[Guide] Lenovo ThinkPad T440S [OpenCore 0.6.7]

[Sniki]

Guys i am feeling much better today and yesterday the Acidanthera March Update has been released.

Just finished my EFI 0.6.7 update, will do some more cleanup and preparation for guide update.

A general summary of changes:
- OpenCore 0.6.7
- Acidanthera kexts of March Release
- Sinetek-rtsx v2.5 with added sleep and wake support and native macOS SD Card Icon on mounted volumes.
- VoodooSMBUS & VoodooRMI v1.3.2 with some General Touchpad improvements.
- AirportItlwm v1.2.0 Stable with tons of improvements, bug fixes & optimizations.
- Added Modern OpenCanopy (Big Sur icons and menus on OpenCore GUI)
- Added Audio Boot Chime.
- Adding EDID Patching guide to fix garbled screen with CSM disabled so you guys can finally enjoy Secure Boot.
- Some ACPI refinements
- Added ACPI read & write methods for YogaSMC support.
- Etc, more to be seen in the official changelog once it goes live.

 

[Sniki]

Guide is updated into Github, still working on the EDID patching section to add pictures for the process, however the guide is ready and fully usable.

Note: for those of you who use VodooPS2Controller instead of VoodooRMI (people with the original flat touchpad), give VoodooRMI one more try and see if previous issues have been resolved.

 

[CoBrA2168]

Guide is updated into Github, still working on the EDID patching section to add pictures for the process, however the guide is ready and fully usable.

Note: for those of you who use VodooPS2Controller instead of VoodooRMI (people with the original flat touchpad), give VoodooRMI one more try and see if previous issues have been resolved.

If I'm still on Clover/Mojave (this is getting very ancient, yes I know...) do you think I should try out the new VoodooRMI? Everything right now has been stable/solid so I haven't done any updates, other than updating the Card Reader kext and utilizing the Thinkpad Assistant application.

 

[Sniki]

You can give it a try if you want and see if it improves the touchpad experience, i believe you have the updated TrackPad with physical buttons and IMO for me it has been superior compared to VoodooPS2.

As for the rest of the stuff, i am not sure what are you exactly using right now from my OpenCore version.

I would drop ThinkPad Assistant as i believe it has been already deprecated as YogaSMC took over.
What you do is you add the SSDT-ECRW.aml, YogaSMC.kext and use the YogaSMC app and also install the YogaSMC Pref pane.
It has many great features and offers full GUI like the ThinkPad Assistant and it doesn't really need a patched keyboard with ACPI, it works natively on SMC level.

Hmm, if i get some time, i may actually update the Clover repository with the latest additions as it reached the cap of improvements on ACPI level i believe, there is no more improvements left to be done ACPI wise, most of the work left is perfecting Audio which is AppleALC stuff and maybe Docking Station Kernel Panics which may be fixed with a future YogaSMC update or end up not getting fixed if it's something within Apple drivers.

So to get the best out of it i would simply port all the ACPI folder (SSDTs), the kexts and the ACPI Patches and use Clover as you do right now, drop ThinkPad Assistant and replace with YogaSMC App & PrefPane.

 

[igorkulman]

Guys i am feeling much better today and yesterday the Acidanthera March Update has been released.

Just finished my EFI 0.6.7 update, will do some more cleanup and preparation for guide update.

A general summary of changes:
- OpenCore 0.6.7
- Acidanthera kexts of March Release
- Sinetek-rtsx v2.5 with added sleep and wake support and native macOS SD Card Icon on mounted volumes.
- VoodooSMBUS & VoodooRMI v1.3.2 with some General Touchpad improvements.
- AirportItlwm v1.2.0 Stable with tons of improvements, bug fixes & optimizations.
- Added Modern OpenCanopy (Big Sur icons and menus on OpenCore GUI)
- Added Audio Boot Chime.
- Adding EDID Patching guide to fix garbled screen with CSM disabled so you guys can finally enjoy Secure Boot.
- Some ACPI refinements
- Added ACPI read & write methods for YogaSMC support.
- Etc, more to be seen in the official changelog once it goes live.

Thanks for the big update! Just booted the new EFI and everything works fine so far. Even VoodoRMI seems to work OK, previously I had to use VoodooPS2Controller.

 

[Sniki]

Thanks for the big update! Just booted the new EFI and everything works fine so far. Even VoodoRMI seems to work OK, previously I had to use VoodooPS2Controller.

Thanks for confirming this, i was mostly curious about the new VoodooRMI so that's great to hear. Enjoy !

 

[CoBrA2168]

You can give it a try if you want and see if it improves the touchpad experience, i believe you have the updated TrackPad with physical buttons and IMO for me it has been superior compared to VoodooPS2.

As for the rest of the stuff, i am not sure what are you exactly using right now from my OpenCore version.

I would drop ThinkPad Assistant as i believe it has been already deprecated as YogaSMC took over.
What you do is you add the SSDT-ECRW.aml, YogaSMC.kext and use the YogaSMC app and also install the YogaSMC Pref pane.
It has many great features and offers full GUI like the ThinkPad Assistant and it doesn't really need a patched keyboard with ACPI, it works natively on SMC level.

Hmm, if i get some time, i may actually update the Clover repository with the latest additions as it reached the cap of improvements on ACPI level i believe, there is no more improvements left to be done ACPI wise, most of the work left is perfecting Audio which is AppleALC stuff and maybe Docking Station Kernel Panics which may be fixed with a future YogaSMC update or end up not getting fixed if it's something within Apple drivers.

So to get the best out of it i would simply port all the ACPI folder (SSDTs), the kexts and the ACPI Patches and use Clover as you do right now, drop ThinkPad Assistant and replace with YogaSMC App & PrefPane.

If you're doing it just for me, I wouldn't bother! I still do believe that OpenCore is the way forward. I'm just on Clover still because I haven't had the need/desire to upgrade past Mojave and the system is very stable. I might do what you did and snag one of those shorter m.2 drives so I can have the best of both worlds.

For now, I might give the new Voodoo driver a shot. I'm not sure if there's a ton of benefits of moving over to YogaSMC vs. VirtualSMC (with Thinkpad Assistant) until I finally bite the bullet and change to OpenCore.

 

[Sniki]

If you're doing it just for me, I wouldn't bother! I still do believe that OpenCore is the way forward. I'm just on Clover still because I haven't had the need/desire to upgrade past Mojave and the system is very stable. I might do what you did and snag one of those shorter m.2 drives so I can have the best of both worlds.

For now, I might give the new Voodoo driver a shot. I'm not sure if there's a ton of benefits of moving over to YogaSMC vs. VirtualSMC (with Thinkpad Assistant) until I finally bite the bullet and change to OpenCore.

Yes, there is nothing wrong with your approach, however even on Clover, I would use the YogaSMC instead.

Here are some more in depth informations regarding to that:
- YogaSMC works natively in ThinkPad SMC level, it has been ported from Linux
- No need for hacky bloated SSDTs to configure keys as the keyboard is completely natively supported.
- Real time FAN speed reading & control (auto, full speed, custom level or completely turn it off).
- You can set charge control to conserve battery life for each individual battery, where to charge and where to stop.
- MicMute Button LED light does sync at boot time compared to Thinkpad Assistant.
- Same GUI for buttons like ThinkPad Assistant.
- LED Control for Power, Standby, ThinkDot and all other available LEDs.
- All the other performance optimizations done in SMC level.

Also, I forgot to ask you, did you test WakeOnLAN ? or anyone else did ?
Technically it should work now just fine.

@CoBrA2168 if you plan to test it, make sure to remove the instant wake patch as it was waking from LAN previously.
Just add SSDT-IGBE it correctly disables the native LAN and uses the patched one. nothing else needed.

 

[fortony]

@Sniki

Firstly, thank you for all of the work you have put into this, its greatly appreciated.

Having updated from OpenCore 0.6.3 to 0.6.7 using the files from GitHub I ran into issues with the supplied BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext from the 0.6.7 files, enabling that in the OpenCore Config.plist for bluetooth functionality (DW1820A) causes my device to hang.

Using the BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext from the 0.6.3 files bluetooth is working as expected.

Thought I would post here in case anyone else is running into the same issues.

Thanks

 

[CoBrA2168]

Yes, there is nothing wrong with your approach, however even on Clover, I would use the YogaSMC instead.

Here are some more in depth informations regarding to that:
- YogaSMC works natively in ThinkPad SMC level, it has been ported from Linux
- No need for hacky bloated SSDTs to configure keys as the keyboard is completely natively supported.
- Real time FAN speed reading & control (auto, full speed, custom level or completely turn it off).
- You can set charge control to conserve battery life for each individual battery, where to charge and where to stop.
- MicMute Button LED light does sync at boot time compared to Thinkpad Assistant.
- Same GUI for buttons like ThinkPad Assistant.
- LED Control for Power, Standby, ThinkDot and all other available LEDs.
- All the other performance optimizations done in SMC level.

Also, I forgot to ask you, did you test WakeOnLAN ? or anyone else did ?
Technically it should work now just fine.

@CoBrA2168 if you plan to test it, make sure to remove the instant wake patch as it was waking from LAN previously.
Just add SSDT-IGBE it correctly disables the native LAN and uses the patched one. nothing else needed.

Wow I didn't realize YogaSMC provided that many benefits. Maybe I will migrate over. I'll just have to clean up all of my other SSDTs though in the process.

I never did further test WOL. It was not working correctly with this laptop when I first tested it. Maybe I'll revisit this and use the SSDT you provided.