skyfly555 Posted April 12, 2017 Share Posted April 12, 2017 Note: I hope this tutorial will be inspiration for somebody willing to install Sierra on unsupported hackintoshes! As you may know, I’ve installed before Snow Leopard, Yosemite and El Capitan on this computer. You can find my tutorials on insanelymac. Now it’s time for Sierra 10.12.4. You need to upgrade the processor to a Core2Duo T9300 (20 euros). I highly recommend having 3 GB of RAM installed, and a SSD drive (I have a 120 GB SSD, 50 euros). And you’ll need a real mac or a hackintosh (maybe this same Acer 5315, if you have it hackintoshed) to create the installer and so on. We will use 2 USB sticks, one of them has to be 8 GB or larger, and an external HDD. Important: Use the left top USB and the right one. Don’t use the left bottom USB, because it will be disabled and Sierra will not detect it. PART 1: The installation process Take the “small” USB stick. In my case, I’m using a 128 MB microSD with a small USB reader. You have to format it with a MBR partition scheme. Create a HFS partition on it. You can use Disk Utility. Let’s call it “installU”. Install Enoch-rev.2839.pkg on installU. You only have to select one option. Under “Bootloader Chameleon”, mark the second option saying "Install Chameleon in the chosen partition". Be sure you are installing it on installU, use the option "Change install location...". Install Clover_v2.4k_r4049.pkg on installU. You have to check 3 options. First, “Bootloader/install boot0af in MBR”; second, “CloverEFI/CloverEFI 64-bits SATA”. Third, and optional, “Themes/BGM”. Be sure you are installing it on installU, use the option "Change install location...". Download the ZIP I provide with some important things you will need (here). From the ZIP file, take the EFI folder and overwrite the one you have on installU. With this, we have some important kexts, a patched DSDT.aml, and a great config.plist that says we have a Macbook 5,1. Now you have a USB stick that can boot Clover. You need to be sure your Acer boot from it. So, you will have to go to BIOS pressing F2 and select it as the first boot option. Note: Clover will appear in some seconds. It will take some time the first time you boot with this USB stick. You have to boot from InstallU every time you boot or reboot during the entire step 7. Now we need to create the Sierra installer on the other USB, let’s call it “installSie”, and install Sierra on the external HDD. To do that, just follow the instructions by Dosdude. The link: http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html Basically, what you will do: a. You will download Sierra 10.12.4.dmg. You can do that in this webpage. b. You will format installSierra as GUID and with a HFS+ Journaled partition. c. You will download and use a tool to create the installSie USB stick. d. Once installed, you will have to boot from installU and select the installS USB stick to boot the Sierra installer. e. Inside of the Sierra installed, you will take the external HDD and format it as GUID and with a HFS+ Journaled partition. Let’s call it “SierraHDD”. If you are an advanced user, maybe you have the HDD in this way; so, you will be able to skip this step. Or you can even have on the HFS partition a Captain backup done with Carbon Copy Cloner and the system will be updated to Sierra without losing your apps and files, at least, supposedly. f. You will install macOS Sierra on SierraHDD with the installer. Maybe you will need an USB keyboard! I needed it during the installation and the first boots of Sierra, until Sierra detected I had a keyboard, and I configured it pressing one key from the keyboard when Sierra asked me to do that. g. IMPORTANT: You have to run macOS Post Install as it’s described in this webpage, selecting the default patches for a Macbook 5,1. h. When you do all of this, you have Sierra installed on SierraHDD and you are booting your computer with InstallU to tell Clover to boot macOS from the external HDD. NOTE: Be patient. We are doing a thing that is not very supported by our BIOS. BIOS needs tones of time to boot from a GPT partition. So, installerU needs time to load the Sierra installer. When we boot the SierraHDD from Clover, it requires time, too. Maybe 5 minutes, or even more. PART 2: Post installation process (optional) Now you have to decide what to do. Now Sierra boots but it needs a lot of time to do that, due to the fact it’s installed on a GPT disk. Note: This SierraHHD gives you the power to boot Mac real computers and even some Sierra unsupported real Macs, as the Macbook 5,1. An option is taking your internal HDD, format it as MBR, clone Sierra using Carbon Copy Clone to the internal SSD, and do steps from 2 to 5 to make your internal SDD bootable. In this way, you will not need the installU USB stick anymore and Sierra will boot very fast. When this is done, you can go to the BIOS pressing F2 when booting and tell Acer to boot from the internal HDD/SSD. Why are you doing all this? Because Sierra needs to be installed on a GPT disk and it refuses to be installed on a MBR disk. Once installed, we can trick it as I have just explained. PART 3: Issues Remember, Intel GMA X3100 graphics card is not supported by Sierra. So, it’s detected thanks to the GMA X3100 kexts, from OS X Hackers. But we don’t have OpenGL, neither QE/CI. The loss you have with this is partially solved by the internal SSD. Sincerely, if you use the Acer for web surfing and office work, it’s ok in my opinion. Wifi is not working. Sound is not working. Ethernet is not working correctly. Left bottom USB port is not working (it didn’t work when I had El Capitan). What I’ve done: Wi-FI: I don’t use it, but you can find info here (there is a list of native airport half mini cards). I have bought an Atheros AR5B91 Mini PCI-E Card (an used one costs 3-5 euros on eBay). It's detected out-of-the-box as it was an Airport card. Ethernet: I had at home two USB Ethernet cards. TP-LINK UE300, 1 Gbps, 20 euros, it works out-of-the-box. UGREEN USB 2.0 Multifunction Hub with Ethernet, 20 euros, it works out-of-the-box. I personally use the UGREEN because I need more than two USB ports. Audio: I have an external USB device from EC Technology, 9 euros, out-of-the-box (link to it: https://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B011QA7R9O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). UPDATED (21th April 2017): Install these kexts in S/L/E. Rename AppleHDA-patched-alc268.kext to AppleHDA.kext before doing that. Remember, if you update Sierra you will probably need to reinstall these kexts. You can install them using Kext Utility v2.6.6. Download them from here. You will have to use a new config.plist for Clover. Download it from here. Overwrite your config.plist with this one. Credits: Mirone and his fabulous AppleHDA Patcher.app Another thing: This Acer 5315-5715z doesn't need one of the most supposedly needed kexts from /EFI/Clover/kexts/10.12/: NullCPUPowerManagement.kext. I'm not using it at all, although it is in EFI Clover Kexts folder: you can delete it. This is because Core2Duo T9300 is supported by macOS Sierra out-of-the-box. Remember, if you have cloned Sierra to the MBR formatted internal SSD, you have an external HDD as a backup. If you have done all the process with your Acer 5315, and you have, as it’s my case, an Acer 5715z, you will be able to boot the 5715z with the InstallU USB stick and this external HDD, out-of-the-box. It will need some time, you know why, as it happens with the 5315. Updated (21th April 2017): I've used this GPT external HDD to boot from it, directly, without any installation process, Sierra on a Lenovo U330, and, after that, I have cloned it to the Lenovo's internal HDD using Carbon Copy Cloner, installed Clover to the Lenovo's internal HDD, and it works nicely; so, this external HDD is a very good aid to create more hackintoshes. Credits All the hackintosh community, and the "unsupported mac hackers", in this case, OS X Hackers and TRMJIJ, and Dosdude1. Thanks to merging the knowledge from the two communities, installing Sierra on this unsupported machine has become a reality. Finally, audio kext has been created thanks to Mirone. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djforbes95 Posted February 17, 2020 Share Posted February 17, 2020 Trying this on my Acer 5315 as we speak however haven't upgraded the CPU so will let you know how it goes thank you for the clear tutorial so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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