Why in the World: Hackintoshes (Y40-70)

Community Blog
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So recently I have been balls deep in Apple shit. Honestly, if I didn’t use linux, I would be an OS X fanboy because of the amount of fun I can have with it. I come from a crowd of console hackers before I got into hacking PC’s. While we had dial-up, I had the ability to go to google and wait 7-8 minutes for the site to poll and give me my search. I could wait an hour and a half for PSP hack and Wii hacks to download though. That stuff took a while, but I found it fun. Very fun. So what is as fun as that, to me, and easy to make something ridiculous?

Hackintosh’s.

Now currently people are not happy with the new macbook pro. I’m not either, but I have explained why (apple turning to the consumer market rather than making absolute workhorses, trying desperately to make the children shut the hell up). I don’t like the touchbar, but the hardware is neat. I don’t like the GPU’s, so I could probably get a way better mac rolling for less of a price. I can get a cheaper laptop and hackintosh it is my point.

Now take a branch here, I recently got my Lenovo Y40-70 for 100 bucks flat on craigslist. 8 GB ram, i7 4510U (2C 4T HT), M275X (2GB Vram, DX12), AC Wireless, and I made it Dvorak, oh and a 1080p screen. 100 bucks? Great deal. Especially when new this was 1000 bucks 2 years ago? I thinks 800 something now so of course I got a deal. Soon as I got it, saw it was the lightest laptop I own, thinest, no CD drive, all the peripherals I need, SSHD 1TB, I instantly thought to mackintosh it. Can’t use it in linux and only windows 10 ca use the drivers properly…

Fuck it.

So at the moment I am writing this on the unit, in El Capitan, and there are a few problems. 1, no M275X drivers installed yet but they do exist BUT, 2. no wifi yet because as it turned out the intel 3150 doesn’t have drivers, but the 3160 does. I’m just going to really really hope that the 3160 drivers will work. 3. USB work, but not SD, bluetooth, the webcam, and maybe some stuff I am missing. INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH the FN key functions are bound to UEFI so they all work no matter what I do. 4. Can’t sleep it. I can’t sleep any hackintoh anyways, don’t know why, but that might be a killer for someone with a laptop. Either it is on, or off. You better have a good battery if you’re doing laptops.

So as I go along and find my resources I want to post more and more about what I find and get on the system. The point I want to make with this project is that I got this reasonably powerful laptop for not much and I want to show that anyone else can do the same as long as they have no fear. You won’t kill the laptop, but you will have to figure out drivers yourself. Not all GPU’s work, for example while my Y40-70 work with some added voodoo drivers for KB and mouse, the intel HD4400 is the only of the 2 chips that work. Where-as in my asus G50VT-x5 the 9800 m GS works perfectly fine except wifi KB and mouse. So your mileage may vary.

I have to find either: a Apple wifi card out of a macbook, AMD drivers, SD card drivers, power drivers, potentially intel 3150AC drivers?, and webcam drivers. As I find that stuff I will post my work. When its all done I’ll be looking for new hardware to hack.

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I have never seen a lot of laptop hackintoshs before, I have only seen a lot of desktops. Good too see you go against the grain.

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No one thinks about it. Might as well pioneer some shit.

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Well that looks familiar.

Please tell me you didn't use one of Niresh's pre-built hackintosh distros. Those things are garbo.

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Actually thats my post, yeah.

And no, full retail. I used to use niresh on my G50V but I got El Capitan running just fine. I'm thinking about doing Sierra, even, on my y40.

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I had no idea that it was possible for mac os to be put on a laptop. Blows my mind.

Great job! once i graduate from school id like to attempt to build a hackintosh desktop so i could at least get used to using a mac for final cut, in case i need experience with the program.

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I would do a VM first before throwing hardware away. Or go grab a macpro 1,1 and look at my thread here about hackintoshing it into el capitan and running a solid system all around.

Main problem I have right now is using built-in wifi is not possible with a 3150AC but with a 3160 its fine. Kinda fuckin stupid. But oh well. I still don't have a driver for an M275X though....

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Good point. Ill remember to do that first.

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I am sure you have checked out Tonymacx86 site. there is a guy on there that does all of the laptop hackintosh stuff. I had a hp 5450s running as my hackintosh for a couple of years before i made the swap to linux.

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The distros can be helpful sometimes. Of course best to avoid for actual installs, but for example, I was having trouble booting retail OS X on an old poweredge server, but one of the distros would work. I eventually tracked it down to being a file called "Preboot.img". If added kexts and boot flags to that img and put it on an hdd, I could boot the retail version; however, if I installed the bootloader directly to MBR, it failed. Even an exact copy from the img. No idea why.

On another note, I've been thinking about trying out installing a hypervisor that can pass hardware (gpu,USB) directly to mac os. Perhaps that could solve some common hardware issues IF the hardware works with the host. If so, it could be run locally and have the benefit of snapshots, etc. I imagine it would only make it harder to hack a laptop, but maybe for mitigating hardware problems on desktops and servers.

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I'd love to try to Hackintosh something, but I don't have anything to download Sierra from the Appstore nor do I want to get it from some shady website :(

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pm me if you want.

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I have successfully made a number of productive working Hackintosh desktops. Hope things work out for u.

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I'm making an update post of my progress either tonight or tomorrow. I'm missing the kexts for getting my GPU (M275X) to work which is annoying.

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Only so much you can do to keep a hackintosh going for software update wise. Laptiops are harder again. I know apple has gorn customer mass sell crap to teens with rich parents for profit mode.

I would be looking at swapping platforms, Myself ex-windows to linux. In the end I think windows will go cloud too and it will be linux on servers and workstations and the mass;s will use cloud linked devices to hook them into a company.

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I will have an update, video, and guide on how I did all of this with lists of bugs and potentials to the OS side of it all here soon. Whether it is tonight or tomorrow depends on how awake I am after I bring horses in in a moment. If I am awake enough expect a massive block of shit here.

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Updates to the Hackintosh

There are some updates I need to list now that, for the most part, my hackintosh project is running magnificently. Not only do I have clover installed with full boot detection, hardware detection that starts in EFI scans pushes hardware to the OS for management. I have something into GPU support and it seems to recognize everything accordingly. Downside is I’m not sure if it really is using the M275X or if it just sharing ram with the Intel HD4400. Though it DID render and play 4K video! I have to think it is using it and not telling me because the kext itself in’t all that well done.

Uh err ehem COUGH HACK GAG Moving right along.

Over all system performance is… stunning actually. Runs better than my mac pro even! I do enjoy my mac pro but in only runs well with a decent GPU in it to start with. So I will call it, over all, better than expected. I have steam installing Cities Skylines to actually test GPU performance and see what that is dong, while I don’t have native wifi exactly settled, I do have a USB that is chugging away happily. Display is crisp, one updates removed a bit of artifacting that I had with some text which has not been a problem. Backlight, audio control…. I basically have a macbook. Its wonderful really. I do want a direct kext to work with my M275X… And native built in wifi so I can have all 3 USB ports…. And SD card support should I ever need it BUT OTHERWISE ITS GREAT.

As for @Marten ’s concern about updates, there is one problem in updating your system… You will need to reinstall clover every single time. I’m not surprised to be honest. In my mac pro I have to replace the EFI and EFIBase every time I update. This is the same thing just in another form. Really not surprised there just keep your install USB handy.

I will be posting a basic usability video after this pot when I am good and awake for it. We will be pushing the system to see what happens!

1 Edit: Graphics

Not great. Like really not great. I have determined that it is using the HD4400 because Cities Skylines ran like shit. With the M275X I could run it even upscaled in windows for the short time I had it installed. So, the kext quest continues.

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Good work man. I have an interest in doing this in the future as part of another project but only for fun, not as a main os. Probably just VM it. But nice to see all this written up about your own experiences.

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Well no one else writes it down as they do it and then the info gets screwed up, doesn't exist, or is just hidden because the guy is a dick. When I was hacking my Wii I couldn't find much info on USB injection other than a lot of people did it. There weren't open info sites, there was nothing on if you had to connect a laptop, nothing on any of it. I didn't know if you needed a game to run or any of that. I found message bomb and did it that way, but a lot of this stuff is hidden for the same reason people get ignored in the linux IRC chats. "If you don't already know you don't need to know".

If people don't know its because there isn't any open information for them to start at. Theres tonnes on hackintoshes but I make it a keen interest to put all the info out that I know of that would be REALLY USEFUL to someone.

Example: When I had my 250X and used linux, the fan wouldn't work. I had to set fan profiles myself. I made a video.

I don't always get questions like in the comments here but it is really nice to see people interested...

But I had problems with fan speed not existing, looked up how to set it up for myself, then went through the process of this video and trying not to stumble over my words. I'm like this with everything. I don't think I could get payed for it but really, documenting and listing, researching old hardware, it really is all I wanna do.

I just noticed that video has 1000 views. WHAT THE FUCK.

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I looked it up and I don't think half of my laptop (ASUS T300 Chi) will work in OSX, so I don't think I can Hackintosh :(

I mean I can't even get it running completely in Linux, and Linux is an open door as far as operating systems go.