[Guide] Asus Zenbook UX305FA on High Sierra using Clover UEFI

[pentium0]

System:
Asus Zenbook UX305FA - 8GB ram, Intel HD5300 graphics, Intel Core M 5Y10 CPU, 1920x1080 IPS Display
Intel wifi swapped for DW1560
ELAN trackpad model, but some UX305FA are ALPS I hear
10.13.3 with supplemental update

TL : DR
Stock unibeast high sierra USB installer seems to install fine onto this laptop.
Use rehabman's clover fork to install clover to the HDD, otherwise SSDT/DSDT patching usually doesn't work right.
Just follow gfoury's guide for El Capitan (https://github.com/gfoury/UX305FA-DSDT-Patch) to get 99% of the system working. See below for fixing the few things broken by high sierra.

Special note for Clover:
OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi and also OsxAptioFix2Drv-64.efi sometimes throw the "is printf working?" clover error and freeze on boot.
The other Aptio fix, AptioMemoryFix.efi, does not give this error for me.
If the "is printf working" error happens recommended to remove OsxAptioFix2Drv-64.efi and use AptioMemoryFix.efi instead. It is an option in the clover installer.

Working:
Sleep (via OS menu or shut lid, not via FN-F1 for some reason)
Audio (supposedly with HDMI out also, not tested yet. see below in 'install' section)
Proper CPU Scaling - 800mhz resting on battery, 1.29ghz resting on AC resting, scales up to 2ghz regardless
FN keys (via asusFN keys kext)
Display Backlight Control (entire range is too bright, but control works)
Battery Meter
Wifi
Trackpad prefpane (using 10.13.1 prefpane, voodooPS2, and ApplePS2SmartTouchPad - see attached ZIP and screenshot)
Bluetooth (even after sleep, via turning off "handoff to cloud" on general control panel settings)
Webcam

Not Working:
HiDPI (haven't looked into, not sure if it's a good option for 1080p FHD display)
Backlight range is too bright

Background:
Two very good guides are already available:

gfoury (https://github.com/gfoury/UX305FA-DSDT-Patch)
This is what I used to generate the SSDT's in efi/clover/acpi/patched, and the special DSDT hotpatches in the clover .config

jhawk (https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-asus-zenbook-ux305fa-using-clover-uefi.166818/)
This is where I got started and found some needed kexts.
​

But both of these guides were for El Capitan and some things were broken by Sierra and/or High Sierra:

• trackpad.prefpane (I used a method from my lenovo y50-70 to get it working)
• backlight (no IntelBacklight kext seems to be needed for high sierra)

Install:
Stock unibeast-made 10.13.3 booted into installer just fine. Be sure to use rehabman clover version. Just follow gfoury's guide for El Capitan to get 99% working on High Sierra.
The hotpatch config.plist DSDT method worked for me, as per gfoury's guide, as well as the ssdtPRGen.sh method to generate the SSDT.
BIOS settings per guides linked above.
Note, the config.plist made from gfoury DOES seem to be editable using clover configurator.
Audio was installed using the third gfoury guide option:

Hybrid VoodooHDA/AppleHDA
McShmoopy has built a hybrid VoodooHDA/AppleHDA configuration, which handles both internal and HDMI audio. See http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capita...hda-jack-sense-auto-switching-hdmi-audio.html for details.​

There are two different ZIPs attached here. The "everything" zip has everything, for reference, but the contents of /efi/clover/acpi/patched and the config.plist should not be used. It is straight forward to generate your own using the gfoury guide. The "special" zip just has what is not in the guides, and my clover .config as reference.

* The method I used to get trackpad working, with good prefpane, might be unneccessary/bad. I did not try latest voodooPS2 I believe because I assumed I had the ELAN trackpad hardware which doesn't work fully with voodooPS2.

Thanks:
Huge thanks to jhawk and gfoury for helping with their great guides. Also the "one person" (I don't believe it) that is rehabman.

I thought it was going to be impossible to get trackpad prefpane working correctly. Stupid ELAN trackpads. The combination of voodooPS2/ApplePS2SmartTouchPad/trackpad.prefpane attached here in the ZIP does work for me. As stolen from my lenovo y50-70 ELAN install.

 

[Steve1321]

Late reply, but I'm going to add a few notes here in case any other stragglers are still building on this machine.

• I'd recommend building the install media from scratch following Rehabman's guide. There's less fluff installed onto the USB, and the less going on, the easier it is to understand what's happening

• The vanilla trackpad prefpane works fine using the latest version of ApplePS2SmartTouchPad (v4.7 beta 5).
  • This seems to conflict with AsusNBFnKeys.kext, as I believe later versions of smarttouchpad made accommodations for Asus keyboards. My volume keys work fine, but my brightness keys don't. I haven't tested very heavily and it may just be my setup that's wrong.
• Gfoury's build scripts were not able to install AsusNBFnKeys or the SmartTouchPad kext. Not much of an issue considering they needed to be removed/replaced anyway.
  
• If following Gfoury's scripts, don't forget to uninstall IntelBacklight from /Library/Extensions.
  
• iMessage works fine provided you install correct SMBIOS information
• Many guides will tell you to install kexts onto Clover's EFI. On my machine at least, kexts will not execute unless they're installed in /Library/Extensions.
• ssdtPRGen.sh causes bootloops on my machine. I haven't troubleshooted this issue very much, because it seems like power management is working fine out of the box without it. (Rehabman's HWmonitor shows proper CPU scaling when idle and under stress. Maybe that's just cosmetic, but ignorance is bliss)
  • If you've tried to install the ssdt and experience bootlooping, you can revert back by launching the recovery partition, opening a terminal window (under utilities), mounting the EFI and removing the ssdt.aml.
• For audio, avoid VoodooHDA. Patching AppleHDA is just as easy, but requires you to start with a fresh, unmodified AppleHDA. You can search around for the details, but essentially just use a layout of 3, and install the kexts to /Library/Extensions and not Clover's EFI. I can provide more details on this if anyone would like.

If anyone needs assistance, feel free to reach out to me. This community has been very helpful and I'm more than willing to do my part as well.

 

[ngochtran0]

Thank you both for the guide and tips,

I'd like to also add that (at least on my machine) the issue of the backlight brightness range being too high can be solved by using AppleBacklightInjector by Rehabman (https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...rol-using-applebacklightinjector-kext.218222/).

 

[vindu]

anyone having any troubles getting gpu acceleration to work? seems when i enable the igpu the same as i did with el capitan(0x161e0001) it just boots to a black screen
edit. using platform id 0x16260006 + coredisplay patch worked

anyone else having trouble with the battery not detecting if it's charged and plugged in on startup?
edit. just seems to be a known problem with the acpi battery driver

 

[vindu]

anyone having trouble with high memory usage? i get approx 6gb of usage on bootup, have a handful of apps running and it'll dip into the 7.5gb+ mark which seems to result in me not being able to watch youtube videos

 

[RehabMan]

anyone having trouble with high memory usage? i get approx 6gb of usage on bootup, have a handful of apps running and it'll dip into the 7.5gb+ mark which seems to result in me not being able to watch youtube videos

No "Problem Reporting" files attached.
Read FAQ, "Problem Reporting" again. Carefully. Attach all requested files/output.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.164990/
Use the gen_debug.sh tool mentioned in the FAQ, that way it is less likely you'll omit something.

 

[vindu]

debug attached below thanks rehabman

still have the hurdle of getting proper pm going along with usbport injection as well

edit. pm solved with dummyx86platform.kext, just usb to go now
edit. usbport injection solved, still have the memory hog problems though
might resort to reinstalling the os from scratch to check it out

 

[vindu]

system seems to function okay, youtube playback on external display is a bit slow though playing back around 15fps
same config except using 0x161e0001 in el capitan and playback is flawless
memory also constantly goes down to the last 20-25mb then hits the swap file, el capitan generally had 2-3gb free for my general desktop use until i start using any of the adobe software

should note i've disabled MRT since yarascanservice was running at every boot and taking up a bunch of cpu and memory
seems xpcproxy would take up a bunch of cpu and memory at the same time

 

[RehabMan]

debug attached below thanks rehabman

still have the hurdle of getting proper pm going along with usbport injection as well

edit. pm solved with dummyx86platform.kext, just usb to go now
edit. usbport injection solved, still have the memory hog problems though
might resort to reinstalling the os from scratch to check it out

Why DummyHDA.kext and AppleALC.kext?
These two solutions are mutually exclusive.

 

[vindu]

^good eye, must have been left over from my previous kext collection and has been removed
oddly enough only AppleALC worked, DummyHDA didn't do anything on it's own

have now installed high sierra on an external drive twice, once on apfs and once on hfs, seems to have the same memory crunching properties
boot up is using over 4gb, open a few tabs and we're down to less than 500mb of memory free
appears to be high sierra being memory hungry?