[Guide] SurfacePro 1 & 2 Osx-Android-Windows multiboot

[JahStories]

come on don't take it too personal!

 

the list i posted is to testify that there are plenty of 3rd part drivers for almost every device. (and that list is not even the 1%)

 

i'm just telling since the device is usb (others intel or marvell device are not), it could be just a matter of time, when there will be more ext. dongles with the same chipset, some company may provide drivers that could work even with our internal cards.

 

i'm not telling that i'm sure, cause i could be wrong,

but you shouldn't be sure too, cause you could be wrong.

 

P.S.

many users are enjoying multitouch and pen support (that's now even better than on windows) with that "expensive payware"

and many users too would pay even 30$ for a working internal driver, cause they are spending the same on getting an external dongle.

 

[jape]

I am not taking it personally (ie I have no interest in ruining people's dreams ). But one has to be realistic and try not to woo people into buying a $1000 device with unrealistic expectations.

 

Despite the extreme interest and the many attempts no one has completed a 802.11 driver for OS X, so thinking that this may one day happen for the Surface is naive. And Apple is making this harder by hiding the required IO80211Controller headers. So the chances were already very very low in Leopard era, but by now are virtually zero.

 

The Marvell Libertas card was also USB (could be said it was the ancestor to the Avastar -- which is the one in the Surface), there was also lots of interest in this very forum and no one was able to do anything. And wouldn't you think most of the interest/effort would go towards the Intel cards? Most laptops are stuck with one of these, with no way to replace it (like we are). And yet the best that the OSX86 community has been able to provide is a driver that only does WEP on ancient OSX versions and doesn't work at all on more recent versions.

 

And, unlike Intel Wi-Fi, the Avastar is only used by one device: the Surface Pro. The amount of people that are interested on an Avastar driver is negligible. It is correct that in the future there may be some USB pens that use an Avastar chipset, but that just means that OSX86 will just avoid buying those devices and instead go for the 10$ Ralink devices that are certain to be compatible.

 

Basically, I would center my efforts on getting the Avastar desoldered as the best approach to proceed for OSX86 Surface.

 

By the way, bluetooth does not work because the card is expecting firmware to be uploaded to it. Other than that the Avastar just speaks normal HCI like any other BluetoothUSB device so no driver is needed. Implementing the firmware uploading part is a much more reasonable endeavour -- I may even do it.

[JahStories]

do you have a surface pro ?

 

because i think you do not.

 

As i said before, think whatever you want

i am free to have a different opinion.

no one is going to win a medal.

 

i hope this is the end of this big off.topic  

[jape]

do you have a surface pro ?

 

because i think you do not.

 

As i said before, think whatever you want

i am free to have a different opinion.

no one is going to win a medal.

 

i hope this is the end of this big off.topic  

Yes. I am not trying to convince you. I've just exposed the facts and extrapolated from them. Now to everyone his own.

 

BTW: The official MS Ethernet adapter, being a simple USB CDC one, works out of the box in Mavericks. I though they removed the AppleUSBCDCEthernet driver because I can no longer find its sources, but it seems it's still there.

[tyroiii]

After using my hacked surface pro for a few weeks, I've decided to sell the tablet.  I had hope it would replace my macbook air and iPad, but I could not get used to the 16x9 format and the battery life was too short. 

[jape]

Success! I just got the internal Bluetooth working.

 

As expected, it's just a matter of uploading the firmware. After that, the normal OS X driver takes over and works normally.

 

Sources soon.

[munakib]

Nice job, waiting....but impatiently!

Success! I just got the internal Bluetooth working.

 

As expected, it's just a matter of uploading the firmware. After that, the normal OS X driver takes over and works normally.

 

Sources soon.

[hamido123]

great News!!! that will be the reson for me to move to osx

[JahStories]

can't wait to test that out

[jape]

Here are the sources for "Avastar.kext" -- you need XCode to build. I may provide binaries in the future but I have only installed 10.9.1 so far.

 

The instructions are simple. Once built, load the extension. Wait some 10 seconds and the "Bluetooth" icon should appear in System Preferences. From there you can browse for devices, add the icon to the menu as in any other Mac, etc.

I have not tried putting the kext in /S/L/E yet and I recommend against putting it there until you are sure it does not crash your system.

 

Note that in this source tarball there's also a skeleton for a potential Wlan driver. It does nothing. I still keep what I said above: do not get your hopes up on Wi-Fi. Even if this card seems to be easier to work with -- the firmware does virtually everything, no one in OSX86 community knows anything about IO80211Controller internals.

Avastar.tar.gz

[caleidosCope]

@jape: You are the man... Chapeau! Thank you! - Bluetooth is FIXED!!!

 

... just one thing... how to switch it off, if not needed???

[munakib]

Guys, dont be upset at me, I just dont want to install xcode unless its a must install for building that kext. Can you share an easier solution for us noobs?

 

@jape: You are the man... Chapeau! Thank you! - Bluetooth is FIXED!!!

 

... just one thing... how to switch it off, if not needed???

[jape]

... just one thing... how to switch it off, if not needed???

Oh, good question. I suspect OS X believes it is an external USB dongle and thus doesn't let you power off via the normal means.

Maybe one could convince it via DSDT manipulation... no idea how it's done in other laptops.

 

OTOH, I suspect that even turning it off via the OS X way will not actually save much power -- the real way to save power would be to turn off the entire USB device (BT + WLAN) and that's not possible until there's a driver for the WLAN side.

 

Hm... so by loading the firmware, we may have sacrificed a bit of battery runtime, because now the WLAN side is "ready to use" despite the fact no one is using it.... this needs testing.

Guys, dont be upset at me, I just dont want to install xcode unless its a must install for building that kext. Can you share an easier solution for us noobs?

I will publish a build during the weekend or next week -- I want to clean it up a bit and also I would prefer more experienced people to try it first. 

Obviously if anyone wants to share the binaries I have no problem with that. License will be GPLv2 so that we can use stuff from the Linux driver.

[caleidosCope]

Avastar.kext.zip  this works for me...hope you dont mind, jape. (USE the updated kext on the frontpage!)

[miked985]

i was wondering would it be possible to follow the instructions but install osx on an usb 3.0 external hdd and boot from that? I have a surface pro 1 128gb and just looking to install osx on my external.

[JahStories]

Thanks for your work jape, and thanks caleidosCope for sharing the built.  i'm adding a link on the main page. 

 

at least we have bt since wifi is going to be hard to get :'(

 

(tested with my magic mouse, works perfectly, just can't shut it down.)

 

@miked985

 

yes you can install it on an external hd, but i would suggest you using a fast SDXC 64gb card.

[caleidosCope]

Thanks for your work jape, and thanks caleidosCope for sharing the built.  i'm adding a link on the main page.

 

(tested with my magic mouse, works perfectly, just can't shut it down.)

 

@miked985

 

yes you can install it on an external hd, but i would suggest you using a fast SDXC 64gb card.

BTW would you recommend installing android to a sdxc-card? Did you try that? Laggy???

[JahStories]

i know it could be a little bit laggy, but if you get the fastest card its surely going to work pretty well, these card becomed really fast sandisk sdxc card have 250mb/s write 280mb/s read speed  , a couple of users here reported that's the os is running not too slow even with older cards.

And by the way, on an external drive is going to be laggy and probably full of troubles too since you'll have to use the only one usb port, hubs, ethernet, wifi ..... :/ not nice for a portable "tablet"

 

Personally i obviously suggest to install osx directly on the internalssd, but if you have to make a choice...

[munakib]

Okay, this is awesome, both the apple wireless keyboard and magic trackpad are working! The Bluetooth just takes a few extra seconds to turn on once booted to osx- but it saves me a usb port at the back of my cinema display - so a must have!! Also I am sure it will work with iPhone tethering - jape, thanks for your amazing work.

 

JS - If i load OSX with injectors w/ kext - it loads a bunch of nonstop gibberish avaster message and fails to load osx, but if i just load directly into osx, no issues. Do you see the same? 

[JahStories]

i think that using kextload from terminal its just for debugging... (i read that suggestion after the installation), just installed with kextdrop.

[futaris]

First post on insanelymac here. Thanks for helping me set up my first hackintosh.

 

Good to hear about the bluetooth driver.  I'm surprised no-one has mentioned HoRNDIS for USB tethering to an android device.

 

If you have Wireless LAN enabled on your android device, and enable USB tethering, it will work pretty much like a standard USB IPv4 router, i.e. IP masquerading.

 

I guess if you use a new USB 3.0 device with 802.11ac WiFi, you'll even get 802.11ac speeds.

[jape]

JS - If i load OSX with injectors w/ kext - it loads a bunch of nonstop gibberish avaster message and fails to load osx, but if i just load directly into osx, no issues. Do you see the same? 

The gibberish is one of the things that I wanted to clean. No idea why it would cause OS X to fail to load (except maybe because of boredom ).

[wbpluto]

Thanks for this thread!

 

I have 3 problems on my Surface Pro 2:

 

1. Partition cannot be erased in OS X installer: My partition table is GPT created in Windows 8 Setup. I followed the C. Install OSX on the Surface Pro 2, step 3, Disk Utility reports "This partition cannot be modified." "This disk appears to be partitioned for BootCamp. Changing the partition map may make this disk unbeatable using Windows."  [ So, finally cleaned the whole disk and installed only OS X].

 

2. LED Backlight control didn't work. After installed followed this post and using FilesPackage V0.3 for 10.9.2, I found my SP2 backlight cannot be controlled in Display System Preference -- the scrollbar appears, but no effect when slide on it!

 

3. Cannot control volume by volume key on the left. I found the Volume -/+ keys didn't work, if this can be fixed?

 

[munakib]

1. So cleaning your whole ssd solved it?

2. Put your screen to sleep and back in order to get display controls...or else it will be stuck at mid range

3. Volume controls on the left wont work due to Touchbase driver conflicts...you have to resort to the menubar. AppleWirelessKeyboard thankfully has the vol control options for me close to fingers.

 

 

Thanks for this tread!

 

I have 2 problem on my Surface Pro 2:

 

1. Partition cannot be erased in OS X installer: My partition table is GPT created in Windows 8 Setup. I followed the C. Install OSX on the Surface Pro 2, step 3, Disk Utility reports "This partition cannot be modified." "This disk appears to be partitioned for BootCamp. Changing the partition map may make this disk unbeatable using Windows."  [ So, finally cleaned the whole disk and installed only OS X].

 

2. LED Backlight control didn't work. After installed followed this post and using FilesPackage V0.3 for 10.9.2, I found my SP2 backlight cannot be controlled in Display System Preference -- the scrollbar appears, but no effect when slide on it!

 

3. Cannot control volume by volume key on the left. I found the Volume -/+ keys didn't work, if this can be fixed?

[loudog3114]

Anyone want to post a nano usb wifi card that has been tested and works without killing sleep or anything else?  Mine kills sleep, rtl8188cus.