Disappointed with Windows 11, I decided to install MacOS on my Dell XPS 13 9360. This post records the process of installing MacOS on my laptop. I will update it as I learn more about Hackintosh.

Before Install

My Device Specs

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7500U CPU @ 2.70GHz

Graphics: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 (rev 02)

Chipset: 0VPVXX

  • Motherboard details

    Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes Base Board Information Manufacturer: Dell Inc. Product Name: 0VPVXX Version: A01 Serial Number: /429HSF2/CNCMK0088DA027/ Asset Tag: Not Specified Features: Board is a hosting board Board is replaceable Location In Chassis: Not Specified Chassis Handle: 0x0300 Type: Motherboard Contained Object Handles: 0

    Handle 0x001C, DMI type 10, 6 bytes On Board Device Information Type: Video Status: Enabled Description: “Intel HD Graphics”

    Handle 0x0033, DMI type 41, 11 bytes Onboard Device Reference Designation: Onboard IGD Type: Video Status: Enabled Type Instance: 1 Bus Address: 0000:00:02.0

    Handle 0x0034, DMI type 41, 11 bytes Onboard Device Reference Designation: Onboard LAN Type: Ethernet Status: Enabled Type Instance: 1 Bus Address: 0000:00:19.0

    Handle 0x0035, DMI type 41, 11 bytes Onboard Device Reference Designation: Onboard 1394 Type: Other Status: Enabled Type Instance: 1 Bus Address: 0000:03:1c.2

Touchpad: DLL075B

RAM: 16GB LPDDR3 (1866MHz)

Storage: TOSHIBA THNSN5512GPUK 512GB PCIe m.2 SSD

  • Replaced with WD Black SN750 NVMe

Ports: 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 3.0 w/PowerShare, 1 x USB-C (Thunderbolt 3), SD card reader, headphone jack

WLAN/Bluetooth: Qualcomm Killer 1535 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.1

  • replaced with BCM94352Z_DELL (DW1560)

Keyboard and Trackpad Connection Type

Idk yet, now assume it to be ps/2

  • Trackpad: SMBus
  • Keyboard: PS/2

Audio

  • Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio ├── Device ID: 0x9d71 ├── Vendor: 0x8086 ├── ACPI Path: *SB*.PCI0.HDAS ├── PCI Path: PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1f,0x3) └── Codec: ALC3246

Terminology

  • UEFI: The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI replaces the legacy Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface originally present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers, with most UEFI firmware implementations providing support for legacy BIOS services. UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even with no operating system installed.
  • UEFI Drivers: Like any other OS, UEFI has drivers and they’re loaded by Clover or OpenCore. They’re also meant to load devices or perform other tasks, like loading Apple’s HFS drives with HfsPlus.efi, patching macOS’s boot.efi and so on. You may find them as Clover Drivers or OpenCore Drivers, they’re all UEFI drivers.
  • EFI: It can denote two things:
    • Mac’s firmware, which is the same as UEFI, but pretty modified for Macs only, so not so “Universal”
    • The partition on your hard drive that stores software read by the UEFI to load OSes (like the Windows bootloader) or UEFI Applications (like OpenCore), it’s FAT32 formatted and has an ID type of EF00(in hex). It can be named ESP or SYSTEM, and it’s usually from 100MB to 400MB in size but the size doesn’t reflect upon anything.
  • ACPI: The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) provides an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, more of this will be discussed later in the guide.
    • A DSDT(Differentiated System Description Table) can be seen as the body holding most of the info with smaller bits of info being passed by the SSDT(Secondary System Description Table). You can think of the DSDT as the building blueprints with SSDTs being sticky notes outlining extra details to the project

Install

1. USB Mapping

MacOS has a 15 port limits, but your mother board may have more ports. This mismatch may cause problems like data corruption. Therefore, we need to map the ports before installing the MacOS.

As warned here, if we are installing macOS 11.3 and newer, we’d better map the USB ports before installing it. The guide from opencore is for post install, also USBMap works only on macOS. I found this post that introduces USBToolBox as a way to map USB ports in Windows. Following the post or the github page of USBToolBox to complete USB mapping. At this stage, the gola is to limit the number of ports within fifteen. You can reconfigure it after macOS is installed. Therefore it is acceptable if you didn’t configure it all right.

Note that you will get a UTBMap.kext file after the above steps. Save it somewhere so that you can later copy it to your USB installer.

2. Create USB installer

There are several ways to do it, you can follow the guide from OpenCore. I created a online installer with Linux. If you’d like an offline installer, you can only create it with an existing macOS. Consult the guide for more details.

  1. Download macOS recovery

    cd ~/Downloads
# Download OpenCorePkg (this might not be the newest version!)
wget https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/releases/download/0.8.9/OpenCore-0.8.9-DEBUG.zip
# Adjust below command to the correct folder
cd ~/Downloads/OpenCore-0/Utilities/macrecovery/
# Download Monterey
python3 ./macrecovery.py -b Mac-FFE5EF870D7BA81A -m 00000000000000000 download

    In my case, the recovery medias are located under ~/Downloads/OpenCore-0.8.9-DEBUG/Utilities/macrecovery/com.apple.recovery.boot/, it includes:

    • BaseSystem.dmg
    • BaseSystem.chunklist

  2. Make the installer

    1. use lsblk to get your USB device name. Mine is /dev/sda1

    2. Create GPT partition on your drive

      sudo gdisk /dev/<your USB block>
# If prompted with 3 options, choose "3 - Create blank GPT"
# Clear the partition table and make a new GPT one
> o
	> y # confirm
# Create new partitions
> n
	> partition number: (default)
	> first sector: (default)
	> last sector: (default)
	> Hex code or GUID: 0700
# Write partitions
> w
	> y # confirm

    3. Format the USB to FAT32

      sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n "OPENCORE" /dev/<your USB partition block>

    4. mount the USB

      udisksctl mount -b /dev/<your USB partition block>

    5. Copy the macOS recovery. In my case, the downloaded files are at ~/Downloads/OpenCore-0.8.9-DEBUG/Utilities/macrecovery/com.apple.recovery.boot/

      cp -r /path/to/OpenCore/Utilities/macrecovery/com.apple.recovery.boot/ /media/<username>/OPENCORE

3. Prepare Opencore files

  1. Download the latest release from OpenCorePkg repository. The one ends with DEBUG give more information in case of failures.

  2. Unzip it, copy the EFI folder under x64 folder to the root of your USB boot drive OPENCORE

  3. Remove unnecessary drivers and tools, keep only OC/Drivers/OpenRuntime.efi and OC/Tools/OpenShell.efi

    cd path/to/OPENCORE/EFI/OC
mv Drivers/OpenRuntime.efi ./
rm Drivers/*
> y
mv OpenRuntime.efi Drivers/
mv Tools/OpenShell.efi ./
rm Tools/*
> y
mv OpenShell.efi Tools/

  4. Copy the USB map kext to Kexts folder

Gather necessary files following instructions. Extra files apart from those come with OpenCorePkg are as follows. They should be placed within respected folders under OC.

Drivers

Kexts

Categories

  • Lilu (copy only the Lilu.kext file)
  • VirtualSMC
  • VirtualSMC Plugins including (optional):
    • SMCBatteryManager.kext
    • SMCDellSensors.kext
  • WhateverGreen: graphics support
  • AppleALC: audio support (copy AppleALCU.kext only)
  • USBToolBox/kext: USB mapping support
  • For WLAN/Bluetooth
    • AirportBrcmFixup (need extra to disable AirPortBrcm4360 for BigSur)
    • BrcmPatchRAM (this one is tricky, I’m not sure which to choose)
      • BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext
      • BrcmFirmwareData.kext
      • BrcmPatchRAM3.kext
      • Not sure about BlueToolFixup.kext

Extras

Inputs

SSDTs

These are tables present in your firmware that outline hardware devices like USB controllers, CPU threads, embedded controllers, system clocks and such.

We download prebuilt SSDTs from the web. My XPS 13 9360 Developer edition comes with a i7-7500u CPU. The codename of the CPU architecture is called Kaby Lake.

You can find what’s right for you here.

Download the following files and place them under EFI/OC/ACPI

5. Configure config.plist

I follow this tuorial and this tutorial for generating config.plist for my Kaby Lake laptop

Initialize config.plist

Copy Sample.plist to EFI/OC and rename it to config.plist

Load it into ProperTree

Use https://github.com/corpnewt/ProperTree to populate the config.plist

Update each section

ACPI

Add and Delete can be left untouched. For Patch, I added an item numbered 2 in the following picture.

acpi

Booter

  • All sections can be left unchanged

Device Properties

  • Add child PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0), set it as follow. Check here for more information. The existing PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1b,0x0) can be safely deleted, as it will be overwrite by the boot argument alcid=xxx. Check this section for more details.

    devprop-add

  • As my graphic card is HD6xx, I need to further set values to fix display out.

    devprop-framebuf

    If the values above doesn’t work, try this set: con1 as 105, con2 as 306, HDMI and DP

    KeyTypeValue
    framebuffer-con1-enableData01000000
    framebuffer-con1-alldataData01050A00 00080000 87010000
    framebuffer-con2-enableData01000000
    framebuffer-con2-alldataData03060A00 00040000 87010000

  • Delete**:** Can be ignored.

Kernel

  • Add, Emulate, Force, Block, Scheme: can be ignored

  • Quirks, following the instructions, they are set as below.

    kernel-quirk

Misc

  • Security: set like this as instructed (Do not skip)
    QuirkEnabledComment
    AllowSetDefaultYES
    BlacklistAppleUpdateYES
    ScanPolicy0
    SecureBootModelDefaultLeave this as Default for OpenCore to automatically set the correct value corresponding to your SMBIOS. The next page goes into more detail about this setting.
    VaultOptionalThis is a word, it is not optional to omit this setting. You will regret it if you don’t set it to Optional, note that it is case-sensitive
  • Boot
    QuirkEnabledComment
    HideAuxiliaryYESPress space to show macOS recovery and other auxiliary entries
  • Serial, Tools, Entries can be ignored

NVRAM

  • Add:
    • boot args: -v keepsyms=1 alcid=3246
    • prev-lang:kbd: <>

  • Delete

Post Install

USB Mapping

r/hackintosh - GUIDE: Easy USB Mapping with USBToolbox on Windows

“Kext” stands for Kernel Extension; kext files “extend” Mac OS X’s kernel, the core part of the operating system, by providing additional code to be loaded when your computer boots.

Why should you USB map | OpenCore Post-Install

kext

What are kexts?

EFI Partition

A Quick Guide To Your Hackintosh’s EFI Partition

Apple originally used the EFI partition to help real Macs boot OS X (although real Macs don’t really need it). Clover modifies the EFI partition so that regular PCs can use it to boot OS X as well.

What I have done for debugging

  • Enable two children in Booter → MmioWhitelist
  • Enabel AppleXcpmExtraMsrs