[Guide] Acer TravelMate X349-M-535L

[krandv]

The initial installation passed fairly simple, post installation requires actions.

Specs:
CPU: i5-6200U
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 520
RAM: 8GB
HDD: 256 SSD

I followed this guide:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-booting-the-os-x-installer-on-laptops-with-clover.148093/

Notes for that guide:
1) I used Option 1 to create installer USB
2) I used Clover 2.4k_r4003
3) DataHubDxe-64.efi is installed on my machine, I didn't check if it works w/o it
4) I didn't install EmuVariableUefi-64.efi
5) It is necessary to use SATA-100-series-unsupported.kext because I have 8086:9d03 SATA controller
6) I took config_HD520_530_540.plist from the repo
7) DVMT is not accessible in BIOS (I have v. 1.07), but it seems to be set correctly as I neither patched BIOS, nor used minStolenSize patch. QE/CI works. 1536 Mb of RAM is used by GPU.
8) I used createinstallmedia to create the installer USB
9) I disabled Secure Boot in BIOS
10) On my machine I already have EFI partition with the size of 1GB which has Linux installed in it. The rest of the space on SSD is unallocated. I decided to leave EFI partition with Linux and partition the rest of SSD. This was a tricky part, because if I create an additional GPT partition right next after EFI partition then neither Disk Utility, nor OS X installer can access it. So I've put around 110 Mb between EFI and the newer partition. I partitioned the drive in Linux using "parted" command. I've allocated ~128Gb as FAT32 for it as I want to have Windows in the rest of ~128 Gb. Then using Disk Utility in OS X installer I formatted the partition to HFS+ Journaled and installed Sierra into it.

After the installation finished I followed this guide:
A fix for the menu bar glitch: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/fix-skylake-menu-bar-glitch-fix.206400/
But instead of GFX0 -> IGPU renaming in this guide I used the patch from Clover Configurator.

Also I installed Clover Configurator to mount Clover partition, edit clover.plist easily and generate SMBIOS

After all of the above has been finished I found that OS X recognizes just 4 GB of RAM. I've added 2 RAM modules in Clover Configurator and set amount of slots to 4. This is important! If you leave amount of slots set to 2 then you won't have RAM.
My SMBIOS is set to iMac14,7, this is required for native PM.

In order to fix built-in audio I used AppleHDA patcher by Mirone. First I took a codec list dump in linux using a command

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#0

I found that my machine has ALC255 codec. Then I've launched AppleHDA patcher, dropped my working config.plist onto it and selected ALC255 in the Laptop's drop down. After that I've installed the generated aDummyHDA.kext and CodecCommander.kext in /S/L/E and updated the EFI's config.plist with the generated one.

Then I followed this guide:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-native-power-management-for-laptops.175801/
Hardware Inspector and AppleIntelInfo.kext show ratios from 0.6 to 2.7. I tried with SMBIOS MacBookPro13,2 but it's not supported with the script and PM didn't work, the ratio never felt below 1.3

To show the battery status I installed this kext https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-ACPI-Battery-Driver
My DSDT doesn't contain EmbeddedControl so I didn't patch DSDT, battery status seem to work out-of-the-box

Applied Brightness control using this guide (DSDT patching for IntelBacklight.kext section):
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-patching-dsdt-ssdt-for-laptop-backlight-control.152659/
Skip IGPU PM part of this guide as I turned on the appropriate patch in Clover

My machine misses Ethernet, so I had to use this guide (patch DSST section)
https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-Null-Ethernet
to solve the problem with logging in to AppStore

Replaced the built-in WiFi Intel card with BCM94352Z (bought at Aliexpress). It is necessary:

• to install the fcvo patch from post #1 of this topic http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/312759-fix-macos-sierra-dp1-bcm94532z-wifi Be careful, if you add the patch with Clover Configurator, check config.plist for MatchOS and MatchBuild keys, if they are added, remove them. EDIT: this item is not needed for 10.12.6 and may be for some other prior versions too.
• to use one of the methods described here https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-airport-pcie-half-mini-v2.104850/ I went for patching IO80211Family.kext (method 2 from the link above) EDIT: on 10.12.6 it is necessary to install FakePCIID.kext and FakePCIID_Broadcom_WiFi.kext from https://bitbucket.org/RehabMan/os-x-fake-pci-id/downloads to /S/L/E
• to make bluetooth working I installed BcrmPatchRAM2.kext and BcrmFirmwareRepo.kext from https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-BrcmPatchRAM

Works:
1) GPU
2) Bluetooth, successfully paired Bluetooth headset with it
3) Webcam
4) Built-in audio, volume keys
5) TouchPad (thanks to VoodooPS2Controller.kext). If it doesn't work out-of-the-box, like in my case, then press Fn+F7 to enable it . Or TrackPad thanks to osx smat touchpad driver (google it)
6) Battery status
7) Brightness control in System Preferences -> Display
8) Sleep
9) Wifi

Here are the list of problems I have now:
1) Brighness control shortcut keys
2) No SD Card reader
3) No Fingerprint
4) During boot OS X logo glitches for a couple of seconds, like get squeezed into lines over the screen. I can live with that
5) HDMI status - not checked yet.


I planned to have dualboot Windows 7 on this machine, but unfortunately its installer doesn't support laptop's hardware. Windows 10 installed fine.

 

[krandv]

ok, basically I'm done. I'm happy to live with the rest issues. At now I use the external wifi dongle. Yes, it doesn't get to sleep and Mac doesn't reboot/poweroff if it is absent, but ordering an appropriate wifi card will take ~month, so I'll leave it for later

 

[krandv]

Updated information about Power Management and possibility to dualboot Windows 7

 

[krandv]

4-6 hours depending on what you are doing. Well, I don't think I saw 6 hours, but I always use it hard, I assume it can live 6 hours basing on battery status during the short periods when I use it lightly.
4 hours is for extensive work: browsing, compiling, some FCPX work or watching movies.

 

[krandv]

Updated the description with information about installation of the supported WiFi adapter

 

[d1mon]

krandv, Thank you for your guide! I have same laptop model. So, after months, you still happy, mac os works steadily?

 

[krandv]

Yep. There is a bug in FCPX though. If I select "titles" view FCPX quits. Didn't try to figure out what's wrong

 

[jackharvest]

When you say "Skip IGPU PM part of this guide as I turned on the appropriate patch in Clover", what do you mean? What patch are you referring to? (I'm looking to disable my discrete graphics card)

 

[RehabMan]

When you say "Skip IGPU PM part of this guide as I turned on the appropriate patch in Clover", what do you mean? What patch are you referring to? (I'm looking to disable my discrete graphics card)

It is referring to the GFX0->IGPU rename.

No mention of discrete graphics in the OP's profile.
See guide:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-disabling-discrete-graphics-in-dual-gpu-laptops.163772/

 

[jackharvest]

It is referring to the GFX0->IGPU rename.

No mention of discrete graphics in the OP's profile.
See guide:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-disabling-discrete-graphics-in-dual-gpu-laptops.163772/

Ah. I thought so! Thanks for the link. Gotta follow this one closely...