[Guide] 10.10 Yosemite on the Dell Venue 11 Pro [Core iX]

[altleet]

Ok So i am not sure if my tablet has the WWAN card.. ( I don't think so it has, although I do see the Enable / Disable option in the bios settings, but don't know if its present in the device I haven't opened it yet -- screw driver set hasn't arrived yet  =/)

 

USB power share option is enabled on mine.. apparently it powers up my usb hub to an extent (maybe the issue here -- at least I think so) 

 

I have NFC Enabled too.

 

Aside from that We have the same options ticked in. 

 

 

Also, on the side note I found the USB port in the tablet to be a little buggy.. it sometimes does not recognize any device on the hub at the bios level ( unable to use the keyboard at that point) it takes a restart or a two to get it working again.. Of course this only happens when I re plug a the ac power for the first time use.. couple of reboots solves the issue but then it always stays connected. Until I remove the ac power again, when i call it a day. 

[blankmac]

Ok, I'll try to match those settings as see if it changes anything.  I do believe that it is an IRQ problem.  I can get clover to boot the install USB and get USB devices recognized by adding the "Fix HPET" option in clover.  When I do that, however, your EDID injection no longer works and boots to a garbled screen.  If I eliminate everything related to video it will boot properly, but slowly, and with no QE CI.  Nothing else I've tried gets USB devices working for me so it seems like something is beating OSX to the punch on an IRQ level.  And I think that explains why yours and Alex's USB is flaky at times.  I'm trying to research adding/altering IRQ values via DSDT so that everything has a chance to enumerate without conflicting.  I'm out of my depth though so this is all just guessing on my part.  If you have a chance, try messing with the HPET option and see if anything I'm saying makes sense.

Oh, and if you had the WWAN card installed, it would show up as "mobile broadband" with an on/off switch under your network settings.  If you don't see that then I doubt it's installed.  Honestly, that's about the biggest reason I bought this particular tablet.  I was looking at the Surface, but the WWAN option and the ability to easily upgrade the SSD swayed me to the Venue.  Not to mention that they are a lot cheaper!  It has enough power for what I need it to do.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.  If I could get OSX running reasonably well on it then that would be icing on the cake, but Win 8 isn't too terrible and I do have Ubuntu booting off the SD card with full touchscreen/WIFI support so it's usable as well.

[alex.daoud]

Try setting clover resolution to 1024x768 to fix that garbling issue. I had that problem when I first started with the device and I almost tore all my hair out over it. Setting the bootloader's resolution fixed it.

[blankmac]

Ok, I have it booting reliably now.  I started over and re-installed with Chimera, and then instead of trying to set it up with Chimera, I rebooted with a USB stick prepped with Altleet's method with the only addition being the "FixHPET" added to the config (and I ditched the PS2 kext).  It only works with the USB 3.0 controller disabled in the BIOS, no other options affect it one way or the other.  QE/CI are enabled and working.  Bluetooth comes and goes about every other boot for some reason, which is unfortunate because it doesn't recognize my USB wifi dongle so Bluetooth tethering was going to be my next method of internet connectivity until I can get a compatible card.  Doesn't see my WWAN card either, but I thought I saw a kext somewhere for mobile connectivity so I'll dig around for that.  The problem I'm facing now is that it doesn't run very smoothly, there aren't any video glitches or anything, it's like it just gets stuck for half a second.  I've had a terminal window up with top running to see if something is spiking but CPU usage stays low.  Even while playing a video, it will literally pause for a second, then spurt ahead and catch up to where it should be.  Any thoughts?  My guess is that while the FixHPET is getting me by, it's not ideal.  Thanks again guys for your help and for paving the way!

[blankmac]

lololol  spoke too soon.  I booted into Windows once and now my OSX partition won't boot from the hard drive or from my install USB.  I select it and it just goes back to the main clover menu.  :-/

 

Ok, I think Windows corrupted the OSX partition somehow.  Booted back into chimera and used Disk Utility to repair the disk.  Back in business.  I added a couple more fixes to Clover that are associated with IRQs - RTC, TMR, IPIC.  Now Bluetooth enumerates on every boot where before it was about every other boot.  This convinces me even more that HPET and IRQ conflicts are the problem.  Still not sure why I get stuttering.  Do you guys suppose it could be disk access related?  Or perhaps the CPU is being throttled way down or something?  Also, my WWAN card is visible on the USB bus, but isn't recognized as a WWAN card so I guess I need to figure out where to add a device ID.

[blankmac]

Ok, the stuttering only occurs while it is plugged into the AC adapter.  The battery keyboard doesn't seem to matter.  Not sure what to make of that, but at least I know what's what.  Bluetooth is working perfectly and I'm able to tether to my phone and share my home internet as well as the cellular signal (I'm writing this post with it right now!   )  Just have to figure out the battery meter because it shows 0% - not very handy.  lol  

[blankmac]

Sure enough, the stock DSDT is spec-ing 3 IRQs for HPET - 0,8,11 and IORegistry shows it's actually using 4 - 2,8,11,12 which cause some conflicts with other devices.  Now to figure out which are free and force it to use those in DSDT.  My stock DSDT has compile errors unfortunately.  :-/  Ones that don't make sense to me like an unexpected '}' when it sure looks like it's supposed to be there.

[alex.daoud]

Sure enough, the stock DSDT is spec-ing 3 IRQs for HPET - 0,8,11 and IORegistry shows it's actually using 4 - 2,8,11,12 which cause some conflicts with other devices.  Now to figure out which are free and force it to use those in DSDT.  My stock DSDT has compile errors unfortunately.  :-/  Ones that don't make sense to me like an unexpected '}' when it sure looks like it's supposed to be there.

Weird, I patched the IRQ/HPET on DSDT but it was never required for me. Go to the first page of this thread. There is a DSDT patch there that will help you.

[blankmac]

Weird, I patched the IRQ/HPET on DSDT but it was never required for me. Go to the first page of this thread. There is a DSDT patch there that will help you.

Thanks, any chance you can provide a direct link?  It keeps giving a "can't find the attachment" error.  I don't think it survived the forum rebuild.

Lol.  Nevermind, I thought you were referring to the attached dsdt.  I see your patch to fix my compile error.  Many thanks.

[altleet]

Blank, a quick question.. how the hell did you upgrade the ssd on your tablet... can you please send me a photo of back of your tablet without the cover? I wanna see if it's the same.

 

P.S. Mines completely covered in plastic with no access to wifi card or the ssd.. I'll have to dissemble the whole thing I think =/

[blankmac]

Blank, a quick question.. how the hell did you upgrade the ssd on your tablet... can you please send me a photo of back of your tablet without the cover? I wanna see if it's the same.

 

P.S. Mines completely covered in plastic with no access to wifi card or the ssd.. I'll have to dissemble the whole thing I think =/

Mine is the same way.  There is a video on the dell support site that shows how to take it apart, but for the life of me I cannot find it.  When I get home later I can look for it in my Desktop's history.  It's not hard, just some screws and some prying to get the casing away from the ports, but there are 3 ribbon cables that you have to be careful with to make sure you don't damage them.  I've taken it apart half a dozen times to mod the cooling, install the WWAN card, upgrade the SSD, etc., and it's no worse for wear.  All you need is a 00 philips screwdriver and some *plastic* prying tools to separate the case.  When I find the video, you'll see it's not too hard, although it does take more effort to separate the case than they show in the vid.

[alex.daoud]

Mine is the same way.  There is a video on the dell support site that shows how to take it apart, but for the life of me I cannot find it.  When I get home later I can look for it in my Desktop's history.  It's not hard, just some screws and some prying to get the casing away from the ports, but there are 3 ribbon cables that you have to be careful with to make sure you don't damage them.  I've taken it apart half a dozen times to mod the cooling, install the WWAN card, upgrade the SSD, etc., and it's no worse for wear.  All you need is a 00 philips screwdriver and some *plastic* prying tools to separate the case.  When I find the video, you'll see it's not too hard, although it does take more effort to separate the case than they show in the vid.

This is starting to sound weird, is the i5 physically different from the i3? I can pry off the back panel on mine and I have complete access to the WWAN, WLAN, SSD slots without having to fiddle with any ribbon cables...

[blankmac]

It's because we have the 7139 model, rather than the 7130 i5 model. The 7139 has a smart card reader and fingerprint scanner. I think Dell was trying to bill it as more of a business secure model so in addition to those features, they made the casing more secure by making it harder to access the upgradeable bits.

[alex.daoud]

It's because we have the 7139 model, rather than the 7130 i5 model. The 7139 has a smart card reader and fingerprint scanner. I think Dell was trying to bill it as more of a business secure model so in addition to those features, they made the casing more secure by making it harder to access the upgradeable bits.

Aaaah that makes more sense. We will have to compare 7130 and 7139 DSDTs later on to ensure that the differences won't cause any compatibility errors in drivers.

[blankmac]

Altleet - For reasons unknown, the video is eluding me.  I can't find it via a search of my history or of the dell site.  The only one I'm coming up with is this one - http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/videos~en/documents~venue-11-pro-7130-bottom-case-disassembly-video.aspx

 

That will show you how to deal with two of the ribbon cables, the 3rd is just for the fingerprint scanner.  It's held in by a white tab that you just pry up on.  Also, the three screws on the back of the SmartCard reader have to come out as well to get the case apart.  Once all the screws are out, I suggest starting on the bottom and working your way around to pop off the cover.  It takes a fair bit of effort to separate the case so take your time and be sure to use plastic tools or you will damage it for sure.  I use a spudger leftover from fixing my wife's iphone screen...3 times.... she's pretty, but clumsy, lol!  I'm heading to overseas tomorrow but when I get back I should be able to make a short vid to show you what to do if you need it.

[altleet]

Its fine.. Its just unbelievable that they made it a pain in the ass to deal with

 

I wanted to look in to the cooling and see if I can apply the thermal paste. Thanks anyways for confirming.. So I don't feel like I am tripping or missing out something here. 

 

 

Btw congrats on getting the system running finally.. Ive been busy with 2 other hackintoshes lately ( Clevo P170EM and Yoga 3 pro) . So I couldnt spare much time dealing with dells dsdt.. Although I am following your findings and progress. Ill continue back once I find some time.

 

P.S.  I do have a broadcom NGFF card but its in my yoga 3 pro works great on hackintosh.. and on the dell I am using a 3$ USB Wifi N adapter seems to work great with the drivers i provided in my guide

 

EDIT: I am finally in   everything so tiny.. anyways seems like cpu isnt accessible.. its under that metal thing next to the fan as far as I know.. but not sure how that comes off.

 

Also there is no WWAN card installled on the 3rd m.2 slot 

 

Just wondering.. which wwan card did you install? 

[blankmac]

The metal plate just snaps on.  If you take it easy and don't bend it, it will go on and off pretty easily.  I did apply an aftermarket thermal paste on mine.  It helps with idle temps but I'm not sure there's a big difference under sustained load.  I have a copper plate standing by and when I get some time I'm going to try to increase the mass a bit to see if that will lower temps.  Probably will only help if there is some heatpipe efficiency left to capture.

 

I put the Huawei ME906V in the WWAN spot.  Works excellently in Windows.  It was recognized immediately and populated the APN on its own.  I did have to add a driver to get the GPS working though.  I have T-Mobile and the 906V supports AWS.  The 906E is geared to AT&T.  Haven't been able to get OS X to do anything with it yet.  It shows up under USB and I tried to edit CellPhoneHelper's plist to get it recognized, but it didn't work.  There's only one Huawei device in there and it's old and without much support.  I think what's there was only meant to be a hook so Huawei's Mobile Connect software could reach the device.  The 906 series responds to AT commands and the only devices like that in the kext are Novatel ones.  I've been trying to find out what chipset is on the Huawei device to see if I can trick OS X to use a corresponding Novatel device, but haven't had any luck so far.  If I could get it working, then I don't know if I would bother with a wifi card.  Haven't seen many people get WWANs working tho.  Interestingly, the stock Intel 7260 WLAN is support OTB in Ubuntu now, I wonder if it would be possible to port the driver somehow?  

[alex.daoud]

The metal plate just snaps on.  If you take it easy and don't bend it, it will go on and off pretty easily.  I did apply an aftermarket thermal paste on mine.  It helps with idle temps but I'm not sure there's a big difference under sustained load.  I have a copper plate standing by and when I get some time I'm going to try to increase the mass a bit to see if that will lower temps.  Probably will only help if there is some heatpipe efficiency left to capture.

 

I put the Huawei ME906V in the WWAN spot.  Works excellently in Windows.  It was recognized immediately and populated the APN on its own.  I did have to add a driver to get the GPS working though.  I have T-Mobile and the 906V supports AWS.  The 906E is geared to AT&T.  Haven't been able to get OS X to do anything with it yet.  It shows up under USB and I tried to edit CellPhoneHelper's plist to get it recognized, but it didn't work.  There's only one Huawei device in there and it's old and without much support.  I think what's there was only meant to be a hook so Huawei's Mobile Connect software could reach the device.  The 906 series responds to AT commands and the only devices like that in the kext are Novatel ones.  I've been trying to find out what chipset is on the Huawei device to see if I can trick OS X to use a corresponding Novatel device, but haven't had any luck so far.  If I could get it working, then I don't know if I would bother with a wifi card.  Haven't seen many people get WWANs working tho.  Interestingly, the stock Intel 7260 WLAN is support OTB in Ubuntu now, I wonder if it would be possible to port the driver somehow?  

FakePCIID might be useful in faking the WWAN card, might be worth looking into.

 

Porting WLAN drivers has been an onerous task throughout the existence of the hackintosh scene. The reason being that the source code for the 802.11 classes has never been released. I think someone has reconstructed the headers for them through reverse engineering so theoretically it should be possible. It would be an extremely difficult task though. Quite a while ago, there was a project called iwidarwin which succeeded in porting the drivers for the 2200 and a couple of other now defunct devices. I doubt anyone will be porting drivers for the new ones any time soon unfortunately. On top of that, driver porting from Linux to OS X is no easy task no matter what device you're looking at, the kernels differ greatly. (OS X kernel is the Darwin kernel which is BSD based whereas the Linux one is...Linux based, it's its own kernel). Your best bet is to get the broadcom compatible card (the model of which atleet has posted above and I have put into the OP). Be warned that it is hard to come by and costs a pretty penny (I paid 80 USD for mine). Stay away from Chinese distributors online, they are lying about their stock. The broadcom card can only be obtained through Lenovo/Dell spare parts channels or as an engineering sample (what I got) which are all in limited supplies.

[altleet]

Oh thanks for the info.. Ill get on with applying thermal paste now I am not sure about the WWAN card.. Because I barely use 3G/ 4G connectivity.  for me this tablet is mostly a lab rat to do all my dirty testing on that sounds so evil. although I treat it with care.  

 

Edit: nope.. No luck with snapping the metal plate off. kinda scary rather.. it seems to be pulling the motherboard along with it.

[blankmac]

Oh thanks for the info.. Ill get on with applying thermal paste now I am not sure about the WWAN card.. Because I barely use 3G/ 4G connectivity.  for me this tablet is mostly a lab rat to do all my dirty testing on that sounds so evil. although I treat it with care.  

 

Edit: nope.. No luck with snapping the metal plate off. kinda scary rather.. it seems to be pulling the motherboard along with it.

If you look at it closely, you can see retaining tabs around along the sides, all I do is use something to pry the tab away, then gently start lifting up.  Don't be chicken! lol. 

[altleet]

Well thanks for the help.. after a little challenge trying to pry up the metal.. ( it required minor bending -- But it bend back just fine without any marks) replaced the stock thermal paste.. I don't know how much was the effort worth but ill find out soon once I jack up the temps in game.. the most it went was 75 - 76 %.. On the plus side nothing was glued in tab like how it is in the macbooks air and so on.. although I don't like that fact the that its covered in a metal box frame.. I think it allows more heat to accumulate in.. I wonder if temps get better with leaving the metal out of the tablet.. 

[blankmac]

FakePCIID might be useful in faking the WWAN card, might be worth looking into.

 

Porting WLAN drivers has been an onerous task throughout the existence of the hackintosh scene. The reason being that the source code for the 802.11 classes has never been released. I think someone has reconstructed the headers for them through reverse engineering so theoretically it should be possible. It would be an extremely difficult task though. Quite a while ago, there was a project called iwidarwin which succeeded in porting the drivers for the 2200 and a couple of other now defunct devices. I doubt anyone will be porting drivers for the new ones any time soon unfortunately. On top of that, driver porting from Linux to OS X is no easy task no matter what device you're looking at, the kernels differ greatly. (OS X kernel is the Darwin kernel which is BSD based whereas the Linux one is...Linux based, it's its own kernel). Your best bet is to get the broadcom compatible card (the model of which atleet has posted above and I have put into the OP). Be warned that it is hard to come by and costs a pretty penny (I paid 80 USD for mine). Stay away from Chinese distributors online, they are lying about their stock. The broadcom card can only be obtained through Lenovo/Dell spare parts channels or as an engineering sample (what I got) which are all in limited supplies.

That's way over my head for sure.  I saw the broadcom card on Amazon two or three weeks ago and hesitated...should have grabbed it because now it's nowhere to be found.  

 

Still no luck on the WWAN card.  It shows up on the internal USB hub, but I haven't been able to communicate with it yet.  I'm digging through some Huawei kexts for 10.9 that I've found and hopefully I'll find something useful in those.

 

I'm still having some minor issues that seem to be either related to USB HID stuff or the Window Server.  Sometimes I'll get laggy behavior whenever I click on something as if the UI is frozen for a second, spinning beachball, then everything catches up.  It's not every time though which is making it hard to figure out.  It's been a good learning experience -- most of the desktops I've built in the past were pretty much turnkey and needed very little to get functioning 100%.  

[blankmac]

Found a cheap Sierra wireless EM7355 card.  It's a little more geared towards AT&T band-wise rather than T-Mobile, but I think it will work for me in my area.  Should have it in a few days and I think I will have a much easier time getting it to work on OS X.

[blankmac]

Hey guys, my install is currently running perfectly and I'm trying to gather as much info as possible so I can maybe troubleshoot my random freeze issues.  I've collected the whole boot sequence from the console, all the currently running processes, and all the currently loaded kexts via kextstat.  Is there anything else I should try to capture to compare?  Thanks.

[blankmac]

Still can't figure out why I'm having laggy issues now and again...There's nothing in the logs or any of the data I collected that points me to anything in particular.  Pretty annoying really.  Also, the Sierra card I received is an older version and is not recognized at all by OS X.  It also causes hellacious screen flicker issues in Windows 8 so I'm going to keep plugging away at the Huawei card.  I emailed them about OSX drivers, not that I expect them to help mind you, but you never know.  I replaced the aluminum shield with a copper plate and used thermal adhesive to permanently bond it to the CPU heatsink and heatpipe.  I drilled holes in the plate so that the entire heatsink assembly can be removed as one unit.  It made a tremendous difference in the cooling system under Windows at least.  I can ramp up the TDP to 12.5 watts and it stays around 80C under max load when playing a modern game like COD AW.  The temps barely crack 70C under load on older DX9 games.  I think the only other improvement that can be made would be to get fresher air to the fan intake.  I might get a spare back and see if I can mod it without it looking horrid.  On the Huawei card, it doesn't seem like FakePCIID is really an option since the wwan card is on the usb bus.  Unless i'm misunderstanding the purpose of the kext (which is totally possible).  I'm actually considering trying to install Mavericks and see if that changes anything because there are quite a few Huawei network devices that are not working with Yosemite that used to work under 10.9 apparently.