[Success] LG Gram 17 (17Z990-R.AAS9U1)

[kirkevonphilly]

Huge thanks to rdmitry0911 over here. This thread and a sweet open box deal at Microcenter resulted in picking up my 17Z990 as a result last Saturday. I feel like I'm at a pretty good point with my setup today. This isn't intended to be an install guide, but a dump of all my notes to help anyone that might be facing the same.

Not Working:

• Fingerprint Reader: Assume it never will be and not going to look into it
• SD Card Reader: Haven't looked into at depth, but surface level searching seems unlikely
• Unlock w/ Apple Watch: Just started to look into this. I think it is a Catalina specific issue. The option to enable it is present and at the lock screen, the. PW input field is hidden for a few seconds, like it is trying, but then re-appears.

Untested:

• HDMI

Purchases:

• HD: Kingston A2000 250GB SSD 3D NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive
• HD: Kingston A400 240GB SSD TLC NAND SATA III 6.0 GB/s M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive
• Wifi: TP-Link Mini - AC600 USB 2.0 Wifi Adapter
• Wifi: BCM94360CS2
• Wifi: BCM94360CD/BCM94360CS2/BCM943224PCIEBT2 12+6Pin WiFi Bluetooth Card to NGFF(M.2) Key M Adapter for Mac OS
• Wifi: HUYUN IPEX MHF4 Antenna WiFi Cable for NGFF/M.2 WiFi/WLAN Card Module (IPEX MHF4 Internal Antenna for NGFF/M.2 Intel 7260 7265 8260 8265 9260 9560 AX200 WiFi WLAN Card M2M)
• RAM: OLOy DDR4 RAM 32GB (1x32GB) 2400 MHz CL17 1.2V 260-Pin Laptop SODIMM

Install

• I used Unibeast to create a Catalina installer
• I used rdmitry0911's EFI folder and just made sure I had all the latest versions of the kexts
• I pulled the OEM windows SSD and replaced it with the new Kingston A400. I left the 2nd slot empty for now after reading of issues installing to an NVMe. I didn't confirm the issues and don't know if this is required or not. After a successful install on the A400, I installed the A2000 NVMe into the second slot and used SuperDuper to clone the A400 (both main and EFI)

Keyboard/Trackpad

• VoodoPS2Controller.kext, VoodooI2C.kext and VoodooI2CHID.kext are in my EFI/Clover/Kexts/Other/
• The trackpad is definitely usable. It doesn't compare to a real Macbook trackpad, but is definitely a far reach from being unusable.
  • It's a springboard style trackpad (easier to click in on the bottom than the top), so I enabled "Tap to click"
  • The "Silent clicking" and "Force Click and haptic feedback" won't do anything
  • I had originally had issues with all my single finger mouse movements registering as click and drags. Tap to click, setting the "Click" sensitivity to "Firm" and "Tracking speed" to the fastest seems to have resolved this.
• All of the gestures are enabled and work
• I used Karabiner to set the Function keys
  • Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys: disabled
  • Keyboard backlighting must be hardware/bios level... you will need to use FN + F8 to cycle between off, low, and high backlight options. I didn't find any options that allowed me to set up specific keys to control it.
  • I tried to map my keys so the symbols matched the functionality, not map to original Macbook keyboards (my memory's not that great and I hardly use them anyway).
    • F1: dashboard
    • F2: apple_top_case_display_brightness_decrement
    • F3: apple_top_case_display_brightness_increment
    • F4: launchpad
    • F5: mission_control
    • F6: f16
    • F7: f17
    • F8: f18
    • F9: f19
    • F10: mute
    • F11: volume_decrement
    • F12: volume_increment
  • F16-F19 usage: I figure I might re-map or bind to other functions later

Wifi and Bluetooth

• I temporarily used the TP-Link AC600 USB adapter. Lots of posts about USB adapters causing issues, but I didn't spend time understanding them. I just needed internet for a few days while the rest of the Amazon shipments arrived. The TP-Link software on the website for the adaptor, aka Archer T2U, works fine for Catalina.
• I opted to burn one of the two m.2 slots AND a USB port to avoid using USB wifi for the long term. Unfortunately, the LG Gram 17 (17Z990-R.AAS9U1) does have a soldered in chip. I would have preferred to keep the 2nd m.2 slot for a backup HD. Using SuperDuper to clone a working disk to a backup disk in the same machine has been great on my desktop. Maybe I'll just git an m.2 drive USB enclosure.
  • The BCM94360CS2 works fine for wifi and bluetooth
  • You do need an adapter; not all adapters are the same keying and could be just a mm in size difference and not work. Listed above is the one I used using the 12+6 pin to NGFF (m.2) m keying
  • While bluetooth is on the card, it does require USB to work. The adapter will include a wire to run from the adapter to the motherboard. Normally, you'd have extra pin headers on a motherboard to use. This laptop does not. You'll have to sacrifice something. I opted to run the wire to the left USB port, solder it, and prevent things from being plugged into it with a USB port dust cover. You just need to solder two wires (USB D+ and D-).
  • Since the OEM wifi card is soldered on, you need to disable the built in bluetooth, otherwise bluetooth will appear to be enabled, but no devices will be located.
    • About This Mac --> System Report... --> USB and find the entry that says bluetooth and I believe it might have a manufacturer of Erikson. Note its "Location Id" value
    • Terminal --> ioreg | grep "HS" and look for the above "Location Id". Note the HSxx value
    • Update your Clover config.plist's boot arguments to include uia_exclude=HSxx. I believe this prevents power to native bluetooth
  • I am using AirportBrcmFixup.kext in EFI/CloverKexts/Other
• The built-in wifi antennas might be re-usable. The are MHF4 connectors (*I think*) and can be disconnected. The run up through the hinges and into the screen. I attempted to buy antenna extensions to go from the new wifi card to these antennas, but got a wrong connector. Instead, I bought new antennas (listed above) and just routed the to the left and right of the trackpad. No issues w/ signal so far. Without them, absolute trash, and unusable (connects, disconnects, inconsistency, etc).

Sleep

• Helpful commands to help troubleshoot
  • sudo pmset -g
  • sudo log show | grep -i "Wake reason"
• I originally was seeing on sleep, the screen turns off, the LEDs on the F5 and power button stay on, after 15-30s or so, they go out, then immediately back on and the system wakes up
  • I removed everything plugged into the USB ports (except my now hardwired/soldered bluetooth connection)
  • Disabled bluetooth and wifi
  • Same results
• I don't know which fixed it, but
  • Updated config.plist
    • Boot --> NeverHibernate: unchecked
    • Boot --> HibernationFixup: checked
  • Deleted
    • /Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement*
    • Rebooted

Headphone Port

• Did not work originally, but an update to config.plist seems to have worked
  • Boot --> Arguments --> change alcaid=3 to alcaid=21

 

[Feartech]

they way things are going with kexts, may be worth having all your 3rd party kexts in clover/kexts/other

 

[kirkevonphilly]

Thanks. I think the only thing I mentioned in the post not there was the VoodooPS2Controller.kext in L/E. Was there anything else you spotted?

I just moved it, updated the post, and attachment to reflect that one.

 

[Feartech]

Thanks. I think the only thing I mentioned in the post not there was the VoodooPS2Controller.kext in L/E. Was there anything else you spotted?

I just moved it, updated the post, and attachment to reflect that one.

hibernatemode should be set to 0

do the terminal commands from here:

[Guide] Native Power Management for Laptops

Overview Power Management should be one of the first things implemented when trying to install OS X on a laptop. Because of heat/noise and battery life issues, using NullCPUPowerManagement is not a realistic option on a laptop. Fortunately, with Clover, NullCPUPowerManagement is never needed...

www.tonymacx86.com

SMCHelper-64.efi should be removed as you are using VirtualSMC.kext, this is mentioned in the VirtualSMC documentation

config.plist:
this can now be removed:

<key>ForceKextsToLoad</key>
        <array>
            <string>\System\Library\Extensions\IONetworkingFamily.kext</string>
        </array>

 

[TheCatalinaWineMixer]

@kirkevonphilly Do you have the issue where the touchpad sometimes doesn't register clicks or movements? I've watched the kernel messages and can see that the movements aren't being passed to VoodooI2CHID, but I don't know how to monitor the device itself to see why.

 

[kirkevonphilly]

@kirkevonphilly Do you have the issue where the touchpad sometimes doesn't register clicks or movements? I've watched the kernel messages and can see that the movements aren't being passed to VoodooI2CHID, but I don't know how to monitor the device itself to see why.

How long does it last? I get the occasional blip, but lasts a moment or two and passes. Just long enough for me to think it was just the OK trackpad.

 

[HEOMAC]

can you show us a picture how to solder usb d+ and d-? I wanna follow your solution but soldering is not easy for me.. thanks in advance!

 

[rdmitry0911]

Hi guys, for those of you, who, like me, don't want to survive with hfs+ in macos 10.14+ here is OC based EFI that works great with apfs in both 10.14 and 10.15 and on top of that it has lid open/close, sleep/wake, hdmi audio and sd card reader working. It also has intel bluetooth firmware uploader which makes it work out of the box. So, it's fully functional mac without any compromises and only wifi needs your attention.

 

[ball6847]

Hi guys, for those of you, who, like me, don't want to survive with hfs+ in macos 10.14+ here is OC based EFI that works great with apfs in both 10.14 and 10.15 and on top of that it has lid open/close, sleep/wake, hdmi audio and sd card reader working. It also has intel bluetooth firmware uploader which makes it work out of the box. So, it's fully functional mac without any compromises and only wifi needs your attention.

Hi rdmitry0911, Could you please guide me how to setup Bios for LG Gram ? I have 17Z90N model and cannot even boot into Installer

 

[hokamidat]

can you show us a picture how to solder usb d+ and d-? I wanna follow your solution but soldering is not easy for me.. thanks in advance!

I second this