot ” should be disabled – “legacy boot” optional – “CSM” (compatibility support module) enabled or disabled (varies) – “boot from USB” or “boot from external” enabledNote: If you get a “garbled” screen when booting the installer in UEFI mode, enable legacy boot and/or CSM in BIOS (but still boot UEFI). Enabling legacy boot/CSM generally tends to clear that problem. In my case I left VT-d and Fastboot as they were.
Also, update your 9550 to the latest BIOS. Don’t forget to set mode to “AHCI” in the sub-menu “SATA Operation” of “System Configuration”. It’s mandatory. (Old) Warning for 4k / UHD screen owners: Do not use the EFI shell to to edit the DVMT Pre-allocation for getting your screen to work.
This bricked a user’s machine already. Instead, make use of a patch explained in a later section of this guide. All you need to do is follow the instruction in this guide. If you do not know about DVMT Pre-allocation, do not worry. You not need it. So in short: Do not use UEFI shell to edit DVMT allocation.
How To Install OS X 1. Dell Dimension 9. If you own a Dell Dimension 9. 10, and you would like to “hackintosh it” i. OS X on a PC then this.
1.2 Prepare the USB Simply follow rehabman’s install guide referenced earlier for a USB install. For this you need a real Mac or a Hack with access to the Apple Store for downloading 10.11.4 or newer – >=.4 is necessary for initial Skylake Support. If you download freshly from the Apple Store, you’ll get 10.11.5 or newer During the preparation of the USB install it’s best to go for a fail-safe clover configuration.
A streamlined, all patches active configuration comes after your system said Hello world and is ready for usage. In short, please use this by rehabman for the initial setup on your USB stick. This plist includes important patches, some of which we’ll activate after the initial installation. In this plist you need to adjust a couple of things: Into “Devices” section. 0x19160000 The rest of the config.plist can stay as rehabman pre-configured it. Please don’t make too many edits to your config.plist before finalising your install. 1.3 Kernel Extensions for Install You may need extra kexts, apart from the mandatory FakeSMC and VoodooPS2 (as per rehabman’s install guide): • HackrNVMeFamily-10_11_6.kext – for seeing and installing on a stock SSD if you have a M2 NVMe SDD!
It’s attached to this guide and valid for 10.11.6 – see below in 3.7 if you are installing an earlier or later version of MacOS. Recommended escalation of getting your drive to cooperate: • Use the HackrNVMeFamily kext • If the Installer doesn’t see your SSD with this kext, then it might be missing the patches for your device. In this case you have to use for install. Please report if you have to do so, maybe your drive can be “hacked” post-install. Of course, delete HackrNVMeFamily • Should you still face problems, see this. Please refrain from using other kexts during install.
Go with a bare minimum. All you want is to get the system on your Laptop and boot. Please see 3.7 of the post install section to update the included HackrNVMeFamily-10_11_6.kext to newer OS versions or even Sierra 2. Installation Installation is pretty much 100% in alignment with rehabman’s guide Just make sure, again, to follow the I split up the drive into two partitions to prepare the second one for Windows later. So I left the second one just untouched by formatting it HFS+ which was later overwritten by the Windows 10 install routines. But that is just if you also want to use the silenced beast that is the GTX 960M for gaming outside of serious Mac business. How to get MacOS booting again after installing Windows: When installing Windows after having installed Clover, it will install its own bootloader into your EFI partition.
To get back to boot macOS, you need to have the USB key from the install handy, so you can add Clover’s UEFI boot entries. So don’t panic. Post install After your install went smooth and you installed Clover to your SSD as per guide, it’s time for the real work.
It’s also a good idea to keep the USB stick handy and not fiddle with it’s config. It was good enough for a install, it’s good enough to start your machine with and fix the errors your *.dsl patching and config.plist adjustments brought along. 3.1 DSDT/SSDT Patching Patching DSDTs and SSDTs will enable the following: • Turn off the NVIDIA GPU for OS X – this is a must – it saves a lot of battery and the discrete GPU won’t be utilized by MacOS anyway • Backlight control, important for proper sleep and resume • Fn keys for Backlight control via Fn keys • Audio, see below for the special section pertaining how to enable our codec rehabman, again, provides all info needed for patching these files. His master is a “ must be open at all time” 3.1.1 Extract When in the Clover boot menu, press F4 to extract vanilla DSDT and SSDTs from the system and save them in your Clover ACPI folder.
These files shall be the base for all the patching following. 3.1.2 Prepare For all DSDTs and SSDTs, please remove or rename. The preparation work is done, let’s patch! For starters, you can check the DSDT and SSDTs attached in the archive. But you should extract yourself and patch yourself. Who knows what Firmware and Bios is driving your 9550.
The first patch you should apply to your DSDT is “Rename _DSM methods to XDSM” – then continue. Rehabman’s guide also gives hints at usually good and unproblematic patches. Try it yourself – rather don’t patch too much, try to boot and see if you get the desired effect after every patch. 3.2.1 Backlight control for backlight control. All you need is the “OS Check Fix (Windows 8)” and a kext, see below. In addition to this, you need to follow for adjusting your DSDT for getting our dedicated brightness keys to work. One of the following patches need to be added to your DSDT via MaciASL’s patch window: For VoodoPS2Trackpad.
End; I opted for ApplePS2SmartTouchPad.kext – I found it to offer better Palm rejection while also supporting more gestures. Version 4.x works just fine. Retain brightness value upon resume from sleep and benefit from super fine brightness steps This is courtesy of: • If installed, remove ‘IntelBacklight.kext’ from S/L/E • If patched, remove brightness fixes from DSDT • Remove the existing PNLF device from the DSDT • Compile and install the SSDT from post to the ‘PATCHED’ folder of your Clover installation – add it to your named list of SSDTs in config.plist, if you are using a named list • Create a ‘AppleBacklightInjector’ kext as mentioned in the post above and install it in S/L/E • Rebuild kextcache. Sudo kextcache - system - caches 3.2.2 Turn off NVIDIA This video plus rehabman’s helped me. I patched most of the SSDTs and the DSDT, but this may not be necessary: patched mostly the DSDT only and turnf the discrete GPU off as well.
His method is in 3. Couperin Les Barricades Mysterieuses Pdf there. 2.3 Rename iGPU There are patches and a by rehabman Most essential for me to get it working were: • “Rename GFX0 to IGPU” • “Cleanup/Fix Errors (SSDT)” But it always depends on your SSDTs. Just be sure to follow the guide, especially making sure you treat every SSDT with the rename. 3.3 SSDT.aml via pikeralpha Needed for native Power Management. Please refer, to once again, a great by rehabman. You have to chose between this method for power management and the new fancy Speed Shift method mentioned below.
Speed Shift ignores SSDT and OS-level settings. Obviously, you must find your own Serial No.
– If you take the SMBIOS posted here and simply copy and paste them, they WILL not work 3.6 Full QE/CI, 4k and fix memory allocation Thanks to 10.11.4+ this is super simple. Just take out the Fake-ID and ensure you kept the InjectedID as in the beginning of the guide. If you employ the Backlight Fix and IntelBacklight.kext – which you should – you’ll have a super smooth boot-up experience, too. Additional steps for 4k / UHD screens: If you have a 4k screen, you must make two additional changes, courtesy of the by “the-darkvoid” for the Dell 9350 and rehabman: Open a Terminal and run these commands.
Sudo codesign - f - s - / System / Library / Frameworks / IOKit. Framework / Versions / Current / IOKit Only after these changes will 4k work. Which you want, if you paid $$$ for 100% AdobeRGB 3.7 iMessage, App Store, iCloud etc. For proper functionality you need to generate MLB and SMUUID. As usually, the guide from rehabman covers that in depth. I was successful with the following steps: • Generate a proper Serial No not in use yet by others.
Either through Clover configurator for supported System and its SMBIOS generator, or by • Make sure you don’t have a MLB or SmUUID value set • You can take the Board-ID and Bios from the examples in this guide for the system definitions provided • Reboot after setting Serial number, Board-ID and Bios • Use Clover Configurator’s Rt variable generator for getting the MLB, SmUUID value. ROM is usually set correctly automatically.
• Save the details given by the configurator into SMBIOS fields • Reboot and try iCloud, Message etc. I also found that the aforementioned NullEthernet.kext enables a reliable connection to these services. Please follow the instructions when installing. As explained by rehabman, you also need to place ssdt-rmne.ssdt with a custom MAC address and edit the ssdt into your config.plist For advanced help, please see this 3.8 Audio Since I last wrote about Audio, things have improved a lot. No more Voodoo, now let’s patch native via injection, yeah. You need two kexts and the SSDT-ALC298.aml attached to this post • Place and into your Clover kexts folder • Place the afromentioned ALC298.aml int your ACPI/patched folder – don’t forget to adjust your config.plist if you use a named SSDT list • Inject Audio ID 13 via config.plist If you previously committed Audio patches, like injecting Audio ID through DSDT or even renaming the Audio device (I did that, thus finding the device was a bit harder), then you need to adjust the Audio ID in your DSDT as well. End; 3.9 Speed Shift Skylake brings a new, fancy method of managing your C- and P-States of your CPU called Speed Shift.
This means quicker throttling up and down, can mean higher power or longer battery, depending on your needs. Bare in Mind, this is a pretty new development in the Hackintosh world, so use this as an alternative to generating states via the guide linked in 3.4. If you are interested (I’m happily using it, it keeps the fan on lower settings), there are two ways: 1. Enable HWP in Clover. – My changes for HWP support in Clover are already in repo and will be included into next build – Fully rewrote my kext. I like it now! You can got it here – Normal support of HWP needs not only CPU configuration, but also frequencyVectors with HWP flag.
Currently in El Capitan this is only MacBook9,1. So who want to have best possible CPU performance with incredible battery life – change your smbios to MacBook9,1. Also, for those who has generated ssdt.aml – delete it and forget, we don’t need it anymore bcz HWP will handle all power management! Yarrr Yes, change your SMBIOS to MacBook9,1 – with Sierra this could be MacBookPro13,1 as well, we’ll have to see.
Keep Speed Shift after sleep To retain Speed Shift after resume from sleep, you need to follow a few simple steps outlined in post. Otherwise, Speed Shift won’t work after your system slept. Kinda pointless, so follow the simple steps. Remember: It’s either Speed Shift or SSDT.aml patching via Pike R.
Alpha for Power Management, not both. 3.10 Native NVMe In the pasts months the Hackintosh world has evolved even further, also again thanks to the work of the likes of rehabman and pikeralpha. A new method has been found to directly patch NVMe kexts by Apple to avoid NVMeGeneric. Mkdir ~/Projects && cd Projects git clone patch-nvme.git cd patch-nvme.git./patch_nvme.sh 10_11_6 This will yield in a kext you can install or add to your Clover kexts. This method could also be used to create a kext for NVMe patching before updating to 10.12 – you need to adjust the target platform in the command line accordingly.
Updating 4.1 10.11.6 & Security updates Updating to 10.11.6 worked for me via the App Store (see 3.3.6 for getting the App Store to work). Here’s the steps I took: • Make sure that the App Store is working by providing a proper SMBIOS • Download the Update and let it install itself, it will reboot when it’s done to the Clover boot menu • With FHD, you’re done at this point, apart from re-patching or re-installing kexts in S/L/E Additional steps for 4k/UHD • After the initial installation restart, don’t boot directly boot OS X, instead enter Clover Options during OS selection after boot • In the Clover boot menu, open the “Graphics injector menu” and inject a fake ID for the Intel IGPU, much like during install, for example. Install Plesk Migration Manager Linux. # Run the following command in order to patch IOKit in order to disable CheckTimingWithRange sudo perl -i.bak -pe ‘s xB8x01x00x00x00xF6xC1x01x0Fx85 x33xC0x90x90x90x90x90x90x90xE9 sg’ /System/Library/Frameworks/IOKit.framework/Versions/Current/IOKit sudo codesign -f -s – /System/Library/Frameworks/IOKit.framework/Versions/Current/IOKit • After patching, simply reboot and you’re golden – you may need to reinstall.kexts or kext patches depending on your setup ToDo I probably forgot important things, so this guide will be updated accordingly. • AppleHDA patching instead of Voodoo Audio • Hopefully better palm rejection for the Touchpad – solved by an alternative TouchPad driver • Replacing NVMeGeneric with a more stable method Repo A git of the current kexts, cofnigs & ACPI files I use can be found. As always, be careful when using ACPI files from other systems.
Files attached All the files attached are tuned to i7 systems. You need to adjust the injected ID pertaining your CPU (see above for details) as well as decide on using NVMeGeneric. Clover.zip: This zip file provided should only be a starting point to discover how a complete system is configured. It’s based on my running i7 setup – It’s not a good idea to deliver a running setup, as it maybe not up to date and not optimized for your system. Instead, use this guide and rich thread to create your streamlined, optimized setup. Everything you need is there. Minimal_for_install_example.zip: This is the actually setup I used when installing the system.
It’s minimal, without many kexts and config.plist edits SSDT-ALC298.aml: The verb to be used in combination with CodecCommander and AppleALC to relish native audio support HackrNVMeFamily-10_11_6.kext – Required to install and use MacOS on 9550s fitted with NVMe M.2 drives Display #1 2016-11-13 14-13 2.2 F-S XYZLUT+MTX – ICC profile for 4k screen calibrated with Spyder4Pro colorimeter and DisplayCAL. Every panel is different, so don’t expect too much precision, but this profile works great for sRGB and AdobeRGB dellxps15icon.png – An icon to brand your Desktop Apply with LiteIcon or manually Please take care when using files contained, especially ACPI related ones.[/size] Source: Download attachments here.