Lenovo ThinkPad T480

[hifox]

Hi all,

i play with the thought of buying the all new T480 Lenovo ThinkPad. Since the notebook is pretty new on the market i don't suspect there is a full coverage of all its features under macOS. I have a few questions about the compatibility up to date:

1. Graphics: There is an option to buy the T480 with the GeForce MX150, but there could be difficulties during the installation with a second graphics card. Is this a huge issue? Because i would like to set it up as a dual boot installation with Windows for playing some old games and the MX150 would help a lot.

2. WWAN: I used to have a WWAN Module for LTE support due to the fact that i have it a my companies notebook. Any chance i can get this running under macOS? (Please, please, please...)

3. WLAN Card: The builtin wireless card seems to have problems for some people, for some not. Any recommendations to that? Otherwise i would give it a try before buying a new one.

3. Docking Station: Do the docking stations of Lenovo working with the already testes notebooks, like the T440? Would be super awesome too!

How is the general support coverage so far? i read in another thread there are still issues with the new sound card, any chance someone new if this is already working?

I hope you can give me some advice! Many thanks and a good night,

Hifox

 

[Sniki]

1. Graphics: There is an option to buy the T480 with the GeForce MX150, but there could be difficulties during the installation with a second graphics card. Is this a huge issue? Because i would like to set it up as a dual boot installation with Windows for playing some old games and the MX150 would help a lot.

There should be no problems except the fact that you will have to disable it via ACPI since macOS doesn't support switchable graphics like Optimus technology, that way via ACPI disabled, you can use it when you boot on Windows.

2. WWAN: I used to have a WWAN Module for LTE support due to the fact that i have it a my companies notebook. Any chance i can get this running under macOS? (Please, please, please...)

To be honest im not familiar with LTE and not sure that it is supported on macOS as Macbooks as far as im informed, they don't have LTE support.

3. WLAN Card: The builtin wireless card seems to have problems for some people, for some not. Any recommendations to that? Otherwise i would give it a try before buying a new one.

Not sure on which card are you refering to, but if it's intel you will have to replace (preferably the DW1830 "BCM94352z").

3. Docking Station: Do the docking stations of Lenovo working with the already testes notebooks, like the T440? Would be super awesome too!

We should be able to make the docking station to work but it will require some time to detect/fix/patch the extra USB & Video Output Ports.

How is the general support coverage so far? i read in another thread there are still issues with the new sound card, any chance someone new if this is already working?

Not sure about which Card are referring to, do you know what audio codec does that laptop have ?
Audio in most of the cases is fixable with a codec dump on linux and then patching it accordingly.

Also what type of CPU does the laptop have : 8th gen Kabylake R or Coffee Lake ?

 

[hifox]

There should be no problems except the fact that you will have to disable it via ACPI since macOS doesn't support switchable graphics like Optimus technology, that way via ACPI disabled, you can use it when you boot on Windows.

Thanks for the input! Good news on this side then!

To be honest im not familiar with LTE and not sure that it is supported on macOS as Macbooks as far as im informed, they don't have LTE support.

I thought so, on some boards i found solutions for other notebook brands that seem to work, i will investigate further into this for sure. Maybe with the USBInjectAll kext i can show it up in the OS itself.

Not sure on which card are you refering to, but if it's intel you will have to replace (preferably the DW1830 "BCM94352z").

Indeed, they builtin Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 - M.2 Card, so i guess i would need to replace it. But i'm fine with that, this is not a problem at all.

We should be able to make the docking station to work but it will require some time to detect/fix/patch the extra USB & Video Output Ports.

Alright, so a long way ahead. But maybe i can do it, not to good it writing kext stuff, time to dig up some hw related books ^^

Not sure about which Card are referring to, do you know what audio codec does that laptop have ?
Audio in most of the cases is fixable with a codec dump on linux and then patching it accordingly.

The T480 has the Realtek ALC3287 codec, and as far as i have seen there is no support yet. But i can check regarding the dumping of the codec on a bootable linux and try to patch it. Nice idea!

Also what type of CPU does the laptop have : 8th gen Kabylake R or Coffee Lake ?

It's the 8th gen Intel Core i7-8550U Prozessor (Kabylake R) if im informed correctly.

 

[Sniki]

Indeed, they builtin Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 - M.2 Card, so i guess i would need to replace it. But i'm fine with that, this is not a problem at all

That should be easy as long as this model has no whitelist implementation on Bios
"Even though it seems that newer model don't have whitelist"

Alright, so a long way ahead. But maybe i can do it, not to good it writing kext stuff, time to dig up some hw related books ^^

Shouldn't be that hard, we just have to detect each usb physical port on which port does get assigned and build the usb injector accordingly.

The T480 has the Realtek ALC3287 codec, and as far as i have seen there is no support yet. But i can check regarding the dumping of the codec on a bootable linux and try to patch it. Nice idea!

I can patch it / help on it.

It's the 8th gen Intel Core i7-8550U Prozessor (Kabylake R) if im informed correctly.

Good thing as Kabylake R is already supported

 

[damex]

Not sure on which card are you refering to, but if it's intel you will have to replace (preferably the DW1830 "BCM94352z").

is there a reason it has to be dw1830?
it is 3 antenna card and laptop has 2 antenna only for wifi card.
How about lenovo thinkpad 04X6020 card? (it has the same BCM94352z but only two antennas)

 

[Sniki]

is there a reason it has to be dw1830?
it is 3 antenna card and laptop has 2 antenna only for wifi card.
How about lenovo thinkpad 04X6020 card? (it has the same BCM94352z but only two antennas)

Reasons to consider DW1830:
It has bluetooth 4.1 as others do have 4.0, it is newer, yes it does have 3 antenna slots but you can use two just fine as a lot of people did.

Second option if you don't mind bluetooth, you can use DW1560 like i do.
2 antennas

Don't buy lenovo model as it's not a NGFF card (it has only 1 cut and won't fit on your laptop, NGFF cards do have two cut places on the connector.

 

[hifox]

Hi all,

Sorry i was offline for a few days, busy with work related stuff! Thank you so much Sniki for your feedback on all my questions!

I ordered now the DW1830 card and am currently waiting for its arrival. Regarding the docking station topic i'm looking forward to get it done, since it would be such a cool feature to have, so much quality improvement!

The fix for the new ACL should be easy, i looked into the old kext files and i think a have a good impression on how to do it, i will keep you posted on this for sure!

 

[m93ptiny]

I'm also interested in T480's variation T480s. Please updates us if you make any progress. Thanks

 

[markusberger83]

If there is any progress on the Realtek ALC3287 codec I highly appreciate any input. Also trying to get audio to work on a
Lenovo ThinkPad L380 Yoga that uses this codec.

 

[Sniki]

If there is any progress on the Realtek ALC3287 codec I highly appreciate any input. Also trying to get audio to work on a
Lenovo ThinkPad L380 Yoga that uses this codec.

It should be as easy as grabbing a codec dump on linux and posting it here