The Alpa, a mid-range hackintosh

Nicholas
Nicholas
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

This is a basic build that I have made and is a mid-range desktop suited for loads of multitasking and some high-end gaming.


What doesn’t work

  • Haven’t tried everything but sleep.
  • Tell me more!

Preparing the installation drive

Preparing the installation drive is pretty straightforward if you were to follow the guide here.

Also, I will provide a post-installation zip for easier pre and post-installation setup.

Alpa.zip

Once you’re ready, unzip Alpa.zip and you’ll see that it contains a “postinstall” folder. Within the folder is Clover Configurator, a program that allows us to modify contents of the Clover bootloader that is installed within a drive.

Open it, and head to the ‘Mount EFI’ section and mount the EFI folder of the installation drive. Replace the EFI folder with the one we have from Alpa.zip.

Head to the ‘Install Drivers’ section and install the following drivers:

  • OsxAptioFixDrv-64 (This rectifies a memory problem for loading the kernel for boot.)
  • EmuVariableUEFI-64 (This rectifies the NVRAM support that is not present on our hardware.)

Next, look for a config.plist in the EFI folder of the installation drive. Replace the config.plist with the one we have in the EFI folder of the postinstall folder.

What you would want to do now is to launch Clover Configurator to work on a few things,

  1. We’re going to fix boot (At random points of time, booting will fail miserably due to a memory problem. We’ll have to implement a fix that I’ll guide along below

Fixing Boot Permanently

As our hardware does not support NVRAM natively, we’re using OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi to allow the loading of OSX via relocating memory. However, due to some relocation issue even with the driver, we may encounter random boot failures and would require another driver to rectify this. Fortunately, you can follow the guide here. You can read the entire guide but I’d advice you to download test2.efi and stuff it in your drivers64UEFI folder and move on.

Installing macOS on your PC

This section is critical to swift setup of your ‘mac’ and would require meticulous installation effort to configure a proper OS environment.

Ensure that your motherboard has all configurations set for macOS.

For this motherboard, most of the configurations are ready for macOS so make sure you leave them as it is.

Installing macOS

Simply select the Unibeast-prepared thumbdrive to install and follow the instructions as usual. Once you reach the main screen, head off to the next section.

Configuring macOS for Post Installation

This guide made by a member of tonymacx86 helped me alot and most of what we have here follows his strategy in making a successful post-installation.

First and foremost, Multibeast does not work well with the build we have and I do not have much of an idea why as I do not have enough time to investigate the cause.

  • Replace the EFI folder with the EFI folder attached in the postinstall folder so that your mac can boot on its own without the thumbdrive.
  • Open Clover Configurator.
  • Mount EFI to mount the partition where macOS is installed.
  • Go to the EFI folder, then Clover and open config.plist with Clover Configurator. Choose SMBIOS and change the serial number (Generate a new one)
  • Check the serial number to make sure it is not currently used.
  • Launch ‘terminal’
  • Key in uuidgen and hit enter several times to generate multiple codes for entropy.
  • Copy any one of them and paste that in Clover Configurator (Make sure your config.plist is open), SMBIOS => SmUUID
  • Make sure ‘UseMacAddr0’ is being used at Rt Variables for ROM

Post Installation Information

Audio

I’m following this guy’s guide and it seems to work well. ALC887 is a pretty common piece of audio ding.

iMessage

Resolving the NVRAM Issue

If you’re experienced, follow this

This is a relatively straightforward fix. Following a day of research, this forum discussion best explains the resolution. Our configuration does not have native NVRAM support (I suspect its due to MSI) and would thus require that approach to make iMessage and Facetime work, don’t worry just follow what I’ve written below;

  1. Follow this guide and do NOT restart when they say so. This clears all cache and configurations related to the iCloud family that relates to iMessage and etc.
  2. Install the drivers for NVRAM support via Clover Configurator (Mount your EFI partition; Head to the ‘Install Drivers’ section and you’ll see EmuVariableUEFI-64.]. Source
  3. Done!

Originally published at nixholas.me.

Nicholas

Written by

Nicholas

I usually write about that things that linger in my head which i need to get my head out of.

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