[SUCCESS][Guide?]OC HP Pavillion ce-0501na i5-8250U UHD620 DW1560

[littlegreen]

Hey guys!

I've been struggling with migrating to OpenCore for a while. Finally got some help with the battery SSDT and managed to get BigSur working properly....ish. I want to share my experience. This is a guide of a sorts, but I will leave it to the forum mods to decide whether to move it into the guides section, as I will be describing the process, but don't really understand some things.

There's loads of info, so I'll be putting lots of items in spoilers brackets.

Model: HP Pavilion ce-0501na 14"
CPU: Intel Core i5-8250U
Graphics: Intel UHD 620
Display: 14" IPS display 1920x1080px. @ 60Hz.
Ram: 8GB DDR4 @ 2666MHz. (Single channel)
SSD1: 256GB m.2 SATA III SSD - HyniX (Big Sur)
SSD2: 256GB 2.5” SATA III SSD - Samsuns 850 EVO (Catalina)
Audio: ALC295
Ethernet: RTL8111
Install macOS version: 10.15.5 + 11.0 (beta 9)
WiFi: DW1560 - Broadcom WiFi a/b/n/ac + Bluetooth 4.0+LE



Credits:
Apple - for creating macOS
Rehabman - for his tireless work over the years which has enabled all of us to do these great things with our machines.
acidanthera team - for their continuous efforts with everything there is - bootloaders, kexts, etc.
Tonymacx86 - a great webpage full of knowledge and great people that are always ready to help!
Headkaze over at InsanelyMac for his Bluetooth patches and general contributions - great work!
@Feartech here on the forum - thanks dude! That last bluetooth thing was killing me!
@moh.96 here on the forum - for the battery SSDT - thanks dude! Couldn't have installed this without you! Also @BlvckBytes - for maintaining the thread that ultimately lead me there.

First and foremost, here's a little something about the laptop I am describing:

Laptop review:

Spoiler: Laptop review

I (not so anymore)recently acquired a 14” HP Pavillion laptop, which I successfully, albeit dirty, turned into a MacBook running Mojave. I struggled with the wifi for quite a while, thinking I’ll find a way to get the DW1820a running and so I ultimately left the project at a somewhat uncompleted state. However, only recently the DW1560 cards got discounted and I bought one for £32 which is a bargain, and decided to try again - this time with Catalina 10.15.2 (Now 10.15.5) - and now Big Sur.

Thoughts about the ce0501na:
This laptop is a very heavily budget-oriented machine. Given the price point at which I bought it nearly two years ago, I would say that the price of £449 is not only reasonable, but very practical and realistic as well. The computer has decent amount of horsepower to drive my day-to-day tasks, which basically comes down to a browser, a mail client, Word, Excel and some very lightweight tasks in Google Sketchup and DWG Viewer. The CAD viewport doesn’t move the same way it does on my desktop, but for its money, and, considering what’s inside, it is actually not bad at all. Viewing CAD files is definitely no issue at all.

The chassis has quite a bit of give and flex when pressured around the touchpad, but in normal typing conditions the keyboard barely budges. The keys are fairly steady, with a very nice long travel for a laptop these days and for me personally - a true treat in the price range. The unit is equipped with a 14” FullHD IPS display, which is nice and bright, though not sure how colour accurate as I haven’t even needed it for anything even remotely accurate. In my opinion, at this price point it does not matter much anyway. Again - budget.

In macOS, the CPU sustains a 2.3GHz boost clock on all cores in Cinebench R20 and doesn’t go hotter than 71°C, which for me is perfectly acceptable, as I never felt anything burning underneath my hands. I have seen some software-based overclocking solutions for this particular CPU online, but have never thought of implementing them on my machine, as I don’t really need any extra juice for what I am doing. The lack of fingerprint sensor can be seen by some as a setback, especially given they are becoming ever so inexpensive, but I see it as a major bonus - there’s no struggle to get it working, and it is not just sitting idly there, which helps the aesthetics of the machine somewhat.

Sound is a bit dim - and under Catalina it sounds noticeably quieter for some reason. On the plus side - it sounds more balanced. My best guess is, under Windows B&O have done something weird with the audio drivers. It’s not distorted in any way though - and fits right in the budget as a category. I don't actually listen to music at all, so I don't care. Also, OpenCore offers audio boost now, so you can go around that easily if you wish.

Battery life is unexpectedly shorter under macOS, but it still gives me at least 3-4 good hours of work at maximum brightness with a few applications open, mixed with SideCar use - I’ve no clue if that impacts it at all, though. It is definitely not the longest battery out there, but I suppose it all comes back to the budget - so I am not even expecting more.

The camera is frankly terrible to say the least. It's only point to talk of is that it works out of the box.... although I'd rather it didn't - it really is that bad.

In conclusion - this can be bought used for around £250 used, which is a very nice price point for some lightweight-tasked computer. I guess the best word to describe it is “Decent” - because every feature, aside from the camera is just that. Decent.

Specs:

Spoiler: Specs

Model: HP Pavilion ce-0501na 14"
CPU: Intel Core i5-8250U
Graphics: Intel UHD 620
Display: 14" IPS display 1920x1080px. @ 60Hz.
Ram: 8GB DDR4 @ 2666MHz. (Single channel)
SSD1: 256GB m.2 SATA III SSD - HyniX (Big Sur)
SSD2: 256GB 2.5” SATA III SSD - Samsuns 850 EVO (Catalina)
Audio: ALC295
Ethernet: RTL8111
Install macOS version: 10.15.5 + 11.0 (beta 9)
WiFi: DW1560 - Broadcom WiFi a/b/n/ac + Bluetooth 4.0+LE

About the Wi-Fi:

Spoiler: About the Wifi

When installing DW1560, please note - you will need one additional antenna, as the laptop ships with only one. There are little routes left for it - and a place to install on the right hand side of the screen - I guess HP just did not bother because of the silly chip it comes with. Your milage may vary, though - maybe you can get one that has the two antennae installed already. Mine only came with one, so I had to spend the stupendous amount of £2,99 on eBay to get two brand new ones and route them around the screen.

What works:

Spoiler: What works - Everything

Everything! *
Here is a list of what works and has been tested:
Keyboard
Touchpad
Ethernet
Intel UHD 620 QE/CI
CPU PM and SpeedStep - admittedly worse than under Windows though.
Screen Brightness - I need to somehow adjust the curve, as the lowest point turns the screen off entirely.
WiFi + Bluetooth*
AirDrop, Continuity, Handoff
Sleep/Wake
Battery - with less than 5% drainage overnight when asleep.
Audio
Camera
iMessage + Facetime
Sidecar
FN Keys**

Spoiler: Not everything works

*Everything works. No, seriously - everything! There is obviously a few caveats but none of them is a show-stopper in the MacOS experience. Here they are:

—WiFi MUST be replaced. You cannot run away from this one - be prepared to drop £50 for a wifi card and that is that. I’ve used the DW1560 and have obviously included all the settings and kexts in my attached EFI folder - so if you are installing macOS on this laptop, save yourself a headache and buy the DW1560.
— Not every time, but sometimes I cannot wake the computer from a keyboard, touchpad or a mouse. I need to press the power button and it lights up immediately. Not a real bother.
—**Function keys on the top row are enabled via Karabiner-Elements. It takes 2-3 minutes to setup and it doesn’t get much more straight-forward than that!
—The camera’s video quality is horrific to say the least. It works OOB, but I’d rather it didn’t at all!
— I have not actually tested the card reader, as I do not own any SD cards.

Installation:

1. Follow this guide to create your USB Installer:

How to Create a macOS Big Sur Installation USB

Here's a quick guide to create a macOS 11.0 Big Sur Public Beta Installation USB. Please note, this guide is not universal, and may not work for all systems. STEP 1: Download macOS Big Sur Public Beta 1. Enroll in the Free Apple Beta Software Program 2. Download Public Beta Access Utility 3...

www.tonymacx86.com

2. OpenCore install onto your USB Flash drive (I am assuming you know how to do the following steps from other guides)
2.1 Download the attached EFI.zip and install it to your EFI partition on your USB drive.
2.2 Reboot and boot from your flash drive and proceed to install Big Sur as per normal.
2.3 Once installation is finished, mount your SSD EFI folder and copy the EFI folder over to that. Done!

3. Generate SMBIOS, serial, etc.

a) config.plist>Platform Info> Generic
- MLB
- Serial Number
- SystemUUID
b) config.plist>Platform Info> SMBIOS
- BoardSerialNumber
- ChassisSerialNumber
- SystemSerialNumber
- SystemUUID

I have removed these from the config.plist in the attached EFI folder because these are the ones I am using with my Apple account.
You will need to generate these using GenSMBIOS or another tool to generate these.

Explanation regarding getting Wi-Fi features of DW1560 working

I had to spend some time reading regarding how to make this work with AirDrop, continuity, handoff, instant hotspot, etc, etc.
You will most probably find this release of AirPortBrcmFixup which goes on to explain how and why the kexts and injectors have changed. I found that somewhat ambiguous, so I thought I'd offer a dummed-down explanation the way I explained it to myself.

Here is a quote of how this is explained on GitHub:

Spoiler: DW1560 on BigSur:

Please pay attention
In 11.0 (Big Sur) class AirPortBrcm4360 has been completely removed. Using of injector kext with such class name and matched vendor-id:device-id blocks loading of original airport kext. To address this issue and keep compatibility with older systems injectors for AirPortBrcm4360 and AirPortBrcmNIC were removed from main Info.plist file. Instead, the two new kext injectors are deployed in PlugIns folder: AirPortBrcm4360_Injector.kext and AirPortBrcmNIC_Injector.kext. You have to block (or remove) AirPortBrcm4360_Injector.kext in BigSur. In OpenCore you can specify MaxKernel 19.9.9 for AirPortBrcm4360_Injector.kext. In Clover you can have two different AirportBrcmFixup.kext, but in kext folder with version name 11.0 AirportBrcmFixup.kext must not contain AirPortBrcm4360_Injector.kext. You don't need these injectors at all if your vendor-id:device-id is natively supported by AirPortBrcmNIC or AirPortBrcm4360 (your device-id is included into Info.plist in these kexts).

Here is my dummed-down explanation:

Spoiler: How can I haz wi-fi on BigSur with DW1560

Apple are evidently dropping support for certain chips. Or not, I don't really understand it. In any case, our beloved DW1560 chip does not work the way it used to and needs an injector kext.

This injector is actually included inside AirPortBrcmFixup.kext, and is called a plugin.
The injector, however, needs to be declared separately in our config.plist as if it were a separate kext - and you also need to declare it before the main kext for it to work.
Here is how I have done it and I have everything to do with wi-fi working:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>Comment</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>MaxKernel</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>PlistPath</key>
        <string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
        <key>Enabled</key>
        <true/>
        <key>MinKernel</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>ExecutablePath</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>Arch</key>
        <string>Any</string>
        <key>BundlePath</key>
        <string>AirportBrcmFixup.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortBrcmNIC_Injector.kext</string>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>Comment</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>MaxKernel</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>PlistPath</key>
        <string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
        <key>Enabled</key>
        <true/>
        <key>MinKernel</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>ExecutablePath</key>
        <string>Contents/MacOS/AirportBrcmFixup</string>
        <key>Arch</key>
        <string>Any</string>
        <key>BundlePath</key>
        <string>AirportBrcmFixup.kext</string>
    </dict>
</array>
</plist>

In ProperTree this looks like this:

That's it. Wi-fi works for me now.

I may be addition some additional explanations of how I arrived where upon request if I know how to explain it.

happy hacking!
littlegreen

 

[littlegreen]

Reserved

 

[sluisga]

Hi I managed to break my hackintosh by attempting this and trying to install Big Sur on my 14" HP Pavilion.
I used the OpenCore Config.plist Sanity checker website to check my config file was suitable, which it said it was but no luck.

The BigSur installer worked. WiFi working, during the setup on OpenCore, Rebooted twice during install.
When selecting the installed macOS option and showing the apple logo briefly, it would fail and restart the laptop.
Tried various things using different OpenCore versions but no luck.
Will try go back to Mojave on Clover once I figure out how to do this using my working Windows boot.

 

[sluisga]

WOOP got it working!
The changes I made are the following:

I was using OpenCore 0.6.1 instead of 0.6.3 which is the version that supports BigSur.

Also just as important, I was running the OpenCore Bootloader from a USB drive. BigSur requires the Bootloaders to run from PreBoot after installation (the laptop's EFI folder on the computer you're running from I believe).
I managed to get into the PreBoot within WindowsOS using an online guide to access the PreBoot EFI folder - I can provide links or commands if required..
then everything worked! I lost my access to my iMessage and FaceTime, think this is because I changed the spec of the laptop from MacBookPro 15,2 to 14,1 but kept the serial etc. this would likely have confused the iCloud service and blocked it I imagine.

 

[one.nine]

WOOP got it working!
The changes I made are the following:

I was using OpenCore 0.6.1 instead of 0.6.3 which is the version that supports BigSur.

Also just as important, I was running the OpenCore Bootloader from a USB drive. BigSur requires the Bootloaders to run from PreBoot after installation (the laptop's EFI folder on the computer you're running from I believe).
I managed to get into the PreBoot within WindowsOS using an online guide to access the PreBoot EFI folder - I can provide links or commands if required..
then everything worked! I lost my access to my iMessage and FaceTime, think this is because I changed the spec of the laptop from MacBookPro 15,2 to 14,1 but kept the serial etc. this would likely have confused the iCloud service and blocked it I imagine.

This post saved me days of misery - thank you!

 

[tuandunguit]

What OpenCore version I should use? 0.6.1 or 0.6.3?
Seems attached EFI is using 0.6.1, but is it support BigSur?
I created USB for BigSur 11.0.1 and use attached EFI but unable to boot.

 

[littlegreen]

Unfortunately, my laptop got damaged and has been sent away for repairs, so I have not been keeping up-to-date. In any case, you should generally use the latest version of the bootloader for best compatibility, but also read the changelogs just in case.
Bear in mind the OP was written while BigSur was still in beta.

@tuandunguit - I can see you are running an i5-8265U, which is close enough of a CPU, however, the system is otherwise different, most likely.

Battery SSDT, as an example, has been specifically written for my laptop and is not generic. Therefore should not be used. Delete it from your ACPI folder and config.plist and try again. Boot with -v and see what errors out specifically?

Boot your system up in verbose mode and post the screen here - maybe we can troubleshoot it.

 

[sluisga]

What OpenCore version I should use? 0.6.1 or 0.6.3?
Seems attached EFI is using 0.6.1, but is it support BigSur?
I created USB for BigSur 11.0.1 and use attached EFI but unable to boot.

The final version of Big Sur requires Open Core 0.6.3 and it MUST be installed on the PreBoot of the computer you are using, NOT a usb key with opencore on as it will fail. The installer will work but once finished installing, the actual macOS will not run.

 

[saitami7749]

Hi littlegreen,
I studied your attached EFI, but there some files make me confuse.
In folder ACPI, there were 6 files: SSDT-AWAC.aml, SSDT-BAT.aml, SSDT-EC-USBX-LAPTOP.aml, SSDT-PLUG-DRTNIA.aml, SSDT-PMC.aml, SSDT-PNLF-CFL.aml .
In 6 those files, there were 3 files: SSDT-PNLF-CFL.aml, SSDT-AWAC.aml, SSDT-PMC.aml. Those 3 files are use for Coffee Lake CPU, but i5 8250U is Kaby Lake R (follow intel specs & wiki).
Please help me make clear this point before I install om my lap.
Thanks a lot and look forward your reply.

 

[deeveedee]

I stumbled upon this guide when looking for something else, and thought I'd add a tip from my own experience...

I have found that the i5-8250U/UHD620 is rock-solid under load when framebuffer-stolenmem and framebuffer-fbmem are removed from config.plist DeviceProperties (to leave stolenmem and fbmem unconstrained). I use framebuffer (AAPL,ig-platform-id) <00001B59>. After my upgrade to Big Sur 11.6, I was experiencing com.apple.driver.AppleIntelKBLGraphics kernel panics when I ran remote desktop and/or firefox video streaming and/or TunnelBlick OpenVPN (not sure if the 11.6 upgrade was a coincidence). After trial and error, I resolved the problem by removing framebuffer-stolenmem and framebuffer-fbmem from DeviceProperties.

Additional notes: I don't have any control of pre-allocated DVMT in my BIOS config. I assumed that because I couldn't control/set DVMT that I needed framebuffer-stolenmem and framebuffer-fbmem. This assumption turned out to be untrue which suggests that my rig has plenty of pre-allocated DVMT (at least 64MB) to support the stolen and fbmem required by my chosen framebuffer.