[Guide] Lenovo ThinkPad T440S [OpenCore 0.6.7]

[Sniki]

I'll add a little cautionary tale to this bios mod encouragement ...

I swapped in a new i7 mainboard, so I read the bios, modded it, and wrote it back. It booted up OK, I hopped into Linux to redo the boot options and poke around to make sure everything worked. No problem. I buttoned it up, powered it on, and booted into OS X to a hang... the Intel graphics never came up.

Many hours later, I had an i7 T440s that could run Windows and Linux, but not OSX. I have an i5 laptop that can run them all (literally the same drive just moved back and forth between the two). I grabbed logs from both laptops booting up, poked at them, and was lost. I posted here (comment still awaiting moderation).

Then I figured it out.

"while I was in there" I used me_cleaner to disable the ME. The laptop wouldn't boot with the -S option (aggressive deletion), but booted up OK with the -s option (just flip a disable bit), so I thought nothing of it. While diffing the two logs, I noticed IMEI in the working one's log but not in the broken one. I associate IMEI with cellphones ... so I wondered if I just hadn't spotted a cell modem or something? Nope it's actually required for functioning Intel graphics on OSX. The me in me_cleaner is the ME in IMEI. So I undid the bit flip, and smacked myself for wasting an afternoon on silliness.

Having screwed around with bios modding, I'd recommend the whitelist removal and forget about the advanced menu (nothing too useful in there IMO), and definitely don't touch me_cleaner

I never touch anything else but the the whitelist removal, whenever i needed to tweak, i always told the guy who did on the specific forums to (ONLY REMOVE WHITELIST PLEASE!!) i don't want advanced menu and i don't need it and don't add it into my bios mod.

Not because it removes something, that has never been an issue on my previous mods (L440 era) but that just opens you a lot of options to mess up your system, this is a laptop, it's not a spaceship or Drag Racing car to tweak things up to that extend where you don't even know what was the default value and what is the optimal one.

Yes, without imei you have no acceleration and that is only the visible thing on the surface, you have no idea what other mess happens under the hood.

Good thing you figured out and solved the problem.

 

[dnsound]

Hey @Sniki , care to share your t440p OC EFI folder? I'm working on it since past sunday, built OC 0.5.8 from scratch using the vanilla laptop guide, but i'm still not able to boot my osx installation . I wanted to compare my build with yours to see what I'm doing wrong.

 

[CoBrA2168]

@Sniki any luck updating the KBD SSDT so it can still support keyboard backlight? I’m eager to try out this new app. Thanks as always!

 

[Sniki]

@Sniki any luck updating the KBD SSDT so it can still support keyboard backlight? I’m eager to try out this new app. Thanks as always!

System freeze after wake from sleep on macOS Catalina was driving me crazy and took a substantial amount of time from me, finally the insanely nonsense DW1820A card that can cause a wagon of non-logical issues turned out to be the issue.

I did update the SSDT-KBD, will do one more optimization and cleanup and upload it.
Will check the audio now and attempt to fix the wake from sleep issues and we should be good to go.

 

[Sniki]

Update: I couldn't reproduce any audio problem so far, so who was having them, i would like to explain it again on how to reproduce it with the OpenCore EFI provided.

Hint: i could very well be a not correctly cleaned up audio setup and bloated NVRAM or EC.

Update 2:
- We fixed the issue where LED light will go off after wake from sleep even if microphone is still muted
- Fixed LED Breathing light after wake from sleep with the same method as above where we don't need to Patch WAK anymore, so no need for the ACPI rename _WAK to ZWAK.

I love the progress we got so far.

Next to work on:
- Add Battery Cycle Count
- Add Dock Audio Support to MacPeet Manual mode patch that we use
- Fix VoodooPS2 issues on latest versions

 

[raulmazda]

System freeze after wake from sleep on macOS Catalina was driving me crazy and took a substantial amount of time from me, finally the insanely nonsense DW1820A card that can cause a wagon of non-logical issues turned out to be the issue.

Ah, you're seeing it too?! I thought it might be something specific to my card :/

Does disabling aspm cure it for you? Can you get pci-aspm-default=0 to apply to the BRCM device in OpenCore?

 

[Sniki]

Ah, you're seeing it too?! I thought it might be something specific to my card :/

Yes, those cards are cancer in macOS, one update may introduce a stupid issue which you can never know where it is coming from and will waste you hours of trying to fix it and end up being the card in the end.

Does disabling aspm cure it for you? Can you get pci-aspm-default=0 to apply to the BRCM device in OpenCore?

In OpenCore it doesn't seem to be working (can't disable it via DeviceProperties).
The moment i found out, i replaced the WIFI Card with the BCM94360CS2 Apple Card and got rid of like 4+ kexts as well.

I just had the card installed when i was testing some stuff on Linux, since it's on macOS now i will keep that card.
Works well on Windows too, Linux as well but on Windows and Linux it requires to install drivers manually and do the configuration part with LAN as you have no connection on the first setup screen.

About Battery Cycle Count, it seems visible on about this mac, it's tricky to get it work when we have two batteries working as one until Acidanthera splits the registers and make the change on VirtualSMC so it reads them as one.

 

[sacco]

can you tell more about setting BCM94360CS2 in the windows? I could not connect

 

[Sniki]

can you tell more about setting BCM94360CS2 in the windows? I could not connect

Some cards won't list Wifi Networks unfortunately, i have seen and have a card like that, but one that i ordered on AliExpress (BCM94360CS2) works on all OS, except that i have to install it after setting windows as it doesn't work and come installed OOB like Intel cards do, same applies to Linux

No known fix for that.

 

[Sniki]

Guys Acidanthera Updates are usually 1-5th of each month.

So i can assume that they will release their updates tomorrow, so will include the entire EFI 0.5.9 tomorrow if all goes well by plan and these are the updates scheduled for June which will come in use into the guide (removed the ones that have nothing to do with the T440S):

• OpenCore 0.5.9
• AppleALC 1.5.0
• VirtualSMC 1.1.4
• IntelMausi 1.0.3
• WhateverGreen 1.4.0
• Lilu 1.4.5
• VodooInput 1.0.6
• VoodooPS2 2.1.5

Fixes done by T440s side (non Acidanthera):

• FixedHPET and provided SSDT-IRQ (IRQ fixes) - removed the dirty workaround we used so far by blocking/delaying AppleHPET to load.
• New keyboard map with Fn buttons to work with their native functions as they did on Windows and the macOS replacement for the ones available, also FN+Spacebar HUD indicator included, all these require latest ThinkPad Assistant application to be used
• Added Method _TTS (transition to state) to save the state of Mic Mute LED F4 key even after wake from sleep.
• Also removed _WAK to ZWAK ACPI rename for LED Blink fix and now the fix is done with Method _TTS which is available on the updated SSDT-LED
• Build Sinetek-rtsx of Cholonam from source which seems to work well on macOS Catalina.
• Custom VoodooPS2 (previous version) and combined with latest VoodooInput optimizations until we have a solution for latest VoodooPS2 which broke TrackPoint and Physical Buttons.
• Corrected HP15 (TouchScreen/EMV Smart Card Reader) USB Port Type from 0 (USB2) to 2 (Internal) into USBPorts.kext

This is the changelog and schedule for Tomorrow (Monday or eventually Tuesday) if a new problem raises.
Will update this in case i forgot to list something or add something newer.