Thinkpad T410 Hackintosh

7-9 Minuten

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The Lenovo Thinkpad T410 is available on eBay for ~400€ and makes a very good Hackintosh.

There is no original Mac required for installing the Hackintosh! This guide is written for model number 2522-3FG.

Original specs:

• Intel Core i7-620M (2.66 GHz)
• 14.1” WXGA+ 1440×900
• NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M (256MB)
• 4 GB DDR3 1066 MHz

Modifications:

• Kingston SSDNow V300 (120 GB) instead of 250 GB HDD
• Atheros AR5BHB92 instead of Intel Ultimate-N 6300

In the beginning there needs to be a Windows 7 (x64) running on the laptop for applying a BIOS update & patch. Between wiping Windows and installing Lion, there has to be done a temporary Snow Leopard installation, just to create a Lion USB installation thumb drive. At the end, the Thinkpad T410 will be running a fully functional Mac OS X 10.7.5 Lion!

Replacing the Wireless Card

Since Intel wireless cards aren’t supported by OS X, the card (Intel Ultimate-N 6300) has to be replaced by an Atheros AR5BHB92 to get the WiFi to work on a Hackintosh.

The AR5BHB92 isn’t on the whitelist of the T410’s BIOS, so the laptop refuses to boot with Error 1802 if the card is placed in the PCIe slot. To circumvent this restriction, the BIOS has to be patched with the whitelist removed.

Requirements

• 6iuj27us.exe (BIOS Update 1.43, http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-74268)
• T410-1.43-whitelisted-$01BF000_SLIC.ROM (Whitelist removal patch, http://applelife.ru/threads/remove-whitelist-for-bios-lenovo.39745, Mirror)
• Packing/clear tape

Note: The wireless card can only be replaced after the BIOS patch has been applied!

BIOS update & whitelist removal

1. Download BIOS Update 1.43
2. Install & Run
3. Update BIOS & Reboot
4. Run C:\DRIVERS\FLASH\6iuj17us\64bit\WinPhlash64.exe
5. Select Backup BIOS and Flash BIOS with new settings
   • Specify new BIOS file: T410-1.43-whitelisted-$01BF000_SLIC.ROM
   • Flash BIOS:
6. Reboot

“5 beeps, pause, 5 beeps”

The laptop will make 5 beeps, a pause, 5 beeps and then start up normally. The beeping is caused by the security chip, which recognized the whitelist removal patch.

It can be disabled in BIOS (Security > Security Chip > Disabled). After disabling the security chip, the beeping will be gone.

“Pin 20 Tape Trick”

…and the hacking goes on 🙂

The wireless card will be disabled and won’t find any networks by default. It needs to be enabled by a switch on the laptop, which the T410 doesn’t have. So the card needs to be tricked into thinking it is enabled by default. The trick? Tape over pin 20 of the cards PCIe connectors!

OS X will now recognize the wireless card without any further modifications.

Snow Leopard

Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.6.3 Snow Leopard Retail DVD (eBay)
• iBoot 3.3.0

Installation

1. Burn iBoot to a CD
2. Boot iBoot CD
3. Insert Snow Leopard DVD, hit F5 & select Snow Leopard Installation DVD
4. Open Utilities > Disk Utilities
   • Select HDD/SSD
   • Erase
   • Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
5. Close Disk Utils
6. Install
7. Restart
8. Boot from iBoot CD again, into freshly installed Snow Leopard
9. Finish configuration
10. Skip updates
11. Done!

Lion

Requirements

• 8 GB USB thumb drive
• Mac OS X 10.7.5 Lion InstallESD.dmg
• Chameleon Boot Loader
• Chameleon Wizard
• Kext Wizard
• Extra.zip (kext’s & DSDT)

Prepare USB thumb drive

1. Plug in USB thumb drive
2. Open Disk Utility
3. Select USB thumb drive
   • Partition
     • Volume Scheme: 1 Partition
     • Option: GUID Partition Table
     • Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
4. Mount InstallESD.dmg (double click)
5. Open Terminal: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles True killall Finder
6. Mount BaseSystem.dmg from Mac OS X Install ESD
7. Select USB drive in Disk Utility again
   • Restore
     • Drag Mac OS X Base System (from BaseSystem.dmg) to the Source field
     • Drag partition from USB drive to the Destination field
     • Restore
8. Eject Disk Image from BaseSystem.dmg
9. Replace the the symlink Packages in /System/Installation in Mac OS X Base System with the Packages folder from Mac OS X Install ESD
10. Copy mach_kernel from Mac OS X Install ESD to Mac OS X Base System
11. Run Kext Wizard:
    • Intallation
    • Browse for kext’s (or drag&drop)
    • Destination: System/Library/Extensions
    • Target Disk: Mac OS X Base System – Maintenance
    • Select System/Library/Extensions
    • Target disk: Mac OS X Base System

Bootloader

1. Create folder Extra on Mac OS X Base System
2. Run Chameleon Installer:
   • Change Install Location: Mac OS X Base System
3. Run Chameleon Wizard:
   • org.chameleon.Boot (see above)
     • Save to /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist on Mac OS X Base System
   • SMBios
     • Edit
       • Premade SMBioses
       • Select MacBook Pro (6,1) – Core i5/i7
       • Save to /Extra/SMBIOS.plist on Mac OS X Base System
4. Copy DSDT.aml to /Extra on Mac OS X Base System
5. Copy kext folder to /Extra on Mac OS X Base System
6. Restart

Installation

1. Boot from USB thumb drive
   • Select Mac OS X Base System
2. Run Disk Utility
   • Select HDD/SSD
     • Erase
     • Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
3. Install
4. Restart
5. Boot from USB thumb drive into the installer again
6. Open Terminal: cp -R /Extra /Volumes/<$OSX>/ cp -R /Volumes/<$OSX>/Extra/kexts/* /Volumes/<$OSX>/System/Libraries/Extensions chmod -R 755 /Volumes/<$OSX>/System/Libraries/Extensions chown -R root:wheel /Volumes/<$OSX>/System/Libraries/Extensions reboot
7. Boot from USB thumb drive into freshly installed Lion
8. Connect USB keyboard (only required for configuration after first boot)
9. Configure System

Post-Installation Steps

1. Run Chameleon Installer
2. Set OS X system volume as destination
3. Run Updates
4. Restart

Optional: RAM Update to 8 GB

Note: The T410 doesn’t support more than 1066 MHz clock speed! To be sure it will work, just take Apple certified Memory (CMSA8GX3M2A1066C7).

Done! 🙂

Update: Mountain Lion

It is possible to install OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion over Lion without losing any data.

Repeat the steps from the Lion installation, BUT skip step 3.2.2 (Disk Utility)! Just select the Lion system volume as target for the installation. After the installation, audio will not work, so replace the AppleHDA.kext with this one (using Kext Wizard and repairing permissions).

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1. http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/274218-guide-lenovo-thinkpad-t510510i-plus-t410-and-w510-106-107-108-109-all-working-ok-20131112-update/
2. http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/280756-guide-the-all-in-one-guide-to-vanilla-os-x-including-chameleon-dsdt-for-beginners-updated-for-mavericks/