[Guide] 10.11 El Capitan On the Surface Pro 4

[bernito]

Had I known, I would have at least tested it, but unfortunately I've already returned the Dell.  Given the replaceability of the guts, lack of a whitelist, etc, it would be a no-brainer with a working touchscreen.  I'm going to try the HP Spectre X2 sometime in the next couple of weeks, supposedly the TS is Wacom AES and USB connected so there's a good chance of finding drivers from the Wacom site that will give full compatibility.  Intel wifi again, but some of the photos I've seen lead me to believe it can be replaced just like the Dell.

Think link contains a downloadable PDF on how to teardown of the HP Spectre x2.  I unfortunately cannot tell what type of WiFi card is in it from the pictures.

 

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/productdata/disassemblynotebook-o.html

[blankmac]

Think link contains a downloadable PDF on how to teardown of the HP Spectre x2. I unfortunately cannot tell what type of WiFi card is in it from the pictures.

 

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/productdata/disassemblynotebook-o.html

I've since found out that it has Intel wifi soldered to the mainboard. The wwan card is m.2 and replaceable. Depending on whether it is USB or PCIe connected, the only possible course I can see is to replace it with a WLAN card. The real problem may be that the BIOS is likely to have a whitelist of acceptable cards and it may not be easily defeated. The business model version, HP elite x2 1012, has a replaceable card, but again, whitelist. Sigh. I've been thinking it over, not sure it's going to be worth the hassle.

[bernito]

I've since found out that it has Intel wifi soldered to the mainboard. The wwan card is m.2 and replaceable. Depending on whether it is USB or PCIe connected, the only possible course I can see is to replace it with a WLAN card. The real problem may be that the BIOS is likely to have a whitelist of acceptable cards and it may not be easily defeated. The business model version, HP elite x2 1012, has a replaceable card, but again, whitelist. Sigh. I've been thinking it over, not sure it's going to be worth the hassle.

I came to the same conclusion regarding the wwan card on the Spectre x2 and oddly just was looking at and about to post that the Elite x2 has a replaceable WiFi card.

 

Do you know for sure that it is whitelisted in bios?

[blankmac]

I came to the same conclusion regarding the wwan card on the Spectre x2 and oddly just was looking at and about to post that the Elite x2 has a replaceable WiFi card.

 

Do you know for sure that it is whitelisted in bios?

No, just guessing. I'd be pretty shocked if it wasn't tho, HP wants you to buy more expensive HP stuff. I hate to abuse Best Buy's return policy but I may just buy the M3 version they have locally and fiddle with it some.

[bernito]

No, just guessing. I'd be pretty shocked if it wasn't tho, HP wants you to buy more expensive HP stuff. I hate to abuse Best Buy's return policy but I may just buy the M3 version they have locally and fiddle with it some.

Good idea. An HP rep just told me that these are business units that are designed to be upgradeable so he believes there should not be any whitelist issues.

 

  The maintenance and service guide is at the bottom of this page:

 

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/psi/mostViewedResults/?sp4ts.oid=874194

[blankmac]

Good idea. An HP rep just told me that these are business units that are designed to be upgradeable so he believes there should not be any whitelist issues.

 

  The maintenance and service guide is at the bottom of this page:

 

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/psi/mostViewedResults/?sp4ts.oid=874194

 

On the whole, I have to say the HP is a bust.  I had a Spectre X2 in my hands the last couple of days.  Upsides - OSX installs easily enough and the USB touchscreen is recognized and functions as a mouse.  The vendor id is Elan, not Wacom, so none of wacom's drivers work, but multitouch can be had if you want to pony up the $$ for some touch-base drivers.  The device itself is slick and well built, easily the closest to the Surface Pro 3/4 than any other I've tried in terms of weight/size/useability.  The big downside/dealbreaker with the Spectre is the soldered Intel WiFi.  I didn't realize that M.2 WWAN cards are keyed with "B" rather than "A" and/or "E" so there's no possibility of using the WWAN slot for WLAN.  Which brings me to the Elite X2, I think that it can be made to be a near fully functional system as it shares the same guts as the Spectre with the advantage of being able to swap the WLAN.  Downside to the Elite X2 is the cost (and *maybe* a card whitelist).  The base model is not horrible in terms of price, but only comes with 4GB of memory and the Core M3.  Based on my experience with the Spectre, anything less than 8GB of memory will drive you crazy and the price goes way up when you bump it to 8GB unfortunately, more than I'm willing to spend at least.  Wish I would have tested Alex's I2C kext on the Dell....

 

In SP4 news, I still have not come up with a way to install from 10.11.4.....

[bernito]

On the whole, I have to say the HP is a bust.  I had a Spectre X2 in my hands the last couple of days.  Upsides - OSX installs easily enough and the USB touchscreen is recognized and functions as a mouse.  The vendor id is Elan, not Wacom, so none of wacom's drivers work, but multitouch can be had if you want to pony up the $$ for some touch-base drivers.  The device itself is slick and well built, easily the closest to the Surface Pro 3/4 than any other I've tried in terms of weight/size/useability.  The big downside/dealbreaker with the Spectre is the soldered Intel WiFi.  I didn't realize that M.2 WWAN cards are keyed with "B" rather than "A" and/or "E" so there's no possibility of using the WWAN slot for WLAN.  Which brings me to the Elite X2, I think that it can be made to be a near fully functional system as it shares the same guts as the Spectre with the advantage of being able to swap the WLAN.  Downside to the Elite X2 is the cost (and *maybe* a card whitelist).  The base model is not horrible in terms of price, but only comes with 4GB of memory and the Core M3.  Based on my experience with the Spectre, anything less than 8GB of memory will drive you crazy and the price goes way up when you bump it to 8GB unfortunately, more than I'm willing to spend at least.  Wish I would have tested Alex's I2C kext on the Dell....

 

In SP4 news, I still have not come up with a way to install from 10.11.4.....

 

Bummer.  HP had the "Customizable Elite x2 for half price on their website yesterday but didn't the trigger.  Big mistake based on your post.

[blankmac]

 

 

Bummer.  HP had the "Customizable Elite x2 for half price on their website yesterday but didn't the trigger.  Big mistake based on your post.

 

 

I guess if money is no object, maybe, but it would still be $1300-ish out the door and that seems like a lot for what you're getting.  I think I'm going to snag another Dell and hope that I can get Alex's driver working on it.  The microsoft store has the 1080p model for $849  (8GB/128GB Core M5)  The 4k screen is too much for the HD515 IMO and would likely need the IOKit patched to work if it could be made to work at all.  I'm also going to pick up a cheap 42mm SSD since they are B keyed and see if I can add it in the WWAN slot, just depends on if it is a true PCIe slot or USB connected, I suppose.  I have unlimited tethering worldwide on my work phone so I don't really have any use for WWAN anyway.  I'll start a new installation thread once I get it figured out.

[bernito]

I guess if money is no object, maybe, but it would still be $1300-ish out the door and that seems like a lot for what you're getting.  I think I'm going to snag another Dell and hope that I can get Alex's driver working on it.  The microsoft store has the 1080p model for $849  (8GB/128GB Core M5)  The 4k screen is too much for the HD515 IMO and would likely need the IOKit patched to work if it could be made to work at all.  I'm also going to pick up a cheap 42mm SSD since they are B keyed and see if I can add it in the WWAN slot, just depends on if it is a true PCIe slot or USB connected, I suppose.  I have unlimited tethering worldwide on my work phone so I don't really have any use for WWAN anyway.  I'll start a new installation thread once I get it figured out.

I actually bought a Dell XPS 13 9350 earlier today from the Dell refurb website with a 30% off coupon that ends tonight.  Its core i5 6200 / QHD+ / 256 GB SSD and cost $839,30 + $62.95 sales tax with free shipping for a total of $902.25 delivered.  I owned the exact same machine (XPS 13 9343 early 2015) and the Intel HD 5500 integrated graphics had no problem driving the QHD+ screen.  You do need to patch the IOKit and increase the DVMT Pre-Allocated settings, but can get virtually everything to work.  Here is a great thread on the 9350 if you are interested:

 

^^^^^^^^^^^

Edited April 15, 2016 by JahStories
Please read the rules!

[blankmac]

I actually bought a Dell XPS 13 9350 earlier today from the Dell refurb website with a 30% off coupon that ends tonight. Its core i5 6200 / QHD+ / 256 GB SSD and cost $839,30 + $62.95 sales tax with free shipping for a total of $902.25 delivered. I owned the exact same machine (XPS 13 9343 early 2015) and the Intel HD 5500 integrated graphics had no problem driving the QHD+ screen. You do need to patch the IOKit and increase the DVMT Pre-Allocated settings, but can get virtually everything to work. Here is a great thread on the 9350 if you are interested:

^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Lol, you're living dangerously posting that link. That's tantamount to heresy around this place!

 

That seems like a really good deal. I already have a killer laptop, tho....980m and only weighs 1.5lbs more than the XPS 13. Not nearly as thin, of course. Lol. Anyway, I'm going to stick with the XPS 12 and see if I can get it working well.

[JahStories]

Great news Alex!

[tundrwd]

I'm going to make a request here - not sure yet if this has been done - but I hate this thread process trying to find out what I need to do/watch for/etc.

 

Can someone either:

1. Update the first post on this thread with CURRENT instructions, as things are determined/found out/etc.
2. Create a NEW post - a sticky, if possible that does #1
3. Or, post instructions on a website, or in a Google doc to install OSX El Capitan on an SP4.

And, since it certainly appears that there is a slightly different process between internal or external drive to boot from/install - instructions or a "mix" of which things need to be done for which type of boot device?  Personally, I plan on using one of my USB SSD drives to install on for a while - until I'm comfortable things are working properly, etc.

 

Sorry - I've just been on other forae where this type of item goes on for dozens or even hundreds of pages, and you have to wade through ALL of it, including all the red herrings and wild goose chases, trying to create your own consolidated set of proper instructions.

 

Anyone else begin to see what I mean?  Last page and a half are not really about the SP4, per se, but various Dell and HP models.  Not bad information - don't get me wrong - knowing what works/doesn't, may be of some help, but some of that is probably irrelevant to getting OSX on the SP4.

[blankmac]

Anyone else begin to see what I mean? Last page and a half are not really about the SP4, per se, but various Dell and HP models. Not bad information - don't get me wrong - knowing what works/doesn't, may be of some help, but some of that is probably irrelevant to getting OSX on the SP4.

I didn't start the thread so there's not much I can do about the first post which, by the way, is still accurate installation information. You are free to assemble a new thread with what you believe is the appropriate content. As I said before, we are at an impasse with the SP4, unfortunately.

[cydia2020]

I got installed on the Surface Book, but it seems that the NVMe driver have some problem, when I put NVMe driver in the Clover Kexts folder, it will stop booting, but if I delete the driver, it will go back to normal, any ideas?

[blankmac]

I got installed on the Surface Book, but it seems that the NVMe driver have some problem, when I put NVMe driver in the Clover Kexts folder, it will stop booting, but if I delete the driver, it will go back to normal, any ideas?

There's an unknown interaction with the I2C controller kext that causes the NVMe driver to no longer work. Rolling back the kext to 10.11.3 will allow the NVMe kext to load but it isn't a realistic solution going forward given that new installations can't be done with 10.11.4. Until someone with the skills writes a new kext or the original author updates the NVMe kext, we are out of luck where the internal drive is concerned. The current kext is a bit dicey on 10.11 anyway. It crashes frequently on shutdown which may corrupt the drive or cause data loss.

[alex.daoud]

There's an unknown interaction with the I2C controller kext that causes the NVMe driver to no longer work. Rolling back the kext to 10.11.3 will allow the NVMe kext to load but it isn't a realistic solution going forward given that new installations can't be done with 10.11.4. Until someone with the skills writes a new kext or the original author updates the NVMe kext, we are out of luck where the internal drive is concerned. The current kext is a bit dicey on 10.11 anyway. It crashes frequently on shutdown which may corrupt the drive or cause data loss.

We figured out the cause of the apparent meddling the I2C controller kexts were causing with the other system. Turns out it had nothing to do with them and the issue was immediately rebooting from Windows. For some reason, the system has two DSDTs so the one we modified was only being loaded on a fresh boot. The unmodified one was still in memory upon rebooting from Windows.

 

Might not be the situation for you but just wanted to make you aware.

[blankmac]

We figured out the cause of the apparent meddling the I2C controller kexts were causing with the other system. Turns out it had nothing to do with them and the issue was immediately rebooting from Windows. For some reason, the system has two DSDTs so the one we modified was only being loaded on a fresh boot. The unmodified one was still in memory upon rebooting from Windows.

 

Might not be the situation for you but just wanted to make you aware.

Ok thanks, that may be worth looking into... I've seen the dual dsdt thing before but I didn't realize it stemmed from a reboot vs cold start. What were the significant differences between the two that caused the problem? Was it that previously disabled i2c devices were now enabled? Or something else?

[ccarrieta]

I can give the elite x2 a try, would the instructions be similar to SP4 ? or can you give me an idea of how to start..  Also even if I need to shell out $$$ do you think that the screen (i read it was wacom) would also work with the pen ?

[blankmac]

I can give the elite x2 a try, would the instructions be similar to SP4 ? or can you give me an idea of how to start.. Also even if I need to shell out $$$ do you think that the screen (i read it was wacom) would also work with the pen ?

The HP installs easily, your best bet is to head to the El Capitan laptop support forum on the "other" site and follow the clover based install instructions. The touchscreen may incorporate Wacom's tech but the vendor id is Elan. Touch-base very likely has compatible multitouch drivers if you want to shell out some $$. They'll send you a test driver upon request. Can't answer the pen question tho. I still have some USB issues to fix on the XPS 12, but I'm sticking with that. Just had it priced matched with Amazon for $699. That's tough to beat money-wise.

[ccarrieta]

you mean the xps 12 2 in 1 (newest model with usb-c) ? I have one at work not used, and can give it a try...

[blankmac]

you mean the xps 12 2 in 1 (newest model with usb-c) ? I have one at work not used, and can give it a try...

Yep, that's the one I'm using, not the 4K screen model tho, it boots to a black screen, and in my opinion, isn't worth the hit on performance/battery. Touchscreen doesn't work and may not ever, but it runs Ubuntu 16.04 really well, touch included. Just ordered a 1TB SSD for it and I'll do an OS X install write up after I put the SSD in.

[cydia2020]

Finally found the solution of NVMe Driver on 10.11.4, the solution is simply disabling TPM, also see http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/311874-installing-10114-on-surface-book-i5-256-gib-with-dgpu/for NVMe EFI driver

[blankmac]

Finally found the solution of NVMe Driver on 10.11.4, the solution is simply disabling TPM, also see http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/311874-installing-10114-on-surface-book-i5-256-gib-with-dgpu/for NVMe EFI driver

 

That may work for the Surface Book, but not the SP4, or at least, not mine.  I've always had TPM disabled.  :-(  The driver is buggy as {censored} on El Cap anyway.  Almost always kernel panics on shutdown for me.  Hasn't corrupted the drive yet but it's only a matter of time.  Glad you were able to get yours working tho!

[mac33]

Yep, that's the one I'm using, not the 4K screen model tho, it boots to a black screen, and in my opinion, isn't worth the hit on performance/battery. Touchscreen doesn't work and may not ever, but it runs Ubuntu 16.04 really well, touch included. Just ordered a 1TB SSD for it and I'll do an OS X install write up after I put the SSD in.

 

Have you started a thread for the Dell XPS 12 9250 yet? How are you booting? USB-C Adapter?

[blankmac]

Have you started a thread for the Dell XPS 12 9250 yet? How are you booting? USB-C Adapter?

 

I really liked the Dell but I ended up going through two of them with what appeared to be motherboard issues.  So at the moment, I don't have one in my possession and was able to score an HP elite x2 at a reasonable price.  If the HP works out, I will likely just stick with it, but if the WLAN proves too hard to get working, I'll get another Dell.

 

I was booting the installer via a USB-C to USB-A adapter and then connecting a USB 2.0 hub to the adapter.  I had the installer on a USB 3.0 stick and USB 3.0 was not functioning directly from the USB-C adapter.  The only real issue I was having was memory allocation errors at start.  The only thing that solved this for me was to use a UEFI driver compiled specifically for this problem which I obtained from here - https://sourceforge.net/p/cloverefiboot/tickets/125/?page=1

 

Even with the driver, it will fail to boot OS X maybe 10% of the time.  I didn't work on figuring anything better, but a more reliable solution is probably possible.  I'm attaching my Clover folder (use at your own risk) if you want an easy way to get your installer booting.  I highly suggest you extract your own ACPI tables and patch them tho.  As it stands, I have the MacBookPro12,1 in the SMBIOS, but the MacBook9,1 is a spot on match for the Dell.  The only problem is that currently the MacBook9,1 is running a different build of 10.11.4 since it was just released and it doesn't appear in the platform support list.  You can still use the MacBook9,1, but if you do, REMOVE the SSDT.aml from my clover folder or you will be unable to boot.  You will still get power management of a sort, but the processor will not underclock, only turbo.  I expect that as soon as 10.11.5 is released you should be able to use the macbook smbios with better results than the MBP, possibly without needing any power management adjustments at all given that an identical processor is used.

 

Feel free to take the groundwork I started and make an install thread.  If you have any questions, let me know and I'll try to answer as best I can.  Hope that helps.

CLOVER.zip