Fresh Catalina Install on NUC5i5RYH

[Tango2]

I've started out with Sierra on this hardware several years ago and made it all the way to 10.15.1 without any major problems. I was having some buggy issues, as well as not being able to successfully upgrade to 10.15.2, so I decided it was time for a clean install. I'm a hackintosh noob ;-)

I built my bootable USB Drive with all the required tools and software and set off. My configuration is as follows:

NUC5i5RYH
16GB RAM
1x SATA 250GB SSD
1x M4.SATA 120GB SSD

The install was pretty straightforward, however I did run into a couple problems. First, I was having problems getting the installer to run. I'd get to the clover boot loader on the USB Drive, but it kept hanging on the install phase, resulting in the "prohibited" sign. I tried a bunch of stuff with not much success, then reverted to rebuilding the USB boot drive & image. On second attempt, everything loaded just fine.

Got through the initial install, and ran MultiBeast per the instructions on the sticky. Kept running into a problem which turned out to be related to the read-only file system introduced in Catalina. The sticky doesn't include this in the steps, but there is a link in the troubleshooting section that covers it. Before running MultiBeast, you have to open a terminal and type:

sudo mount -uw /

You'll be prompted for your password, then it will return you to the command prompt. Now you can proceed with the MultiBeast steps and it should complete successfully.

Problem 1 (status: not fixed): For some reason, when running MultiBeast, the current included version of the clover boot loader is 4934, however Clover has released up to 5103. When I tried to install the latest version via Clover configurator, I get a warning that it is not compatible with the version of MacOS. I tried proceeding anyway, but I am unable to boot from the internal drive when doing so. It just hangs during boot. I reverted back to booting from the USB Drive, re-ran MultiBeast to get a booting system again.

Problem 2 (status: not fixed): My ethernet does not seem to be working reliably. Occasionally, web pages won't open even though in settings it shows a valid IP address and connection. System report show that I'm using the AppleIntelE1000e.kext version 3.3.6. I'm not sure if this is the right version for the NUC hardware.

Problem 3 (status: not fixed): My video also does not seem to be working optimally. I see artifacts occasionally, which makes me think I have the wrong video driver as well.

Problem 4 (status: deferred [link]): I have no audio input or output. No audio device is detected in my system report.

Problem 5 (status: not fixed): Bluetooth is not working, although it is detected via system report.

Although I'm trying to work through the above problems, I'm not sure the best way to go about doing so. I've tried installing some different kexts in hopes it would resolve the issues, but have not been successful. I still have access to my EFI Folder from my previous install in which all devices were working properly. I'll keep this thread open to document the progress for others to benefit from.

Any recommendations would be great.

 

[Tango2]

Attached is my original config.plist that was pulled from my previously working EFI partition. I'm hesitant to copy this over to the new EFI partition, as I'm not sure it was 100% right either. I'm hoping to understand what I'm doing better than I have in the past to optimize this install.

 

[Tango2]

Problem 2: Ethernet issues seem to arise after periods of inactivity/sleep. Reboot seems to resolve the problems temporarily. (status: not fixed)

Problem 3: When my video does not work, System Report shows "no kext loaded", but when it does work, it does not show which kext it is using. On my most recent boot from my system drive EFI, video is working properly. (status: not fixed)

Problem 4: I realized my USB soundbar that I had been previously using was disconnected. Upon reconnecting it, my audio worked. The built-in audio on the NUC may have never worked for me previously, and while I'd like to get the on-board audio working, I'll defer working this until later. (status: deferred)

Thanks to some other tips, I'm attempting to experiment with different kexts to find what works. What I've found so far is that the kexts I place in the EFI/Clover/Kexts folder seem to have no impact on the kexts loaded (i.e. for Ethernet) because it is loading a kext from the /Library/Extensions folder instead (AppleIntelE1000e.kext). I may experiment with putting the kexts I want to try into the L/E folder to see if the results are different.

I still have a lot to learn... I'm not doing anything with the config.plist files at this point, don't understand what the DSDT files do and probably several other things, but I'm going to keep working through it one thing at a time.