Installing OpenCore on Legacy Arrandale Notebook (LG A410 - Intel M390)

[zeninguem06jan2025]

Hello, Hackintosh community!

I’m here to share my experience and seek help regarding the installation of macOS High Sierra on my LG A410 notebook, which has an Intel Core i3 390M (Arrandale) processor. As many of you know, installing macOS on legacy hardware can be a challenge, but I am determined to make it work.

Hardware Specifications:

• Model: LG A410
• Processor: Intel Core i3 390M (Arrandale)
• GPU: i915
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 500GB SATA/AHCI HDD

Objective:

My goal is to install macOS High Sierra using OpenCore as the bootloader. I am aware that support for older hardware may be limited, but I believe that with the right configurations and necessary patches, I can achieve this.

What I’ve Done So Far:

1. Created a USB installer for macOS High Sierra: I used a Mac to format the USB and create the installer.
2. Downloaded OpenCore: I grabbed the latest version from the official GitHub repository.
3. OpenCore Configuration: I am currently working on editing the config.plist file and including the necessary drivers and kexts.

Problem:

Unfortunately, the USB drive is not booting. I believe this may be due to a lack of proper configuration in the config.plist file or other necessary files that I am not aware of.

Questions:

• Has anyone here successfully installed macOS on a notebook with an Arrandale processor? What patches or configurations did you use?
• Are there specific kexts I should consider to ensure that audio and networking work correctly?
• Any tips on how to troubleshoot common issues that may arise during installation, especially regarding the USB booting?

Thank you in advance for your help, and I look forward to sharing my progress with all of you. Let’s see if we can get this old notebook running macOS!

Best regards,
zeninguem06jan2025@gmail.com

[cankiulascmnfye]

@zeninguem06jan2025 You could try with OpCore Simplify to create an EFI in Windows to get you started.

[verdazil]

14 minutes ago, cankiulascmnfye said:

You could try

No, you can't!

See the project web page. Support starts at Sandy Bridge (2nd Gen)

[Baio77]

The installation is simple or at least not complex. The only thing is to create a legacy EFI and convert the EFI partition to make booting work.

Here is my EFI, but you need to convert the EFI partition of the bootable USB to make the USB boot work.
https://github.com/Baio1977/HP630-CPU-Arrandale

Start by installing 10.13 DO NOT go any further because the CPU is really obsolete, you would not have any performance advantage by installing more recent OS

 

Obviously in my reposity you will find an advanced EFI, ACPI patch that makes my HP more similar to the structure of a Macbookpro with the same SMBios I'm using. NVRAM emulation which is not native in our HW, this makes the hackintosh better in all its uses.

 

All that's missing is the activation of Apple services and brightness control, which has been broken in hackintosh since 10.13.

 

https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/tree/master/Utilities/LegacyBoot

On this page you will find what you need to convert the EFI partition of your bootable USB. You must choose the appropriate scripts for your PC
This is what the inside of the EFI hidden partition of the bootable USB should look like. Without that boot file, you will never see the USB at Boot. It also happened to me that the generated boot file gave me an error on boot. If this is the case for you too, take the boot file from my EFI and replace it with the one generated by the script. With this information you should have already filtered out 70% of the complications.

Edited January 9, 2025 by Baio77

[cankiulascmnfye]

@verdazil Oh, sorry. You're right. I guess it's because 1st gen Intel core includes A LOT of different CPU models and it would be a lot of work to implement all of them.

[deeveedee]

15 hours ago, zeninguem06jan2025 said:

• Has anyone here successfully installed macOS on a notebook with an Arrandale processor? What patches or configurations did you use?

 

Yes.  See here.