[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

[CaseySJ]

Hi again,

After a new WIN10 install and some BIOS-Settings, I get another IO-file and Infos in Hardware/PCI. Would you like to check the IO-file again please? Now Boot Support is Boot Once, USB and GPIO3 is enabled.

That is much better: Thunderbolt is finally appearing on RP21.



The Thunderbolt SSDT you are using is not specifying device name and model information, so that is why the System Information --> PCI page does not show it. Note that System Information --> Thunderbolt should not be used because it will always say either:

• No hardware found
• No drivers are loaded

The screenshot above shows that currently you have not connected any Thunderbolt devices. What happens when you connect a Thunderbolt device? If the Thunderbolt device does not seem to work, then run IORegistryExplorer once again and select File --> Save As... and upload the saved file.

Some other problems I see:

• PROBLEM 1: You have an Intel CNVi WiFi/BT card in your system. This card can interfere with Bluetooth. Do you have any problem connecting Bluetooth devices?
  • If so, copy the attached file, SSDT-DESIGNARE-Z390-NO-CNVW.aml, to the CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder in the EFI partition of your Mojave SSD, and reboot.
  • This file can be used on most Gigabyte motherboards with on-board Intel CNVi modules.
• PROBLEM 2: You only have USB 2.0 ports activated. You will not be able to connect USB 3 devices at full speed. To fix this problem, please see this guide.

By the way, please click here and enter the correct Motherboard information into your profile.

 

[CaseySJ]

@CaseySJ Thanks to you this was my easiest Hackintosh install ever! And I'm quite old at this hahahaha. Your guide is awesome, just made a clean install of Catalina on a 9900k + Designare.

Glad to hear it! Did you have to do anything special (i.e. did you have to deviate from the Build Guide) to install a fresh copy of Catalina?

I just have one last problem, my iMessage/Continuity/Sidecar isn't working. I can't log in iMessage, a error saying "An error occurred in activation" pops up. I can't find my hackintosh in Airdrop and there is no device in Sidecar to use, even with my iPad Pro (2018) connected in the USB-C port of the motherboard.

This might be due to missing "rc scripts" in Catalina. Because the System is mounted in its own read-only volume, Clover/MultiBeast is unable to install those scripts. The scripts are necessary for managing NVRAM, which in turn is necessary for Messages and FaceTime. It may also be necessary for Sidecar (don't quote me on that though).

You could try running the Clover installer manually by downloading it from the SourceForge website (just Google for "clover boot loader"), but first it will be necessary to re-mount the System volume with read-write permissions. Don't worry, the permissions will revert to read-only when you reboot.

To remount the System volume with read-write permissions:

• Run Terminal
• Type sudo mount -uw /

See details here.

I'm not sure whether the Clover installer will work in Catalina, but feel free to try it. Here's a quick guide. WARNING: You assume all risk for carrying out this procedure! Please make full bootable backup first.

Follow Steps 1 and 2:


Then turn on:

• Clover for UEFI booting only
• Install Clover in the ESP (ESP = EFI System Partition)
• Install RC scripts on the target volume

Then click Install.

After that, reboot and see if you can log in to Messages and FaceTime.

 

[tern]

@CaseySJ: followed your guide closely to upgrade to Catalina today, near the end of phase 2 during reboot, i only see Boot macOS from Mojave (my drive name), i selected that, then it ran for about 1 min with all loggings, after that, the screen showed black forever. I waited for 30 mins, nothing happens. Tried reboot and it repeated the same issue. What did i do wrong? Thanks!

 

[CaseySJ]

@CaseySJ: followed your guide closely to upgrade to Catalina today, near the end of phase 2 during reboot, i only see Boot macOS from Mojave (my drive name), i selected that, then it ran for about 1 min with all loggings, after that, the screen showed black forever. I waited for 30 mins, nothing happens. Tried reboot and it repeated the same issue. What did i do wrong? Thanks!

It may be necessary to wait longer than 30 minutes. Looks like you use SMBIOS iMac19,1 so the second boot was not an Install macOS boot, but a regular boot into macOS. During the second boot, Catalina will split the System into two APFS volumes:

1. A read-only System volume containing only the O/S files.
2. A read-write user or "data" volume.

Both of these volumes belong to the same volume group and appear to the user as one volume. If there are a large number of files in the user directories or a lot of bloat in the old System directories, then it's possible that Phase 2 will take more time. Catalina is quite new and we're still trying to figure it out, so other factors may also be involved.

I would suggest trying again but allowing more time for Phase 2 (up to 1 hour). If it still fails, boot back into your original installation of Mojave and check the following:

• What is the size of your user folder?
• Are there many user folders?
• Are there a lot of third party kexts in /Library/Extensions (other than those for getting the Hackintosh up and running)?
• Are you running any 32-bit applications?
• Are there any "weird" things installed? You can define "weird" for yourself!

The cleaner the original Mojave installation, the more likely that Catalina upgrade will go smoothly.

 

[tern]

It may be necessary to wait longer than 30 minutes. Looks like you use SMBIOS iMac19,1 so the second boot was not an Install macOS boot, but a regular boot into macOS. During the second boot, Catalina will split the System into two APFS volumes:

1. A read-only System volume containing only the O/S files.
2. A read-write user or "data" volume.

Both of these volumes belong to the same volume group and appear to the user as one volume. If there are a large number of files in the user directories or a lot of bloat in the old System directories, then it's possible that Phase 2 will take more time. Catalina is quite new and we're still trying to figure it out, so other factors may also be involved.

I would suggest trying again but allowing more time for Phase 2 (up to 1 hour). If it still fails, boot back into your original installation of Mojave and check the following:

• What is the size of your user folder?
• Are there many user folders?
• Are there a lot of third party kexts in /Library/Extensions (other than those for getting the Hackintosh up and running)?
• Are you running any 32-bit applications?
• Are there any "weird" things installed? You can define "weird" for yourself!

The cleaner the original Mojave installation, the more likely that Catalina upgrade will go smoothly.

Thanks for a quick reply, will try to back up and re-install again. This time i might wait for more 1 hour.
- The size of my folder is small, less than 15GB, mainly Mojave
- My kext in L/E is minimal, just followed from your guide, no more
- Don't have any applications except vanilla from OS

 

[MuffinCrumbs]

Now that I got my rig going, I have realized that for some reason I can’t have all 6 SATA ports in use with an NVMe in the slot closest to the CPU. I am reading in the manual. Trying to decide what to do. I have 2 RAID 0 setups that I use editing video and for backups. However what I am thinking of doing is getting a 2 TB NVME for the second slot, and using that to edit on, and then backing up footage on 1 of the raids. Is that the best thing i can do? I have a full ATX tower, i can put 8 full size mechanical drives in it. Anyone wanna recommend a better setup?

If I recall correctly, the board's SATA ports to the middle don't work, if you utilise both m.2 slots. In this case you got four SATA ports left. Are you using Apple SW RAID?

[EDIT (additional info)]

Well, I used to use RAID a lot with my old hackintosh. But I didn't use onboard RAID via motherboard, as it wasn't supported. Nor did I use Apple RAID. I got a compatible RAID card. Quite inexpensive. It was Highpoint RocketRaid 2720SGL.

I am not entirely sure if that particular RAID card is still supported, as the last time I used it was with Sierra. However, this card takes two Mini SAS. I used to use mini SAS to 4x SATA 3. So I had 8 drives connected 4 drives for each port. This card could do most RAID configurations that 8 drives could handle, including JBOD. The downside is that CSM needs to be disabled, which is common for many RAID cards utilising BIOS.

I am telling you this, because you said you got space for 8 drives. Though, I'm not sure if this gives you any insight to anything. Could also use an additional drive box/RAID enclosure with ThunderBolt, if that is ideal and possible. Depending on your setup and how you want the setup to be.

 

[Etyel]

Bluetooth is no longer working, Bluetooth cannot be disabled and my Logitech MX keyboard is no longer functional. I'll give you the screenshots. Is there anything we can try again before I order the Fenvi?

 

[bluepr0]

Bluetooth is no longer working, Bluetooth cannot be disabled and my Logitech MX keyboard is no longer functional. I'll give you the screenshots. Is there anything we can try again before I order the Fenvi?

Looks like it's recognised. Try clicking on the BT icon in the top bar while holding Shift + Option. Then Debug > Reset the BT module

 

[faithie999]

@FriFlo @MuffinCrumbs @totototo @digumo

These are all good arguments and I think we are all in agreement on the essential points.

• We should use an alternative memory driver if it works. The Build Guide will continue to recommend OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000 for the time being because it allows everyone to come on board with a working system. Later they can and should switch to something else if it works.
• If I remove my WiFi/BT card, I can use AptioMemoryFix. If others disable their iGPU, they can use AptioMemoryFix. So this type of tradeoff should also be considered. If you're okay without iGPU (e.g. SMBIOS iMacPro1,1) then this is a valid tradeoff.
• As development of OpenCore and FwFirmwareServices proceeds, we may have a truly viable alternative to both AptioMemoryFix and OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000. Thanks to @MuffinCrumbs and @rj510 for raising awareness of this coming alternative to Clover.
  • My experiments with alpha builds of OpenCore, unfortunately, ended in boot failures 100% of the time (specifically, errors involving some missing biometric device). Will try again as OC matures; I understand it's at public beta stage now.

A couple more comments and I'll leave it at that...

• @MuffinCrumbs is right, "that people would defend their use of things. Defend how they use the driver." I use the driver because I have no alternative and because there have not been any ill effects so far. This does not ensure long-term safety by any means. Even a future bug in AptioMemoryFix or FwFirmwareServices could brick your system. FwFirmwareServices have just entered Beta, so you're putting yourself at extra risk.
  • Regular full backups are the single most effective guarantor of our long-term computational well-being. Nothing else comes close.
    • Memory modules can fail (and they have).
    • CPUs can burn out from overheating and overclocking.
    • Motherboards can get bricked from a firmware update gone wrong.
    • Power surges and spikes can burn out power supplies.
    • An EFI memory driver can brick the motherboard.
    • Even a bug in a "safe" memory driver can brick the motherboard.
• All of these are valid risks. We face these risks every day. And the "protection" we use is Carbon Copy Cloner -- to use @digumo's analogy of an STD.

To continue to beat this dead horse...

My takeaway after reading apianti's disclaimer is that he developed free2000 to test a particular problem and never intended it for public use. Someone else released it into the wild and now apianti is advising not to use it. It's fair advice for him to give--it was never fully developed/tested for general use, he didn't release it, and now is saying don't use it.

As @CaseySJ has consistently said, many of us need it, we are aware of the stated risks, maintain a current full bootable backup, and let's wait to see if OpenCore relieves us of this problem.

 

[slenderman]

@CaseySJ , or anyone else who might have an idea...

I've cloned my system a few times in the past week. Eventually at some point I start getting:
"couldn't allocate runtime area". I haven't been able to nail to cause down to anything specific at all. It just happens out of the blue, on almost every drive I have so far.

As an example I spent all yesterday trying to fix my 10.13 drive that was set up wrong. (Clover was injecting everything before following a few suggestions from Casey...) I went through each step and documented everything one change at a time. I moved everything to my L/E, rebuilt/repaired kexts, set the config to detect... It worked. I rebooted the drive several times, booted fine every time. Even ran Logic off of it for about 3 hours...

After that I figured I'd try and methodically go back and repair the Mojave disk I did last week where the same thing eventually happened, randomly giving me couldn't allocate runtime area, then wouldn't reboot after despite multiple attempts, unplugging the machine for a few hours etc...

I cloned the 10.13 disk. After that I removed the original 10.13 disk to eliminate any issues. I set up the EFI correctly removing the USB patches according to the guides, and upgraded 10.13 using the Mojave installer in my applications folder...Installer completed, brought me to my desktop, confirmed 10.14, everything seemed to be fine. I then copied the EFI and updated post install file. After reboot same thing... Couldn't allocate runtime area.

I decided to scrap that since it wasn't working.. Figured I'd boot back into the correctly set up 10.13 drive so I removed the Mojave drive completely, plugged only the 10.13 drive in, F12'd the bios and set the disk. Booted fine, things seemed ok... I cloned the 10.13 drive to a backup, (I did leave have both drives plugged in this time however only one had Clover installed and did not move the EFI until after the clone finished. I.e. I just did a straight ahead CCC backup...

I removed the original drive to be sure then booted from the clone. Boom... Couldn't allocate runtime area.

Starting to bang my head on a wall at this point so I remove the clone. I then Unplugged the machine for 15 seconds and wait for all lights to turn off... Then plugged only the source drive I had just booted and made the clone from. Boom... Couldn't allocate runtime area.

Clearly at this point there is something I'm not grasping about either Clover or NVRAM. The drive will be fie for multiple boots. As soon as I start removing a working drive to confirm is booting correctly I eventually wind up with the same error. Weirdly I never saw this error when my EFI folder was set up poorly... (Where Clover injected everything from the "other" folder.)

I'm completely lost at this point... Things seem to work for multiple boots, as soon as I start making backups then removing drives to avoid issues things go weird on me, when that should be the only way to ensure I'm not interfering with anything.

I'm Lost! Needless to say feeling a little punchy! Any ideas??? Is this one of the reasons why some people find themselves requiring the 'free2000' memory fix?

(FYI take your time to respond. Won't be available until late evening/tomorrow night some time... If a request for my EFI is needed no worries, just won't be able to upload until then...)

Just when I think it makes sense everything goes sideways so thank you again! Cheers....