Mountain Lion GUIDE - 2012 Sony VAIO S Series (SVS)

[akuarezz]

just use new hard drive and change to legacy mod..the hard drive that coming with vaio s13 ivy bridge is GPT style and need UEFI mod, so that why osx can't boot after install on vaio s13 dude...or just press f11 when boot and it will load osx. But only OSX mountain lion work bcause it x64 version...

 

[albyx]

Any news/improvement?

 

[Edoir]

Jediarts or anyone else Could you give a screenshot of what you select and what you don't select in Unibeast?

 

[jediarts]

To Edor, regarding multi-beast, I'll going to give 10.8.x one last try before throwing in the towel. Hopefully if the latest update 10.8.2 (as of this writing) fixes the current list of issues. If it works, I'll update my post.

Right now, I just can't get OSX to boot without safe mode, the display doesn't work properly, lots of things dont work properly. The advance bios mod request that I posted didn't get picked up by the bios modder, so right now we're kinda out of tools to make this laptop work (I mean properly work with display QE/CI acceleration, sleep mode, sound, not-randomly crashing, etc).

 

[nightalon]

I am lucky enough to have mountain lion working on an Acer TimelineX 3830TG. It's a great lappy with 540M Optimus on an HD3000 iGPU, but it doesn't have the resolution of the SVS 13 or carbon fiber.

I'm wondering, has anyone tried the EFI strings for the Intel HD 4000 iGPU? The next step would be to disable Optimus via BIOS, but it looks like that would only be possible with a BIOS mod.

In my experience, InsydeH2O BIOSes kind of suck, since they implement a lot of stuff that is "non-standard".

 

[nightalon]

OK, I did some sleuthing.

Since I live in NYC's UWS, I have access to stores with models in stock in the following geographical order: J&R in FiDi, B&H in Hell's Kitchen, Samsung Experience Store at Columbus Circle (now CLOSED), and Best Buy at 61st and Broadway.

The biggest breakthrough came at J&R: the Windows 8 versions of the SVS 13 have an option in their BIOSes to disable discrete/switchable graphics, leaving only the Intel GPU accessible to the system. Since there are known GFX strings for the Intel HD4000, this should render your system bootable.

However, the text-based interface (still InsydeH2O) seemed to shockingly be at native resolution, implying that the system was booted in EFI/UEFI mode. I do not know if disabling EFI mode removes the BIOS option. I should have checked, but I didn't want to render the system unbootable.

I also learned that the Win8 version of the Samsung Chronos 7 (14", also Optimus with GeForce 640), does not have a disable discrete/switchable option.

This reminds me of when I was deciding between the Acer 3830TG and the Asus U36J (both good value lappies with Optimus at 13"). I ultimately chose the Acer because it had the iGPU only option in the BIOS, which allowed me to boot MacOS. It also had a nice Synaptics trackpad, and headers for a 3G modem slot on the mobo, unlike the Asus.

The Sony has potential. I will try to test again, but J&R is quite far for me...I really hope that BIOS option is not EFI-only. (MacOS only supports EFI 1.1 while Win8 only supports EFI 2.2, which is NOT backwards-compatible, sadly. Also, I think Apple's implementation is somewhat non-standard, but I am no expert.)

My overall conclusion is that it is definitely safest just to purchase a laptop with iGPU (HD4000) only, whether it is the SVS 13, an Ultrabook such as the Asus UX31A, or some other model. (I'm starting to think I would take a high-res panel, good mouse, and good keyboard over discrete graphics. I have a mobile workstation to do my discrete graphics for me.)

Also, the Win8 version of the SVS 13 has a new, lower-quality, black plastic base, and just like its predecessor, it has no SIM card slot, unlike its European sibling.

NighTalon, NYC

 

[nightalon]

If you want to go about BIOS-hacking, here's a good resource:

http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g/

It gets into the nitty gritty of InsydeH2O and how it's an EFI 2.0 implementation, etc., etc.

It seems that the BIOS files are pretty easy to dissect...and there's now a known Insyde recovery method.

One thing that's kind of interesting: if the integrated/Optimus switch can be handled by EFI, perhaps it could be triggered from MacOS? I know real Macs use gMux instead of Optimus to do their graphics switching, but we could maybe start to bypass gMux and do an Ironhide/Bumblebee type of implementation since Macs do have the driver support for both the iGPU and often times the Optimus GPU as well. Perhaps getting the hand-off of rendered images from the Nvidia GPU to the iGPU will be difficult, because unlike on Linux, the intel hd video drivers are probably NOT open-source.

 

[jediarts]

If you want to go about BIOS-hacking, here's a good resource: ... (truncated)

Thanks NightTalon, for all the info you posted.

All that Low Level BIOS/coding/etc stuff is way beyond my level of expertise. Fortunately, it seems like someone else got VAIO S 2012 models working on Mountain Lion.

Link to source: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/283613-sony-vaio-s-2012-ml-success-ivy-i5-hd-4000/

I'll update my posts once I have time to try it out on my VAIO.

 

[asronline]

Tried it, but still after installation trying to boot leads me to a black screen

 

[jediarts]

Tried it, but still after installation trying to boot leads me to a black screen

Use this string at chimera/chameleon boot:
"HD4000PlatformId=4", and optionally ("Graphics Mode"="1920x1080x32") just don't use "1366x768x32" unless you have that resolution display.

Also, you can try "HD4000PlatformId" range from 0,1,2,3,4, (Mine works on 4)

Finally, it looks like it might actually work "properly" this time.