Lenovo ThinkPad T420 with UEFI Only

[Denis_HR]

On 9/12/2019 at 12:41 AM, tluck said:

@Denis_HR

ok. but if you boot recovery then you have access to everything.

 

1) start by getting the latest zip from https://github.com/tluck/Lenovo-T420-Clover/archive/v2019.08.13.zip

 

I dont know if your problem is outdated clover and/or outdated kexts.  but i can run HighSierra 10.13.6 with the stuff in the zip

 

 

After managing to mount EFI in safe mode, I used the latest ZIP, as described above, and copied it over to EFI partition, and managed to (properly) updated the Clover, but to no avail.
In the end I botched it so badly that it wouldn't even boot in safe mode
So, I'll have to reinstall from scratch, using my existing (High SIerra) USB installer (good thing that I saved it.... )
Thanks for your help!

 

[BarryP]

Hi Guys, I am new to this site. I have a Lenovo T420 and I have tried following the guide for 420 with UEFI bios. I cant find Tlucks later guide but I have a bigger problem. I have no Mac at all so I cant make the install USB in the guide. Maybe the updated guide will cover this? Would really like to get this working for my son, a Mac head. Thanks for any help?

[tluck]

23 hours ago, BarryP said:

Hi Guys, I am new to this site. I have a Lenovo T420 and I have tried following the guide for 420 with UEFI bios. I cant find Tlucks later guide but I have a bigger problem. I have no Mac at all so I cant make the install USB in the guide. Maybe the updated guide will cover this? Would really like to get this working for my son, a Mac head. Thanks for any help?

@BarryP - well my guide presumes you have access to a "Mac" to download the macOS installer from AppStore to create a Clover-based USB to install on the ThinkPad. That is, create the USB on real Mac ... or Hack or VM. Otherwise there are guides/resources to do what you described elsewhere. see link in my signature to the T420 Guide.

[leaddonkey]

Hopefully, not too off topic, but my extended battery life is trash (ie <20 mins) and I want to get another one.  Anyone have any good req's for a new one?  I know the usual haunts (amazon, newegg), but just wanted to see if anyone had a good seller they've used repeatedly in the past.  High Sierra still crushing it on my T420 and may upgrade my side HDD to a 1TB SSD shortly to enjoy a quicker overall experience.  Thanks for any/all responses.

 

If off topic, feel free to delete mods.

[goodguess]

I got two of these, which are all right for the money methinks:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/T510-T520-Akku-Batterie-Fur-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T410-T420-T430-T510-SL510-E50-DE/174033406422?hash=item28853309d6:m:mEggILEufvkPNtrXbVdEXEA

Actually macOS tells that the batteries have a few load cycles already, if you can live with that the item is OK.

Edited October 3, 2019 by goodguess

[leaddonkey]

4 hours ago, goodguess said:

I got two of these, which are all right for the money methinks:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/T510-T520-Akku-Batterie-Fur-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T410-T420-T430-T510-SL510-E50-DE/174033406422?hash=item28853309d6:m:mEggILEufvkPNtrXbVdEXEA

Actually macOS tells that the batteries have a few load cycles already, if you can live with that the item is OK.

Would love to order, but doesn't ship to the US unfortunately.  Thanks for the req though.  I'll probably order through Amazon / New Egg shortly. 

[goodguess]

Though always being a late adopter, I wanted to try my luck with 10.15.

Mainly to see what was NOT working.

So I installed Catalina over my Mojave SSD with the help of Catalina Patcher and the latest repo from GitHub tluck kindly uploaded.

(Of course I made a backup of my latest Mojave instance with CCC beforehand.)

As far as I can see things work surprisingly well again.

Sure Office 2011 wont work no more plus some other old little helpers, but that had to be expected.

Apple often enough opened the nag screen in 10.14 " the app needs to be updated etc."

 

The only glitch so far is that I lost sound.

Not that I´m using sound output much with my T420 speakers, but no output device at all is rather dull.

What would be the best workaround to enable sound with Catalina on a T420?

 

 

BTW, I lost sound with Mojave too, could have been with 10.14.6 but just threw VoodooHDA on it, which cured the issue.

This solution does not seem to work with Catalina on my side.

Off topic: The PCI SD Card reader (second from left) is still working to my astonishment.

Edited October 10, 2019 by goodguess

[klwang]

Hi, i install 10.15 successful, everything works ok, except the bluetooth

 

the laptop can find hardware, but the bluetooth can not work

 

i use BrcmPatchRAM2.kext and BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext (works fine on 10.14.6)

 

 

 

 

 

[Sherlocks]

Hi, i install 10.15 successful, everything works ok, except the bluetooth
 
the laptop can find hardware, but the bluetooth can not work
 
i use BrcmPatchRAM2.kext and BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext (works fine on 10.14.6)
 
 

 
 
 

try mieze brcm drivers. you can fix

나의 SM-N960N 의 Tapatalk에서 보냄

[klwang]

3 hours ago, Sherlocks said:

try mieze brcm drivers. you can fix

나의 SM-N960N 의 Tapatalk에서 보냄
 

 

many thanks, after  mieze brcm drivers, now everything works fine for me

 

[goodguess]

Nice work, how did you get sound working?

Did you make a clean install of 10.15 on a blank volume?

[plesho]

I've actually did a fresh install of Catalina (dual booting with Mojave for now) using the dosdude's patches and tluck's files and everything works out of the box - sound / network / bluetooth (I run this on x220). The only thing that still bugs me are the glitches. I still cannot understand what triggers them - sometimes they are completely gone for a long time, sometimes they just start appearing.

Anyway - I'm still quite impressed to see these machines running the latest macOS, without sweating :-)

[tluck]

@goodguess thats pretty cool. I am running 10.14.6 on my T420 and was wondering about Catalina on it since I am updating my Dell Hack as I write this note!

 

I was wondering about what happened with sound for? AppleALC won't work? its working for me on Mojave. 

 

@plesho I have same experience on glitches on my AUO box with 8GB. my son's T420 LG LCD and 16GB is fine.  but he doesn't use it that much since the GFX for Minecraft and Roblox are so slow!!!

 

I converted mine to a mini-mac model to be a headless Time Machine and Plex server. so the lid is closed 99% of the time. but I want to upgrade to Catalina to keep on same OS as my other systems. I may tryl get to it this weekend. (using Clover 5093)

 

question: did you upgrade Catalina via USB or download and install directly?

 

[goodguess]

I am under the impression that the Patcher(s) do not work well from 10.14.6 and up, unless one boots from a Patcher made USB.

So thats what I did. Made a Catalina boot stick with Cat Patcher´s procedure and installed over 10.14.6.

This turned out to be a not so good idea, as tons of stuff was moved to a "not assignable" folder - besides sound missing.

I´ll try a clean install soon.

[plesho]

I've just downloaded dosdude1 patcher, created the media and then added tluck's files on top of that in the EFI partition (as described in the guide). Then booted, made a fresh install of Catalina, rebooted, applied the patches from the media again and rebooted once more - everything works out of the box. I don't bother to install the kexts locally (is that even possible with Catalina?)

Edited October 12, 2019 by plesho

[goodguess]

Yep, thats the way to go, so it seems.

My second trial with a clean install is working fine either. No graphic glitches so far, everything working as it should.

Maybe we will get a new EFI package even with Catalina fine tuning?

[tluck]

yup last night, I made a dosdude1 catalina usb installer and then upgraded from 10.14.6 without issue. everything still works (except 32bit apps etc). Sounds etc. I use MBP8,1 model to install the "post" patches.

catalina moves anything out / (root) that it decides is not a system thing to a relocated folder in /User/Shared ... but i anticipated that so i just moved any non-macos stuff in / to /opt

yes, you can still use /Library/Extensions if you want to... dosdude1 patches seem to go there. 

 

The current ESP package on github should work for High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina. i will remove any mojave configs from my github, since the dosdude1 method is the way to go from now on.

 

@goodguess did you figure out the sound/audio?  with AppleALC make sure clover injects audio id 14 for laptop (or 13 with a dock) and that you don't have an old DSDT with layout-id hardcoded in there.

// tjl-begin various HDEF fixes
Device (HDEF)
            {
                Name (_ADR, 0x001B0000)  // _ADR: Address
                Name (_S3D, 0x03)  // _S3D: S3 Device State
                Name (RID, Zero)
// tjl-fix - remove PRW
                Method (_PSW, 1, NotSerialized)  // _PSW: Power State Wake
                {
                    Noop
                }

                Method (XDSM, 4, NotSerialized)  // _DSM: Device-Specific Method
                {
                    Store (Package ()
                        {
                            "hda-gfx", 
                            Buffer (0x0A)
                            {
                                "onboard-1"
                            }, 
// tjl-fix - ID set by Clover - 14 for Normal, 13 for adding Dock Ports
                            /* "alc-layout-id", 
                            Unicode ("\x0E"), */
                            "codec-id", 
                            Buffer (0x04)
                            {
                                 0x6E, 0x50, 0xF1, 0x14                           /* nP.. */
                            }, 

                            "device-type", 
                            Buffer (0x11)
                            {
                                "Conexant CX20672"
                            }, 

 

[goodguess]

Yes, thanks for caring, tluck.

Sound and everything else is working with my clean install.

Maybe I did something stupid during all those upgrades (from Sierra or earlier) and forgot about it meanwhile.

I´m hardly using the dock, but might give that a go.

 

Edit:

At least on my side (DE), the 10.5 build I got was a pre-release, GM maybe?

Anyway, App-Store wanted to upgrade with some Beta upgrade, which I confirmed yes - 

Dang - an un-bootable OS again.

Guess, I´ll wait somewhat longer for a third trial.

BTW, 10.15´s "flat" design is even uglier than 10.14 IMHO.

Edited October 14, 2019 by goodguess

[tluck]

I am using the released 10.15.0 version. most things seem to work.

the new Photos is not showing photos tho - can see imports so something is not 100% there.

 

maybe you need to reinstall the patches?

Edited October 14, 2019 by tluck

[goodguess]

Sure I tried re-installing patches, but no dice.

The CAT installer licence mentioned macOS pre-release, but I don´t recall the exact wording.

The version.plist says this:

<key>BuildAliasOf</key>
    <string>InstallAssistant</string>
    <key>BuildVersion</key>
    <string>9</string>
    <key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
    <string>15.0.32</string>
    <key>CFBundleVersion</key>
    <string>15032</string>
    <key>ProjectName</key>
    <string>InstallAssistant</string>
    <key>SourceVersion</key>
    <string>1426001005000000</string>

 

Is that the same version you are running?

Good to know that our T420´s do still work with your Clover package and the patcher, basically.

 

[plesho]

On 10/12/2019 at 11:26 PM, goodguess said:

Yep, thats the way to go, so it seems.

My second trial with a clean install is working fine either. No graphic glitches so far, everything working as it should.

Maybe we will get a new EFI package even with Catalina fine tuning?

Are you sure about the glitches?

[goodguess]

Sure plesho, with my LG 1600x900 display, 16GB RAM, graphics were all right.

Only had Catalina for a short while, as updating crashed it. 

I´m not quite ready to part with my 32bit apps too.

[plesho]

On 10/19/2019 at 12:06 AM, goodguess said:

Sure plesho, with my LG 1600x900 display, 16GB RAM, graphics were all right.

Only had Catalina for a short while, as updating crashed it. 

I´m not quite ready to part with my 32bit apps too.

 

Nice! Maybe indeed if I throw more memory at it, the glitches will go away - I'm running with 8GB at the moment on X220 (1366x768).

[goodguess]

As of today, AppStore is distributing macOS 15.0.33.

Maybe time to give the OS another go?

Fixes from 0.32 to 0.33 will not be huge, presumably.

[davidian]

I wonder if any of you guys ran into this issue.. I created a mojave usb installer with dosdude-s patcher tool (tool 1.3.3, macos 14.5.02), and used the EFI from tluck's github, with the 1600x900 config plist. When trying to install mojave, I get a "No packages were eligible for install" error message.

I googled it, and they say this is because of date/time not beeing set, but running date in terminal shows the correct time. Even after setting it manually I get this error.

Any ideas?

When creating the usb installer I get "This machine is natively supported" message, I guess this is due to Mac model being set to MacBookPro9,1 in SMBIOS section of config.plist ?

Edited October 25, 2019 by davidian