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[GUIDE] Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia on HP EliteDesk 800 G4/G5 Mini - The perfect MacMini8,1 Hackintosh


deeveedee
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On 6/8/2022 at 1:25 AM, deeveedee said:

I performed the upgrade from OC 0.8.0 to OC 0.8.1 with following changes.  My new OC 0.8.1 EFI is attached to Post #1.

 

Is it necessary for me to upgrade every time there is an update to OC? I am currently running OC 0.8.0 EFI and it appears to be working well. Just looking for some general advice on when it is a good idea to upgrade the EFI.

Edited by kiwi7910
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@kiwi7910 If your rig works well, you don't need to upgrade OC.  Read more for why you may want to upgrade OC...

 

I upgrade OC as frequently as I do so that I keep this thread current for others who follow.  Each OC upgrade may include bug fixes and/or changes necessary for a new version of macOS (or other OS, since OC is a bootloader for multiple OSes).  It's almost certain that you will need a new version of OC for a future version of macOS (e.g. we'll probably need a new version of OC for Ventura).  It is generally easier to make the small, incremental updates for each new release of OC than it is to make updates after skipping mulitple versions of OC.  If you don't like the pain of significant changes after skipping multiple OC versions, then keeping your OC version current with minimal changes may be desirable for you.

 

Also, when I upgrade OC to a new version, I upgrade the Acidanthera kexts.  For example, when I first created the OC EFI for this HackMini8,1, AppleALC did not fully support the layout for our audio.  That was fixed with an upgrade of AppleALC.  It's less likely that new kexts will be required for our rigs, but I still upgrade the kexts with each new OC release (if kext upgrades are available).

Edited by deeveedee
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@kiwi7910, The fact that you asked that question the way you did indicates that you probably don't need to update OC. @deeveedee just offers an extraordinary service by keeping things up to date for everyone. There can always be some newcomers who would like to start from the most up to date version. I have been on the side of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy, letting myself lag for updates for several month at a time.

That being said, keeping track of the changelog is a good thing to do, and upgrading across multiple versions can become tedious work as configurations may change significantly. So in that case it may be a problem of wanting to spend a little bit more time when updating but doing it less frequently, or doing very little keeping track of every update. We may end up finding a fix for something we did not know was broken.

 

@deeveedee, talking about the kext's have you tried compiling them from source? I have discovered that for some odd reasons, some of my self compiled ones are very significantly smaller than the official released ones. I have saved several MBs from my EFI by compiling Lilu, WEG, VirtualSMC and AppleALC myself.

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@rafale77 Interesting observation about the kext sizes.  I've only built Acidanthera kexts when attempting to resolve an issue (e.g. I was building VoodooPS2 as I experimented with a bug fix for an issue I submitted).  I tend to be conservative with OC and kexts, preferring to stick with release builds directly from Acidanthera, but it's good that there are experimenters like you who pave the way for the rest of us!

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EDIT: It now appears that these additional run-efi-updater entries are not necessary for installing Ventura.  Leaving this here just in case we need it.

 

I've made my first EFI mod in preparation for experimentation with Ventura.  My new EFI (which I won't be posting for a while) contains the additional run-efi-updater entries noted by Cyberdevs here.  My latest config.plist with these changes is attached.  The changes are as follows:

 

   EFI/OC/config.plist

  • Added run-efi-updater (String, No) to NVRAM > Add > 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14
  • Added run-efi-updater (String, No) to NVRAM > Add > 4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102

config.plist.zip

Edited by deeveedee
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2 hours ago, deeveedee said:

@rafale77 Interesting observation about the kext sizes.  I've only built Acidanthera kexts when attempting to resolve an issue (e.g. I was building VoodooPS2 as I experimented with a bug fix for an issue I submitted).  I tend to be conservative with OC and kexts, preferring to stick with release builds directly from Acidanthera, but it's good that there are experimenters like you who pave the way for the rest of us!

 

See the compile dates and the size below:

From memory, Lilu, AppleALC were the big hitters. It is possibly due to my XCode setup? Not sure...

 

image.png.0056c03ce08e77784a56a3b0cc9d4960.png

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@Jazzoo Someone else reported the same "AppleKeyStoreTest" issue here.  I posted a possible solution here.

 

If my posted solution doesn't work for you, if you post your current EFI, I'd be happy to take a look.  I haven't yet tried to install Ventura, but I've only seen this issue reported by one other person, so maybe we can figure this out together.

Edited by deeveedee
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1 hour ago, deeveedee said:

@Jazzoo Someone else reported the same "AppleKeyStoreTest" issue here.  I posted a possible solution here.

 

If my posted solution doesn't work for you, if you post your current EFI, I'd be happy to take a look.  I haven't yet tried to install Ventura, but I've only seen this issue reported by one other person, so maybe we can figure this out together.

 

@deeveedee Thank you for your help! I'm far from my HP Mini for a couple of days. I will post results monday when I am back. 

 

BTW guys do you know where to purchase OEM WiFi/BT antenna's for our mini systems ? I have a spare BCM94360NG and I bought universal laptop antennas...signal is really bad :( I'm in Europe and my wife is in US currently so I have options if available anywhere.

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What antenna did you get? In the US, EBay is a good source of these parts. I got one set there in the past.

I have been experimenting with antenna myself and discovered that these tiny laptop or internal antennas work great for 5GHz but are often hit and miss for 2.4GHz and BT.

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17 minutes ago, rafale77 said:

What antenna did you get? In the US, EBay is a good source of these parts. I got one set there in the past.

I have been experimenting with antenna myself and discovered that these tiny laptop or internal antennas work great for 5GHz but are often hit and miss for 2.4GHz and BT.

 

I got one of these Antenna Cable Module. Placed them on the front and the back of the case imitating the OEM antenna position. Tried with BCM94360NG and it works better than Intel 9560NGW but still not what I expected. The reception is not that good if the router is in the other room. Curiously this cable module works way better when installed on SFF case. I am thinking may be these mini's are struggling some kind of interference if the antenna is not placed the perfect way.

Edited by Jazzoo
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@Jazzoo, I too am finding out how finicky these antennas can be. Beyond just the wifi network signal, it also impacts reliability on a lot of apple specific features (continuity, Sidecar, watch unlock). For the HP, I highly recommend the OEM setup. There are all kinds of orientation and shielding setup for these antennas to function optimally. One alternative would also have them both stick out from the back with a cable and and standard RP-SMA connectors as the HPs have precut punch out in the back for this but the looks would be less pleasant.

Edited by rafale77
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My bootable backup procedure here does not appear to be working for Monterey 12.3.1.  I was hoping to create a bootable backup of my production disk before upgrading to Monterey 12.4.  Does anyone have suggestions for creating bootable backups (a duplicate of a bootable Monterey disk onto another disk)?  Bombich has lots of warnings about how it's no longer possible with MacOS.  Is that true?  I'm using CarbonCopy 6.  Thanks.

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@deeveedee Yes, booting from backup drive is working. It's an old HDD drive and I'm using the OC boot from the main NVME. Never tried to copy the EFI on the backup drive. Settings are default, tried safetynet on/off - works the same. I remember I had problems with 12.1 version but since then never encountered any issues.

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@Jazzoo I tried CCC 6 one more time, but was unable to produce a bootable backup of Monterey 12.3.1.  Not sure what I'm doing wrong and will have to look at this when I have more time.  I ended up doing a fresh installation of Monterey 12.4 and then a Migration from my 12.3.1 disk.  Since both the install and migration were unattended, the approach didn't actually take much of my time.  It's good to know that the CCC approach still works for you.  For those who don't want to pay to upgrade from CCC 5 to CCC 6, the install/migration backup approach is more cumbersome but works fine.

Edited by deeveedee
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Sorry to hear that @deeveedee! I tested today CCC 6 on my Dell Latitude 7490 (details in signature) aaand guess what .... not working 😃 Not sure what's wrong but after the backup the drive is not visible in OC boot menu. 

 

BTW anybody tried this GPU in MacOS ? It will be pretty sweet inside DM systems. Light gaming and better performance in video editing. I'm about to buy one if it's working.

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@Jazzoo There was some discussion about the RX560 card and some did claim to get it working.  Here are a few things you may want to consider:

  • The EFI attached to Post #1 in this thread uses SMBIOS MacMini8,1.  I believe you will need to use a difference SMBIOS mac model to enable your descrete graphics.  You will also need to modify your graphics DeviceProperties.  When you change your SMBIOS mac model, you will need to edit your USBPorts.kext so that it specifies the correct mac model.
  • I have read that RX5xx graphics cards are not compatible with Apple's new Metal 3, while UHD630 is still supported.  I'm not sure of the consequences of this dropped Metal support, so you may want to check
  • When I investigated the card, I found that only 35W Motherboards (those that use the lower power "T" CPUs) included the PCIe connector necessary for this card.  I might be wrong, so make sure that your rig's motherboard has the PCIe connector.
  • I think you will need a vented cover (the same cover that comes with 65W models) in order for the graphics card to cool properly (or just run without a cover)
  • The card takes the place of the HD drive caddy, so you will need to choose between the SATA SSD/HD and this graphics card
  • You may need a higher-wattage AC/DC adapter if you only have a 65W or 90W adapter.  I'm not sure if the graphics card requires a 150W adapter
Edited by deeveedee
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This is all very strange. I have never used any of these software nor used backup strategies. I just recently cloned my macOs across multiple SSDs using the backup function of macos disk utility and had no problems.

 

from memory, so this may be incomplete, as I am not in front of my mac now:

 

1. With both ssds installed, format the destination ssd using disk utility with GPT partitioning.

2. Use the backup function of Disk Utility from the os source drive to the newly formatted drive.

3. Mount the EFI partition of the new drive which should still be empty along with and copy over the efi folder from the old drive.

 

That’s it… I did this a couple of versions of monterey earlier when moving from the HP mini to the Lenovo tiny as I didn’t want to take down the HP before the tiny was fully functional.

 

Edited by rafale77
Typo… was typing on my phone
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6 hours ago, Jazzoo said:

Sorry to hear that @deeveedee! I tested today CCC 6 on my Dell Latitude 7490 (details in signature) aaand guess what .... not working 😃 Not sure what's wrong but after the backup the drive is not visible in OC boot menu. 

 

BTW anybody tried this GPU in MacOS ? It will be pretty sweet inside DM systems. Light gaming and better performance in video editing. I'm about to buy one if it's working.

 

I have long considered installing such a GPU on my 65W HP Mini G5 and as @deeveedee noted found out that it is not possible. It only works on a 35W version of the Elitedesk (Powerdesk don’t support it either) which has a different board and in my experience don’t accept 65W CPUs. The power limited motherboards and matching limited power supplies is one of the reasons for me to explore the Lenovo equivalent.

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