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Guide: Dell XPS 8500

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My install of Sierra (not high) has been nothing but a mess. Constant freezing, BUT the system is still working in the background. I can access the attached hard drives through my MBP over the network. Been reading about S and HS freezes for days...nothing conclusive and a LOT of speculation. Considering going back to El Capitan to see if freezes persist. Or Linux...
 
Im sorry to hear that drd2aiki, my sierra is working fine, all fine for now except for the front usb and audio.. am just waiting to have more time on my sched to update this on High sierra...

I hope you can make yours work too!

Also, I hope others here who have their xps work can help you as well... Godbless.
 
I have everything working but Bluetooth on Sierra 12.6. I'm not all that concerned about Bluetooth.

Since this unit is not a CustoMac, I used createinstallmedia and Clover- the most recent version. In Drivers64UEFI, I made sure I used AptioMemoryFix - The other Aptio fixes have been deprecated with recent Clover releases. Also DataHubDxe and OSxFatBinaryDrv in addition to what gets installed as defaults. I opted for HFSplus.efi. In Boot, I found dart=0 absolutely necessary. Because of my Radeon HD 7770, I used Lilu in kexts, other plus Whatevergreen, and - absolutely necessary, radpg=15. FakeSMC and USBInjectAll also. Under Kernel and Kext Patches, for initial install I didn't get far without AppleIntelCPUPM and AppleRTC. I used SMBIOS iMac 13,2, since that's the only Mac that's ever used my Core i7-3770 3.4. On Devices I used only USB Inject and Fix Ownership. On Acpi, I kept 2 of the Drop Tables that Clover created when I installed it - CpuPM and CPUOIst. I deleted the 3rd. I kept NO Clover Fixes. I did enableC6 and Generate P and C States. The above config got me an Installer that would boot, and allowed me to install. Installing got me fully accelerated graphics, USB 2 on every port. I tried the Radeon DeInit approach w/o WhateverGreen for my Radeon - worked fine on Safe Boot but not on a normal boot. I reverted to Whatevergreen.

Since the 2 front ports are supposed to be USB 3.0, I repaired that: Acpi DSDT patches change EHC1 and 2 to EH01 and EH02. Also needed kexts FakePCIID and FakePCIID_XHCIMux in Kexts, Other. That gave me a USB 3 bus and full speed USB 3 on the 2 front ports.

I got audio working well using AppleALC in kexts/other - it needs Lilu, but I already had that. This also required change HDAS to HDEF in ACPI, DSDT patches. And Devices, Reset HDA, Inject 7.

For Ethernet I used the Mieze RTL8111v.2.2.2.kext. Google for the zipped release. Did not work in Clover/EFI/kexts/other - used a kext injector to put it into S/L/E.

That worked, but my Ethernet interface ended up being en(1). For Messages fix, I used methods posted elsewhere to change it to en(0).

My WiFi card is Dell part 1703. Google this: Kext for Atheros AR946x/AR9485/AR9565 wireless cards. It worked temporarily with the 3 kexts in Clover Kexts/Other. Works permanently in S/L/E. Haven't tried putting all my networking kexts into /Library/Extensions. Haven't had problems with it.

In all cases, I used the most recently released kexts.

Hope this is helpful. It's my first ever Hackintosh. Geekbench scores and Cinebench very good, and it runs nice and cool. The CPU cores run at 1.6 GHz most of the time. FakeSMC Hardware Monitor always shows motherboard proximity sensor 21 degrees C hotter than anything else - even at boot. So it gives warnings when there is an actual load.
 
my front USB doesn't work, @GHender3 , I hope you can elaborate more of this if you have time =)
Thanks so much!

"Since the 2 front ports are supposed to be USB 3.0, I repaired that: Acpi DSDT patches change EHC1 and 2 to EH01 and EH02. Also needed kexts FakePCIID and FakePCIID_XHCIMux in Kexts, Other. That gave me a USB 3 bus and full speed USB 3 on the 2 front ports."
 
my front USB doesn't work, @GHender3 , I hope you can elaborate more of this if you have time =)
Thanks so much!

"Since the 2 front ports are supposed to be USB 3.0, I repaired that: Acpi DSDT patches change EHC1 and 2 to EH01 and EH02. Also needed kexts FakePCIID and FakePCIID_XHCIMux in Kexts, Other. That gave me a USB 3 bus and full speed USB 3 on the 2 front ports."

Yes, I can, over time. How comfortable are you with using Clover Configurator to edit the config.plist in your EFI partition? Have you tried just using the kext named USBInjectall yet? That one got me USB 2 on all ports, I'm pretty sure. But no USB 3.
 
my front USB doesn't work, @GHender3 , I hope you can elaborate more of this if you have time =)
Thanks so much!

"Since the 2 front ports are supposed to be USB 3.0, I repaired that: Acpi DSDT patches change EHC1 and 2 to EH01 and EH02. Also needed kexts FakePCIID and FakePCIID_XHCIMux in Kexts, Other. That gave me a USB 3 bus and full speed USB 3 on the 2 front ports."

I should also have reiterated that I just used "Install Mac OS Sierra" and createinstallmedia in Terminal, plus Clover and Clover Configurator.
 
Thanks for the reply buddy.
Im at the office right now, but i'll check later if that kext will work. (my hackintosh is at home)

My USB 3.0 port at the back is working. its just that the front Bus (both 2.0 & 3.0) and the front audio doesnt work....
 
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Thanks for the reply buddy.
Im at the office right now, but i'll check later if that kext will work. (my hackintosh is at home)

My USB 3.0 port at the back is working. its just that the front Bus (both 2.0 & 3.0) and the front audio doesnt work....


I haven’t checked speed on my back USB 3 ports. Nor have I checked front audio. I’ll let you know what I find. On your back USB 3 - did you try a large file transfer to verify it was better than a USB 2 port? I checked my front ones with an external USB 3 drive and a 6 GB file, compared to USB 3 on my MacBook Pro.
 
Thanks for the reply buddy.
Im at the office right now, but i'll check later if that kext will work. (my hackintosh is at home)

My USB 3.0 port at the back is working. its just that the front Bus (both 2.0 & 3.0) and the front audio doesnt work....


I just did some testing on my system. Both USB 3 back ports work too, and a USB 3 device ends up on the USB 3 bus in System Information. The audio out on the top works fine - I do have to choose headphones as my output device. As mentioned above Bluetooth isn't working. I may try one thing with it.
 
Ive tried my front USB and only 1 is working out of 2, i doubt if its the bus (port) that has an issue, will try to clean it as well again... Front Audio for me is working...
Blue port at the back also works but I cant confirm if it does the 3.0 thing....

here is the screen shot even though a USB flash drive is not detected on it but appears on my disk utility.
Screen Shot 2018-07-05 at 11.26.27 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-07-05 at 11.30.15 PM.png
 
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