[Guide] Lenovo G50-80 El Capitan

[vanluu]

Specs:
Model: Lenovo G50-80
Bios version B0CN40WW
CPU: i5 5200u, HD 5500 Graphic
Ram: 4GB
Hard drive: Kingston Hyper X Savage 120 GB SSD + 500 GB Seagate HDD
Audio: Conexant CX20752
Ethernet: RTL8111


Please check your bios carefully, because you’ll need to modify your bios to increase dvmt, and there’s been a report here showing that higher bios might not be able work. If your laptop come with B0CN40WW bios please don’t ever upgrade. If it came with later bios, you probably might give it a try, and I take no responsibility of any damage you may encounter.



1 Increasing DVMT:
Follow these two guides here and here to increase dvmt to 96MB. You don’t need to install windows to do all the steps there. The default dvmt values is 32MB, so I all I did were downloading the bios files here B0CN75WW and here B0CN79WW in a windows machine, decompile the files with Inno Setup Unpacker then follow the instructions and use the tools provided in the posts to find out about dvmt values.
If you have the same bios version with me, and you don’t want to go through all those long steps, just download this EFI shell. After extracting it, you’ll find a boot folder, format your usb in Fat32, make a directory name EFI inside it, and copy the boot folder from downloaded EFI Shell. Then boot EFI from it and run this command:

setup_var 0x18c 0x03

If it says anything like error: can't set variable using EFI (error: 0x000000000000001a) then I think you may not able change dvmt and need to mask the assertion like this guide here (I have’t tried).

If output is like this, then congrats.




2 Bios: work OOB w/o any configurations.


3 Making USB intaller:


Follow this guide here to create a USB installer
http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capita...ublic-beta-installation-usb-using-clover.html
For the kexts and configuration file, please download mine here.


4 Install El Capitan: follow all the steps of to compel the installation process, after finishing it, install clover to your hard drive and copy all the file in the EFI folder below and replace EFI folder created by Clover Installer.


5 This laptop need to patch DSDT for battery status, and brightness control, and audio to work.
I follow this guide for DSDT patching [Guide] Patching LAPTOP DSDT/SSDTs
all the patches I applied were:

[bat] Lenovo G50-70
[igpu] Brightness Fix (Haswell)
[sys] Fix _WAK Arg0 v2
[sys] HPET Fix
[sys] “SMBUS” Fix
[sys] IRQ Fix
[sys] RTC Fix
[sys] OS Check Fix (Windows 8)
[sys] Fix PNOT/PPNT
[sys] Add IMEI

[usb] 7-series/8-series USB
[usb] USB3_PRW(0x6D) and Rename XHC to XHC1


For brightness, apply this patch.

into method label _Q12 replace_content
begin
// Brightness Down\n
    Notify (PS2K, 0x20)\n
end;
into method label _Q11 replace_content
begin
// Brightness Up\n
    Notify (PS2K, 0x10)\n
end;

6 Install all the kexts provided below with kext Utility. It is important that you install all of them before upgrading to beta 2, 3, and 4. Because if you don’t put FakeSMC in S/L/E before upgrading, you won’t be able to boot after upgrading to beta 2.


7 For wifi: I purchased this tiny TP Link WN725v2.


8 Enjoy your Hackintoshbook


Kexts I used:


ACPIBacklight.kext
ACPIBatteryManager.kext
AppleHDA.kext
ApplePS2SmartTouchPad.kext
FakeSMC.kext
RealtekRTL8111.kext


Special thanks to Rehabman for his great guides, AustereJ for HD 5500 to work, Kinutsk for his guide on setting DVMT in InsydeH20 bios, jcsnider for his guide to install Yosemite http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-laptop-guides/162391-guide-2015-x1-carbon-yosemite.html that I refer to a lot, EMlyDinEsh from osxlatitude for his great work that make elan possible in OS X.


Final words: Install OSX in Windows laptop is long process that give you enough headache of a massive work. If you succeed with my guide then congrats, if you can’t still do it. Read, read, read, then try, try, and try. It takes me a almost a week to read all the materials out there before deciding buying this laptop, another two weeks to try every possibly. However the reward is well worth. I upgraded to Beta 5 and everything works great so far.

Everything is included here, you can download and use them for faster installations


https://drive.google.com/folderview...hHU01SU244U1VMbUhlRjJfZEF2UEt3cnc&usp=sharing

 

[thor4x3]

Busy trying out your guide, thanks for all the effort you put in

do you have a link to the config file ?

 

[vanluu]

This is entire EFI folder.View attachment EFI.zip

 

[eidotevil]

Hello,

I have the exact same laptop but don't want to install el capitan, just Yosemite.

I'm trying to understand if perhaps there is any way to bypass the dvmt issue and configure clover to automatically use the gfx as it is. At this moment my issue is that when selecting to start the installer through clover, I just get a black screen. With -v -f I get a certain message that I will make a picture of and post here on a later time.

Please help as I don't want to lose my warranty but still want to install Yosemite to this laptop.

Thanks.

 

[RehabMan]

Hello,

I have the exact same laptop but don't want to install el capitan, just Yosemite.

10.11 is more stable with regard to the graphics drivers than 10.10.

I'm trying to understand if perhaps there is any way to bypass the dvmt issue and configure clover to automatically use the gfx as it is.

Not that we know of.

 

[eidotevil]

Thank you RehabMan, I was still wondering if all the steps can be done through a Windows system as at the moment I don't have any available Mac system.

Thanks again, I might take the time after all to look into El Capitan and see if I can install that instead of Yosemite on my laptop.

 

[eidotevil]

Ok, so I did a really stupid thing and updated my bios version to b0cn79ww, but even before that trying to change the DVMT value through the efi command thingy did not work and I got the error message that vanluu was mentioning.

How do I proceed? Why are there no older bios updates available since the g50-80 bios does give you the possibility to downgrade the bios version? If there are, where could I find one where I can change this DVMT value?

Thanks in advance. Also I would be interested in knowing more about the work around that Vanluu has posted a link for. I took a look at it but as I'm still kind of newbie I did not manage to figure out much of what it was saying (http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-...00-os-x-yosemite-10-10-3-a-5.html#post1024142).

Thanks again.

 

[RehabMan]

Ok, so I did a really stupid thing and updated my bios version to b0cn79ww, but even before that trying to change the DVMT value through the efi command thingy did not work and I got the error message that vanluu was mentioning.

How do I proceed? Why are there no older bios updates available since the g50-80 bios does give you the possibility to downgrade the bios version? If there are, where could I find one where I can change this DVMT value?

Thanks in advance. Also I would be interested in knowing more about the work around that Vanluu has posted a link for. I took a look at it but as I'm still kind of newbie I did not manage to figure out much of what it was saying (http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-...00-os-x-yosemite-10-10-3-a-5.html#post1024142).

Thanks again.

The patch you link reverses the logic of the assertion, disabling the assertion if your DVMT setting is wrong.

Although disabling the assertion can work, it can also lead to strange bugs that result from memory corruption.

It is best to purchase a laptop that has direct control over the DVMT-prealloc setting in BIOS.

 

[eidotevil]

Cheers RehabMan, thanks for all the useful information!

Now having done some more research (especially with the help of firewolf's guides), I have realized that the dvmt value for my gfx card is actually 128MB (see attachment), which is weird I guess as Vanluu is mentioning 32MB for the same laptop. Still trying to figure out if it is possible to make this work...


Please advice as purchasing another laptop is not even near an option unfortunately. Thanks.

 

[RehabMan]

...
Now having done some more research (especially with the help of firewolf's guides), I have realized that the dvmt value for my gfx card is actually 128MB (see attachment), which is weird I guess as Vanluu is mentioning 32MB for the same laptop. Still trying to figure out if it is possible to make this work...
View attachment 152907

Not enough research... Windows is not a reliable indicator of the DVMT-prealloc setting, especially Windows 10. Ignore it.