[GUIDE] Catalina on HP EliteDesk 800 G4/G5 Mini - The Perfect MacMini8,1 Hackintosh - CLOVER & OC

[deeveedee]

Thank you for the suggestion, I confirm it works also on my system for the purpose of not corrupting the RTC.

Now I'm investigating the wake issue. It seems that I am able to correctly wake the system if there's no displays connected. After that, I connect the display and it's all OK.
If I wake the system with a display connected it freezes and the only way to recover is to power off manually.

Cool - next step with RTCMemoryFixup is to narrow the range, so you're only excluding the minimum. See here for suggested strategy to find the offending address or address range. The folks at Acidanthera seem to think that proper RTC patching may be important for sleep/wake, so we might as well eliminate that variable.

Good detective work to find that you can wake with display disconnected.

If you want to create a new thread for your 600 G3 Mini (separate from this g4/g5 mini) and post a link to your new thread here, we can continue the conversation and debugging there. Thanks!

 

[deeveedee]

I just applied the most recent Catalina 10.15.7 security update and Safari 14.0.2 update without any issues. During the update, my HackMini8,1 did have a few dramatic pauses and screens flickered, but I remained patient and all was well. Just be patient. As always, backup first - just in case.

Note: if you see lost RTC (clock) during the installer reboots, just acknowledge the warning and allow your HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini to recover gracefully. Your G4 mini will reboot and resume the macOS upgrade without issues. There does appear to be the need for RTCMemoryFixup.kext / custom rtcfx-exclude on this rig as noted here. The RTC issue does not occur during normal operation, so fixing this remains a low priority for me.

 

[vascorosso]

If you want to create a new thread for your 600 G3 Mini (separate from this g4/g5 mini) and post a link to your new thread here, we can continue the conversation and debugging there. Thanks!

Sure I will! It wasn't my intention to overload this thread, I'm sorry.
I'll edit this post with the link as soon as I make the new thread.

I just applied the most recent Catalina 10.15.7 security update and Safari 14.0.2 update without any issues.

I can confirm all OK also on my system, the update went fine in less than 10 minutes. I didn't observed any screen flickering or RTC corruption.

 

[deeveedee]

Sure I will! It wasn't my intention to overload this thread, I'm sorry.
I'll edit this post with the link as soon as I make the new thread.

No problem! You didn't overload this thread and you did the right thing. I think it would be easier to have a new thread, since it's clear that the 600 G3 Mini will be different from the 800 G4/G5 Mini. You did fine.

I can confirm all OK also on my system, the update went fine in less than 10 minutes. I didn't observed any screen flickering or RTC corruption.

Were you using RTCMemoryFixup.kext with rtcfx_exclude=00-FF?

 

[vascorosso]

Were you using RTCMemoryFixup.kext with rtcfx_exclude=00-FF?

I just checked and I was using the Clover FixRTC ACPI patch (which I forgot this night when I was switching back and forth between that and the RTCMemoryFixup kext for testing).

In your case, could it be that during one of the restarts RTCMemoryFixup.kext were not loaded, so the RTC corrupted in that moment?

 

[deeveedee]

I think that I have resolved the elevated temperature issue with my drives. My 800 G4 Mini has one mechanical SATA6 HD and two M.2 NVMe SSDs (one for macOS and one for Windows - my system defaults to boot macOS and I press F9 at boot if I want to run Windows). I had installed the macOS M.2 NVME SSD in the M.2 slot closest to the mechanical SATA6 HD (used for TimeMachine, full backups and general storage). In this configuration, my two most used drives were closest to each other. I swapped the two M.2 NVMe SSDs (creating separation between the HD and macOS NVMe SSD) and drive temps have dropped. Not surprisingly, the M.2 NVMe SSD closest to the SATA6 HD (installation made possible by this mod here) and the SATA6 HD can warm each other. After the M.2 swap, my SATA6 HD temp is lower by 5 deg C and my macOS M.2 NVMe SSD temp is lower by 3 deg C.

I will continue to monitor this, but I think this is the solution.

NOTE: I am running without NVMeFix.kext.

EDIT: I had a CLOVER Trim patch enabled in my config.plist (KernelandKextPatches > KextsToPatch). This patch is not necessary and I have disabled it. SSD TRIM is still enabled without this patch.

UPDATE: Ambient temp in my office is 26 deg C (a little warm). My drive temps are behaving nicely after swapping the M.2 SSDs. Idle temps at 10-11 deg C above ambient with the tiny EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini enclosure seems very good to me. The WDS500 is my macOS SSD and the ST2000 is my SATA6 HD.

 

[deeveedee]

I just checked and I was using the Clover FixRTC ACPI patch (which I forgot this night when I was switching back and forth between that and the RTCMemoryFixup kext for testing).

In your case, could it be that during one of the restarts RTCMemoryFixup.kext were not loaded, so the RTC corrupted in that moment?

My G4 Mini is not running with FixRTC or RTCMemoryFixup.kext. I rarely see the RTC corruption and I never see RTC corruption during normal operation, so it's a low priority for me. Based on what I have observed in this Catalina thread and the Big Sur thread, I'd say that HP has gradually made RTC improvements from G3 to G4 to G5. It doesn't appear that G5 has any RTC issues and doesn't require any RTC patches.

 

[deeveedee]

FYI: For those wondering why I haven't been active with OC/BS lately, see here.

 

[taskrov]

Good news for microphone users - User @v.osypets in another forum shared his AppleALC.kext v1.5.5 with me. He has fixed the microphone/audio input. It's not mine to share, but if you look at my HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini thread in the other forum, you'll find the shared kext near the end of the thread.

I'm testing now and microphone seems to be working. Hopefully this is submitted to Acidenthera. Also fixed is the "relocation error" that I observed here.

How did you get the ALC221 to work? I am on 11.1 with latest kexts and OC 0.6.5 (following ALC troubleshooting) but it still does show up in Audio devices. Using layout-id=11 (or 15).

 

[deeveedee]

How did you get the ALC221 to work? I am on 11.1 with latest kexts and OC 0.6.5 (following ALC troubleshooting) but it still does show up in Audio devices. Using layout-id=11 (or 15).

In this thread (for the HP EliteDesk 800 G4/G4 Mini), we're not using ALC221 (the G4/G5 Minis have Conexant CX20632). I did a quick search for "AppleALC.kext ALC221" and see others who have suggested using VoodooHDA.kext for that CODEC.