E6430 (Nvidia NVS 5200M): Only getting restarts after Catalina installation with OpenCore

[estr0genesis]

Hello everyone. So, I recently bought an e6430 with the following specs:

 

-i5 3210m

-Intel HD 4000/NVS5200M

-4GB RAM

-1600x900 resolution

 

 

I've been going though all the stuff with Catalina Opencore (this would be my 3rd hackintosh and my 2nd with Open Core) and have successfully-ish installed the most recent version of Catalina. I got to the installer, erased the Drive, formatted it (tried APFS and HFS+, same result), and got to the reboot (where I would now boot to the Macintosh HD, rather than the installer on my USB, it gets all the way past the Verbose, I get a QUICK flash of the Apple Logo/loading bar, but before anything loads, the system reboots back to the Dell logo. I can't quite find anyone else with this exact error at this point in the install.

 

I'm quite an amateur with Opencore, but I'm wondering one of a few things

 

-Do I need to disable the 5200M and just do everything through the HD 4000? I have another Latitude in this series without the 5200M that was sucessfully Hackintoshed to Catalina without this issue. I honestly wouldn't know how to do that, as beyond some minor ProperTree config.plist updates, I've been relying on bootpacks so far.

-Is it a CPU power issue? I tried what I thought was a DSDT for this exact CPU but it didn't work

-Should I enable or disable Optimus? When Disabled, I get a black screen but no Reboot.

 

I have attached my EFI folder below. Thank you all very much.

EFI_e6430 NVidia.zip

[Jake Lo]

No support for NVS5200m since HS. You'll need Optimus enabled in the BIOS. You'll also need SSDT-dGPU-Off.aml or the similar to disable the Nvidia card. I see you it's in the Config file but disabled but it's missing in the ACPI folder as well. Add it and enable it in the Config file should fix the reboot issue.

[Hervé]

Situation and behaviour regarding Optimus:

1. disabled -> laptop runs on nVidia dGPU only.
2. enabled -> laptop runs on Intel iGPU and nVidia dGPU; dual GPU switching mode on (but unsupported in OS X/macOS).

Trouble is that Fermi chips such as the NVS 5200M have no proper support to no support at all in macOS since High Sierra. The buck stopped at Sierra. As such, you can only run Catalina on the Intel HD4000 iGPU. Given that Optimus has to be enabled to that effect, you need to disable the dGPU through ACPI patching in order to prevent it from draining on the battery unnecessarily.

 

Your config shows that you correctly opted for the HiRes Capri Framebuffer 0x01660004 which is required for your HiRes screen 1600x900. This HiRes Framebuffer only offers 1 x video port by default for LVDS/eDP built-in screen so you'll also have to inject additional properties if you ever want to use external monitors (DVI, HDMI, DP; VGA unsupported). You'll find all the necessary details in the dedicated thread to HD4000 graphics available in our R&D->Graphics section.

 

I also noticed you also opted for MBP11,1 SMBIOS; this is a Haswell model that does not require the -no_compat_check boot arg so you could delete that. The boot arg would only be necessary if you opted for an Ivy Bridge model such as MPB9,2 or MPB10,2.

 

You'll also need additional ACPI tables/parameters in your config to trigger support for your keyboards brightness keys; you'll find all the necessary details in my E6230 guide.

[estr0genesis]

Thank you so much for your help, as I am a bit of a newbie here I'm a little overwhelmed with creating my own SSDT-dGPU-Off.aml from the .dsl Dortania provided. I tried combing through the forums but it seems like all the uploaded .aml files that would fit my config are Unavailable. Is there somewhere I should be looking that I'm not? I really will have hit a wall if I have to create my own .aml because I fear my experience is adequate for that lol.

 

Either way, thank you. I appreciate your help.

[Jake Lo]

Here, add this to the ACPI folder and enable it in Config file under ACPI/Add

 

SSDT-dGPU-Off.aml.zip