iindigo

So I've been trying to get Yosemite running on my M4400 with Chameleon the old fashioned way by adjusting one of Herve's tutorials to fit my laptop. It all goes well until trying to boot, where Chameleon simply complains about /System/Library/Kernels/(mach_)kernel being missing. That's a simple, common issue that many have encountered due to Yosemite both relocating and renaming the kernel, right? Oddly enough, in my case it's more than just a misconfiguration of Chameleon — the kernel file really is missing. In fact, the directory /System/Library/Kernels/ is entirely missing, both in my USB thumb and BaseSystem.dmg. It's not hidden either, it's quite simply not there. What could cause this? Am I missing a step? Did the kernel get moved yet again in 10.10.1?

I've tested numerous variations of VoodooPS2Controller+etc from this thread on my M4400 and they all produce basically the same result. The trackstick does absolutely nothing. With the trackpad, cursor movement works fine except for jumps when lifting fingers, two finger scrolling works only sporadically, and when moving the cursor, clicks sometimes occur even if tap to click is disabled. ApplePS2ALPSGlidePoint identifies the device as E7=0x62 0x02 0x14, EC=0x10 0x00 0x64, the same as mentioned by an E6500 user earlier in this thread. I would greatly appreciate anybody who might be able to help getting this kext to work well with this model of KB/trackstick+trackpad. The kexts used by M4400/E6410/E6500 users at the moment is an old build of VoodooPS2Controller with very poor resolution on the trackstick, no side scrolling, and completely dead middle buttons. The trackpad doesn't even register as a trackpad, it seems to be treated like a generic 2-button PS/2 mouse.

If you take a look at my posts in the Yosemite E6500 thread, you'll see that I had the same troubles with Yosemite+Clover and decided to wait for Chameleon and myHack to be updated for Yosemite. Mavericks is working so well for me that the need for Yosemite, at least for now, is not that great. It's probably is a good idea to wait for 10.10.2 or so anyway. Another note if I haven't mentioned it in this thread already: sleep seems very reliable now that I've set pmset to 0 and have replaced the system sleepimage with a symlink to /dev/null (an unwritable 0 byte file also seems to work). My only remaining gripe is the apparent lack of power management on the FX 770M.

There is surprisingly little out there in regards to hackintoshing M4500s and I'm not sure why. It seems like a pretty great upgrade from the M4400/E6500 and they're cheap, mostly in great condition, and plentiful on eBay. The keyboard looks like it might be the same as the one in the E6400/E6500/M4400. Try the VoodooPS2Controller build that's bundled with most E6400/E6500/M4400 packs; it might not fix your trackpad but may get you keyboard and track stick functionality at the very least.

I don't know if that post was aimed at me, but the artifacts were only visible during install. Video seemed ok once the install was finished and booted into. Don't know what differences exist between the NVS160M and FX 770M, but they're probably similar; my guess is the the 770M is just a beefed up 160M.

You can have VT-D enabled, but as bronxteck mentioned you need to set the dart=0 flag in Chameleon. For the patched AppleHDA in this thread to work, make sure your audio layout ID is set to 0 in your DSDT and that the AppleHDA is installed properly in /S/L/E/ (Kext Drop does this perfectly for me every time). Obviously any HDA Enabler/Disabler kexts or chameleon flags need to be removed. For the Yosemite version of this kext please see http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/188-applehda-for-dell-latitude-e6400-idt-92hd71b7/

Ok, so I tried to install Yosemite by doing the following: 1. Create Yosemite installer thumb drive 2. Install Clover r2953 on the thumb drive 3. Turned off as much as possible in the Clover configuration to match 10.9 Chameleon settings 4. Copy 10.9 kexts and DSDT to appropriate directories in Clover EFI partition The installer boots and video acceleration works, but windows have an odd artifact at their tops. After "Preparing installer" for around 10 minutes, the computer reboots but then goes nowhere because Clover doesn't see the installed partition. I don't know how to get past this problem. I also looked into using Chameleon, but it seems that for now Chameleon requires its own copy of the kernel which feels really janky. I hope the Chameleon team can get things lined out so that booting 10.10 can be as clean and easy as booting 10.9. ---------------------- EDIT: I have Yosemite running with Clover now and seems to be running OK with exception to audio. I'm trying different things to fix this. ---------------------- EDIT 2: Patched AppleHDA from http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/188-applehda-for-dell-latitude-e6400-idt-92hd71b7/ works better than VoodooHDA; sound doesn't break up while playing, but overall quality may be degraded and it seems to choke a bit whenever more than one sound plays at once. With Chameleon, this sort of thing shows up when your bus speed is wrong, but I really have no idea what it indicates when using the technical, complicated Clover. I have a feeling that this is a simple matter of ticking the right boxes in the Clover config, but I really don't know and don't feel like risking my hardware by experimenting further. I'm sitting tight on Mavericks until Chameleon properly supports Yosemite.

I'll be doing some experimentation with Yosemite and the E6500's close cousin, the M4400. Clover will be the main target since myHack for Yosemite probably won't be out for some time to come. howoarang, I experienced similar sound issues with my M4400 while running Clover+Mavericks a few weeks ago. Are you using VoodooHDA?

I find that for OS X, CPU speed doesn't matter nearly as much as RAM and disk speed. Running on 4GB or less is torturous and a huge improvement can be had from pushing it to 8GB. I also saw a massive performance increase by moving away from a mechanical HD to an 840 EVO SSD; with these two upgrades, my M4400 outperforms many brand new computers in some ways despite being manufactured in 2008. Another factor may be your DSDT, SMBIOS, and FakeSMC setup. If those are incorrect, your CPU and memory may be running slower than they should be.

Generally, patched AppleHDA is more stable and provides better audio quality than VoodooHDA. Admittedly, the patched E6400/E6500/M4400-patched VoodooHDA seems to perform well, but it's always nice to have options. In order for the AppleHDA from my pack to work, you need a DSDT with its audio layout ID set to 0 (the DSDT from my pack has this modification) and it has to be installed in /System/Library/Extensions/ with proper permissions, etc (Kext Drop does a good job of this).

I'm glad the DSDT worked, but I didn't make it… it's an E6400 DSDT that someone else made. I just tweaked it to use the right graphics card name for the M4400. As far VGA functionality, I haven't tested it and would have to dig through the shed out back to pull out a VGA monitor to test with. I might get around to testing, but no guarantee. Do you mind posting the kext pack you're using for Lion for anybody else who might happen to need it?

I'm sure there's an old Lion pack with DSDT and kexts sitting around somewhere. Not sure where that might be at this point, but this thread might be a good place to look. Another possibility which may be an option for you is running Lion in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine under Mavericks if the performance impact isn't too great. Running an OS X guest VM under an OS X host is pretty simple.

First off, which system version do you want to run on your M4400? It sounds like you want 10.6 or 10.7 but it's not really clear. If you want to run 10.9, DaFOB's E6400/E6500/M4400 Guide works pretty universally for 770M-equipped M4400 (DSDT and kexts are provided in the thread). If you like, you can also give my updated pack a spin, though it hasn't had anywhere near the level of testing that DaFOB's pack has had. For me, both setups give me full QE/QI, audio, native speedstep, etc. Only thing that doesn't work is sleep and SDHC… haven't tried VGA but reportedly that works fine as long as you hit "Detect Displays" in System Preferences after hooking the monitor up. BIOS version doesn't seem to matter; I previously ran A26 which worked and nothing changed after updating to A29. For 10.7 or 10.6 I can't really help you. I bought my M4400 right around the release of 10.8 and have never needed 10.6. TBH, I don't recommend running 10.6 because developers are dropping support for it like crazy and 10.7 is a buggy beta of 10.8. You could run 10.8 and be ok, but even then 10.9 is generally more cooperative on E6400/E6500/M4400.

Here is a pack of all the changes mentioned in the thread so far. The E6400/E6500 pack will probably work, but it was adjusted based on guesswork as I do not own these machines and cannot test it. I'm interested to hear results with both. Areas which could still be improved: • GPU temps - If HWMonitor is reporting correctly, the 770M always runs at its max clock speed of 500Mhz, meaning it idles at ~55°-60°C (even with good TIM and a copper shim). This is true with every configuration I've tried thus far. • Clover - I had a brief trial with this a few days ago, but had trouble finding the correct configuration. It ran acceptably well, but had strange bugs… most notably, audio playback was extremely choppy (voodoohda) and the transparent part of some window shadows would occasionally turn solid black. • Sleep - This has never worked for me, even with pmset 0. With DaFOB's pack, the machine would restart when told to sleep, and with my current pack it turns off the screen and wifi but never actually sleeps. • AppleHDA - Auto patching E6400 E6500.zip M4400.zip

Beautiful, this fixed the issue entirely! I'm now booting on vanilla AppleACPIPlatform with the latest (custom tuned) FakeSMC-kozlek. As I suspected, the old AppleACPIPlatform was what was interfering with the AppleHDA in the original OP; I now have fully working audio without VoodooHDA! Note that the AppleHDA must be in /S/L/E/ in place of the vanilla kext. Here's my Extras folder as of now: I also tweaked the DSDT slightly to reflect the proper graphics card.

Well that's interesting. I'm not sure if my system is panicking or not when attempting to boot with only v2.0; if I boot it that way in verbose mode, the messages simply stop and the system seemingly hangs after mentioning the loading of FakeSMC and ACPIBatteryManager/AppleSmartBatteryManager and a backtrace.

The idea behind this thread is to share tweaks and tips for running 10.9+ on M4400s. These findings may also apply to similar models, but the focus is on the M4400. I've been running a setup based on DaFOB's Guide. It runs well, but there's always room for improvement… especially since the guide was really more geared for the E6400/E6500 and some of the supplied kexts aren't necessary for M4400 users. Furthermore, it seems that research on these machines has been at a standstill for a while now, and there are bits that may be able to be improved. Here's my setup: Precision M4400 - BIOS Rev A29 • T9400 • Quadro FX 770M • OS X 10.9.4 • Chameleon build 2378 So far, I've found that the system continues to run properly after removing the following kexts from DaFOB's pack (thanks to wern apfel): Kext Reason AppleIntelIntegratedFrameBuffer M4400 does not employ integrated graphics DisableTurboBoostBattery Turboboost is a Core "i" series feature OSXRestart Restart works fine without it Patched_10.7_AppleRTC CMOS reset is not an issue VoodooSDHC Known to cause trouble and doesn't work anyway After removing these, my system is still completely stable and functional. In addition to this, AppleSmartBatteryManager (v1.3) can be updated to Rehabman's newer ACPIBatteryManager (v1.5) without issue. —————————————————— One thing that seems odd/unclear to me is the necessity of AppleACPIPlatform v1.3.5. Some people seem to be able to run with a vanilla version while others cannot boot without v1.3.5 (I cannot boot without it). What is the reasoning behind this? Also, there is a patched AppleHDA that makes for a promising replacement for VoodooHDA. However, I cannot seem to get it working, even though the pinouts and codecs match perfectly. I suspect this is due to the aforementioned use of a patched/rolled back AppleACPIPlatform, as other having similar trouble reports such problems. The kext is attached for anybody interested in trying their luck. Please note that you will have to adjust the HDEF layout ID in your DSDT to 0; the current value of 12 won't work with this kext. One last thing that I noticed is that with the modified FakeSMC supplied in DaFOB's pack is that its smc-compatible key should be set to smc-mcp instead of its current value of smc-napa in order to match up with the SMBIOS model of MacbookPro5,3. That said, I haven't seen much of a change after making this correction myself. AppleHDA IDT 92HD71B7 (E6400:E6500:M4400).zip

Thanks. I ended up getting a DW1510. It was cheap (~$10 on eBay) and works beautifully OOB.

The newest one available here: https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-Voodoo-PS2-Controller Unfortunately I had to revert to the older version because dragging doesn't work under the newer version.

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to share some things that other M4400 users might be interested in. I never was able to get com.apple.kextd to stop complaining, so I wrote an Applescript that runs a launchctl command to unload it at login, since I'm booting with -f and don't use kext cache anyway. If anybody wants these I can post them. Also, I found that setting the Mac model in SMBios to MacBookPro4,1 (a model with a T9300 and 8600GT - quite similar to my T9400 and FX770M) helps quite significantly with heat - my M4400 now runs at roughly the same temperature it does under Windows and Linux. Effects and transitions aren't quite as smooth as with MacBookPro5,3, but the improved temperatures are worth it. Additionally, I installed the latest version of VoodooPS2Controller, which works great and supports the third trackpoint/trackpad buttons. Only annoyance is that the cursor only moves after logging in but that's not too big of a deal.

Are you sure that fixed the prelinking problem? On my machine, I've rolled the kext back to version 1.3.6, removed all other instances of it, and run a full MyFix and the problem persists. Kext Wizard verifies that version 1.3.6 is loaded, so I'm not sure what the problem is...

Kevin, I can't help you with your DW1520, but my M4400 is identical to yours except I have a 2.54Ghz T9400 and a Broadcom 1510. Using the methods linked in this thread, everything works for me including WiFi, which works perfectly out of the box. I previously had an Intel 5300 wireless card which didn't work with OS X but was able to pick up the DW1510 off of eBay for $10, so you should be able to do the same. EDIT: Oh, and heads up for anybody who wants to use iMessage: the version of Chameleon/chimera (chameleon, stolen and rebranded) bundled with myHack does not allow iMessage to work. The latest version of chimera (chameleon, stolen and rebranded) fixes this by faking a Mac serial number. Just download it from tonycrapx86's site and install it.

Hello all, I have an M4400 that I'd like to hackintosh. The guides here should work fine, but the wireless card in my M4400 (Intel Ultimate N 5300) does not work under OS X and causes the 10.8 installer to kernel panic while booting, so I need to purchase a compatible replacement. I looked at grabbing an official Airport Extreme card (the later models) off eBay since they're pretty cheap and include Bluetooth, but it looks like the card is too long to fit in the M440's mini PCI-E card slot. Could anybody suggest a nice, cheap, OS X compatible card that is known to fit M4400s?