Success - HP Spectre X360

[jaymonkey]

was curious if you ever worked out your issues with the touchscreen in Mojave. I'm finally doing the upgrade (on an external SSD to start, with plans to do it on the main device if it goes well) and there doesn't seem to be a lot of Mojave-specific info on the touchscreen situation.

@ShortFormErnie,

I got the touchscreen and pen working quite a while ago which i detailed in this post :-

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...n-and-pen-working-in-osx.246052/#post-1694603

The latest version of VoodooIC2 works with Mojave ... the pen works great but the new gesture engine recently introduced into the project has a small bug in it which means that you have to use three fingers to scroll not two ... Alex the developer is aware of the problem and it should be fixed in the next release.

Also, I realize this thread is a few months old, but if it helps for folks just getting into this: AppleALC works, though I'd recommend mapping to layout 1 rather than layout 3, as I get scratchiness from the speakers on that layout.

I've been using Lilu with the plugins ... WhatEverGreen, AppleALC, AirportBrcmFixup, AppleBacklightInjector which i detailed in a new guide here :-

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/an-idiots-guide-to-lilu-and-its-plug-ins.260063/

For AppleALC I'm using Layout 3 which seems to work ok ... however very occasionally after MacOS boot up there is a distortion effect to the sound, but is fixed by a quick sleep/wake which forces AppleALC to refresh the wake verbs, after that the system will not suffer from the distortion again.

I'll give layout 1 a go though .... would be good not to have the issue at all ... thanks for the tip.

Cheers
Jay

 

[ShortFormErnie]

@ShortFormErnie,

I got the touchscreen and pen working quite a while ago which i detailed in this post :-

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...n-and-pen-working-in-osx.246052/#post-1694603

The latest version of VoodooIC2 works with Mojave ... the pen works great but the new gesture engine recently introduced into the project has a small bug in it which means that you have to use three fingers to scroll not two ... Alex the developer is aware of the problem and it should be fixed in the next release.

Got it working—there was a little mixup on my end regarding in the config.plist, though I eventually got it figured out. Officially moved over to Mojave on the main drive. Worked out pretty well!

 

[jaymonkey]

Got it working—there was a little mixup on my end regarding in the config.plist, though I eventually got it figured out. Officially moved over to Mojave on the main drive. Worked out pretty well!

@ShortFormErnie,

Glad you got it sorted,

Mojave runs very well on my HP Spectre X360, but since I have a very complicated partition map on the 1TB NVMe i decided to stick with HFS+ as the MacOS file system so I use the method of cloning the existing MacOS from the NVMe to a SSD connected to the USB-C port, boot from the clone and install the Mojave update then clone from the USB-C SSD back to the NVMe.

Works great ....

Cheers
Jay

 

[ShortFormErnie]

Currently testing NoTouchId kext with this, as I'm finding the most recent version of 1Password is extremely sluggish/unusable due to constant polling of BiometricKit—which is a problem as the Spectre of course doesn't have a fingerprint sensor on most of its models. (Part of this might be a result of me pushing the machine to MacBookPro 15,1 admittedly. I did that change because it appears to be a closer match for its specs, FWIW.) Will report back when I know more.

EDIT: Can confirm that this works. Made a major difference in 1Password’s speed.

 

[BreakJob]

Was there anything special that needed to be done in order to get the trackpad on this recognized fully by the system? (I'm guessing some sort of patching? I'm still trying to make heads or tales of the patching process... that doc is DENSE!... and so am I, it would seem.)
My trackpad works, but I can't access the settings for it to configure nifty things like gestures, tap to click, etc.
If someone could point me in the right direction to start on this, I'd appreciate it.

 

[ShortFormErnie]

Was there anything special that needed to be done in order to get the trackpad on this recognized fully by the system? (I'm guessing some sort of patching? I'm still trying to make heads or tales of the patching process... that doc is DENSE!... and so am I, it would seem.)
My trackpad works, but I can't access the settings for it to configure nifty things like gestures, tap to click, etc.
If someone could point me in the right direction to start on this, I'd appreciate it.

Have you installed VoodooI2C properly? Admittedly, there will be limits to what the trackpad can do in comparison to a real Mac. I would recommend getting a tool like BetterTouchTool to help with its functionality. You won't replace everything but you might be able to replace some of the more advanced functionality.

 

[BreakJob]

Have you installed VoodooI2C properly? Admittedly, there will be limits to what the trackpad can do in comparison to a real Mac. I would recommend getting a tool like BetterTouchTool to help with its functionality. You won't replace everything but you might be able to replace some of the more advanced functionality.

Thanks for getting back to me!
I'm actually working through some stuff with VoodooI2C right now.
In particular, from this page:

Extract the archive and install VoodooI2C.kext and VoodooI2CHID.kext to /L/E.

Note: Alex's documentation for VoodooI2C suggests injecting the Kext's via Clover ... whilst this method will work you should really try to avoid injecting any Kext's via Clover unless its absolutely necessary .. Injecting Kext's will slow down the boot process and as they are loaded outside of MacOS you can not check on their status via Sys Info nor interact with them. If you do decide to inject the VoodooIC2 kexts via Clover then remove FakeSMC from /L/E as it will stop Clover injecting Kext's (by design).

Finally add the following kext patches to your Clover config.plist which will stop Apples IC2 Kext's from attaching to your I2C controller (credit CoolStar):-

And then in config.plist I finally figured out how? to enter the kext patches that follow the above quote.

But the problem is, if I remove FakeSMC from /L/E, even though I have it in /EFI/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other, I get stuck with an almost endless loop of the same couple ACPI Errors. The screen eventually does attempt to load the UI, but goes black and plays dead.

If this means that I have to finally sit down and somehow make sense of the patching process, I guess I'll have to do that... I know Rehabman did a great writeup for how to do so, but that is so far outside of my skillset that it's laughable. Is there an Idiot's Guide? hahaha... (I'm not opposed to learning. This just has a really steep entry point as far as I can see.)

I've attached my current Config.plist and the screenshot of the ACPI Error loop. If I need to do the "Problem files" bit for further troubleshooting, I can do so, just not at the moment. And if that is the case, would it be better for me to create a new thread?

 

[ShortFormErnie]

Thanks for getting back to me!
I'm actually working through some stuff with VoodooI2C right now.
In particular, from this page:



And then in config.plist I finally figured out how? to enter the kext patches that follow the above quote.

But the problem is, if I remove FakeSMC from /L/E, even though I have it in /EFI/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other, I get stuck with an almost endless loop of the same couple ACPI Errors. The screen eventually does attempt to load the UI, but goes black and plays dead.

If this means that I have to finally sit down and somehow make sense of the patching process, I guess I'll have to do that... I know Rehabman did a great writeup for how to do so, but that is so far outside of my skillset that it's laughable. Is there an Idiot's Guide? hahaha... (I'm not opposed to learning. This just has a really steep entry point as far as I can see.)

I've attached my current Config.plist and the screenshot of the ACPI Error loop. If I need to do the "Problem files" bit for further troubleshooting, I can do so, just not at the moment. And if that is the case, would it be better for me to create a new thread?

I would recommend leaving FakeSMC in /L/E. Seems like what happened here is that your removal of that kext made some other kext you already installed in /L/E stop working. That's no good, obviously. I'm not sure which kext that was off the bat (you might have to dig into your notes), but I think that recommendation was not intended to convince you to remove FakeSMC.

The process I generally use when I'm testing a new kext is to put it in /CLOVER/kexts/Other, then when I've confirmed it's working, add it to /Library/Extensions before I remove it. If I think it's a kext I will use during an install process, I'll leave it in the /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder.

- Ernie

 

[BreakJob]

I would recommend leaving FakeSMC in /L/E. Seems like what happened here is that your removal of that kext made some other kext you already installed in /L/E stop working. That's no good, obviously. I'm not sure which kext that was off the bat (you might have to dig into your notes), but I think that recommendation was not intended to convince you to remove FakeSMC.

The process I generally use when I'm testing a new kext is to put it in /CLOVER/kexts/Other, then when I've confirmed it's working, add it to /Library/Extensions before I remove it. If I think it's a kext I will use during an install process, I'll leave it in the /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder.

- Ernie

Going off of what I can find in other areas of this site, it seems like it's got to do with battery patching. I think, for my currently install, the only thing I've done is added ACPIBatteryManager.kext to /L/E... but since I'm horrible at this, and have just been adding random this and that as I try to get my computer running, it's highly likely that I've picked up some random bit of randomness somewhere that I just don't even remember.

I can't remember where I saw it, but sometime in the past two days I read something about the combination of FakeSMC in /L/E and Config.plist/SystemParameters/InjectKexts set to "Detect" would make the system ignore /CLOVER/kexts/Other. If that's true, then my current configuration wouldn't allow me to test kexts in /C/k/O.

And I just realized that, along the way, as I've been trying to figure out how to get things to work (making my desktop was so much easier than converting this laptop) I entered the VoodooI2C kext patches in both Config.plist/KernelAndKextPatches/KextsToPatch and KernelToPatch. And I'm pretty sure that just can't be right.

 

[ShortFormErnie]

Going off of what I can find in other areas of this site, it seems like it's got to do with battery patching. I think, for my currently install, the only thing I've done is added ACPIBatteryManager.kext to /L/E... but since I'm horrible at this, and have just been adding random this and that as I try to get my computer running, it's highly likely that I've picked up some random bit of randomness somewhere that I just don't even remember.

I can't remember where I saw it, but sometime in the past two days I read something about the combination of FakeSMC in /L/E and Config.plist/SystemParameters/InjectKexts set to "Detect" would make the system ignore /CLOVER/kexts/Other. If that's true, then my current configuration wouldn't allow me to test kexts in /C/k/O.

And I just realized that, along the way, as I've been trying to figure out how to get things to work (making my desktop was so much easier than converting this laptop) I entered the VoodooI2C kext patches in both Config.plist/KernelAndKextPatches/KextsToPatch and KernelToPatch. And I'm pretty sure that just can't be right.

Mixing up KextsToPatch and KernelToPatch is easy though. I think as long as you remove the added code from KernelToPatch, you should be OK. I might recommend looking at RehabMan's starter config.plist file for your device and compare it to what you currently have to ensure something didn't get added by accident.

Also, have you looked at the threads from prior versions of macOS?

For Coffee Lake version (version of Spectre after yours): https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-high-sierra-on-hp-spectre-x360-8th-gen-coffee-lake.251330/

For Kaby Lake version: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...2c-touchscreen-and-pen-working-in-osx.246052/

The Coffee Lake version of the guide, while not for your specific version, is mostly the same as the current process minus the fact that the APFS filesystem is difficult to avoid; it also breaks down the DSDT process pretty effectively. One plus side of this machine is that it's been a Hackintosh guinea pig for a long while now so there's a lot of stuff on the site about it.