Macbook Air (Early 2008) Running 10.11 El Capitan

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

Over the past week or so I have been messing about with my old 1st generation MacBook Air to see how far I could push it in OS upgrades. After a LOT of tinkering and testing etc I have managed to successfully boot into Mac OS X El Capitan and install graphics kexts however there is a few issues I now have with it:

No audio incl. headphones
No bluetooth
No battery status (battery is a replacement and is working, I just don't get the percentage in Mac OS)
It now thinks its a mid 2009 air (because its now effectively a hackintosh hence how I got it to run 😂)
iMessage works but I recommend changing the serial number cause it belongs to someone else (not mine, randomly generated mid 09)

If you know what kexts are needed for any of the above issues please leave a comment with them!

I heard years ago when people were trying yosemite on these that if you phoned apple they would whitelist the serial number, maybe I will give it a shot.

Clover Files:

EFI.zip

drive.google.com

Graphics kext I used is the one included with MacOS Extractor however I took the link from the installer and got the .kext file then used KextBeast to install (the installer managed to remove my wallpaper and dock?!).

 

[campospedro9]

Hello, how u doing?

could you please tell me how did u boot macbook air 1,1 2008 into El Capitan? I've been searching all over the internet for this, and i could not figure out how to do it

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

Hello, how u doing?

could you please tell me how did u boot macbook air 1,1 2008 into El Capitan? I've been searching all over the internet for this, and i could not figure out how to do it

Basically I would start with googling how to hackintosh a pc and start from there, the concept is very similar, just use my EFI folder when they say to generate one, then it should boot. I need to add I couldn’t get everything to work and you will also need a copy of El Capitan to install. Any issues let me know!

 

[campospedro9]

Hello Dan, how u doing?

I started googling how to hackintosh it, but everything that was shown to me was tutorials of how to hackintosh nowadays pcs.

I guess that I have to find a tutorial that show me how to hackintosh an old macbook, and I confess that i'm having some difficulties on this step...

I separeted both this videos here but I came here first to ask u if this is what you meant of what i need to know first

(this one here is actually in portuguese, so if you don't understand what he is saying, just ask me

Sorry for my bad english, i'm brazilian

Thank you for your time

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

What you need to do (this time in more detail) is make a normal bootable usb for mac os x el capitan, this page has the scripts that you need to run in terminal to automatically create a bootable usb, just make sure the usb partition name is the same and the location of the el capitan app file is the same. Then download Clover Configurator, any version will do, and use it to mount the EFI of the usb drive. After that, extract my efi.zip and drag the extracted efi folder to the efi partition of the usb drive. You should now be able to boot your macbook air 1,1 to clover, then to the el capitan setup and get through to the desktop.

I also want to add that I think your english is very good, you wouldn’t be able to tell that you are Brazilian at all!

If you need any extra help let me know and I can make a very detailed guide on how this works!

 

[campospedro9]

What you need to do (this time in more detail) is make a normal bootable usb for mac os x el capitan, this page has the scripts that you need to run in terminal to automatically create a bootable usb, just make sure the usb partition name is the same and the location of the el capitan app file is the same. Then download Clover Configurator, any version will do, and use it to mount the EFI of the usb drive. After that, extract my efi.zip and drag the extracted efi folder to the efi partition of the usb drive. You should now be able to boot your macbook air 1,1 to clover, then to the el capitan setup and get through to the desktop.

I also want to add that I think your english is very good, you wouldn’t be able to tell that you are Brazilian at all!

If you need any extra help let me know and I can make a very detailed guide on how this works!

Hello Dan.

Thank you a lot.

I'm just waiting for my new HDD arrives, so then I could follow your steps.

For what I already read, it's not complicated. I will let you know when I start making the steps.

And, again, thanks for the help and the compliment about my English.

I will let you know as soon as possible about the results.

Regards

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

Hello Dan.

Thank you a lot.

I'm just waiting for my new HDD arrives, so then I could follow your steps.

For what I already read, it's not complicated. I will let you know when I start making the steps.

And, again, thanks for the help and the compliment about my English.

I will let you know as soon as possible about the results.

Regards

No problem, I am excited to see your results and will be here when you need me! 👍

 

[campospedro9]

Hello Dan, how u going?

I'm having some isues here... look if you can help me.

- I've already made the bootable pendrive, but as i'm using OS X 10.7.5 on my Mac Air 1,1, I can't download Clover Configurator. So then I started thinking how could I solve this problem.

I finally figured out that installing VirtualBox on my desktop, emulating a version of El Capitan and download Clover Configurator from there would be a good idea, and then I did it.

That was going ok until i start the Clover. Somehow my pendrive does not appear as a mountable device on Clover (the only mountable device that appears is my HD that is emulating VirtualBox)

As you can see here, when I plug my pendrive (it is not plugged now because right now i'm making it bootable again on my mac air, when it become bootable I will plug in and take a screenshot to index here), it appears when the red rectangle is, unavailable to mount. As i imagine, it should appear in the green rectangle, right?

 

[campospedro9]

Hey Dan, how u doing?

I've finally solved that problem and finished it. It installed successfully.

Appears that the problem was just a bad booting installation on the pen drive. I erased it and reboot, then it installed.

I will leave here this message so people with this same problem could find our topic and solve them

Thank u so much. I trully enjoyed this chat with you.

You're a genious.

My best regards.

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

Hey Dan, how u doing?

I've finally solved that problem and finished it. It installed successfully.

Appears that the problem was just a bad booting installation on the pen drive. I erased it and reboot, then it installed.

I will leave here this message so people with this same problem could find our topic and solve them

Thank u so much. I trully enjoyed this chat with you.

You're a genious.

My best regards.

The issue with your original install is most likely that you were using master boot record (MBR) instead of GUID patition table (GPT) so there is no efi partition (as mbr is used for legacy systems which the mac is not and gpt is used for efi/uefi which the mac is)

Hope I cleared things up about that, probably should have mentioned it in the first place! Will be adding that to the original post.

 

[campospedro9]

The issue with your original install is most likely that you were using master boot record (MBR) instead of GUID patition table (GPT) so there is no efi partition (as mbr is used for legacy systems which the mac is not and gpt is used for efi/uefi which the mac is)

Hope I cleared things up about that, probably should have mentioned it in the first place! Will be adding that to the original post.

Hey dan. how u doing?

Reopening this topic because something happened.

I installed everything correctly, but when it finish installing the OS X in my HDD and reboot, keep appearing in the screen the prohibited sign

After some research, i found that it says that this sign appears because my system is not available to receive the El Capitan’s version of IOS

Could you help me?

 

[campospedro9]

Hey dan. how u doing?

Reopening this topic because something happened.

I installed everything correctly, but when it finish installing the OS X in my HDD and reboot, keep appearing in the screen the prohibited sign

After some research, i found that it says that this sign appears because my system is not available to receive the El Capitan’s version of IOS

Could you help me?

Not IOS, OS X* sorry

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

Hey dan. how u doing?

Reopening this topic because something happened.

I installed everything correctly, but when it finish installing the OS X in my HDD and reboot, keep appearing in the screen the prohibited sign

After some research, i found that it says that this sign appears because my system is not available to receive the El Capitan’s version of IOS

Could you help me?

Hi and welcome back!

Your macbook is trying to boot from the internal hdd, you will need to start it up holding option, then select your usb to boot from, then when clover loads you can select the internal hard drive. MacOSX sees the macbook as what it is and its unpatched for that model, what clover does is tell os x that its a mid 2009 air which was supported. The efi can be transferred to the internal hdd by mounting the internal hdd efi partition and the usb drives efi partition then just drag and drop from usb to hdd. After doing that just reboot for the last time holding option and before you click on the new internal clover hold control to set it as the default boot device, that way it will boot to clover without holding option! Hope this helps!

 

[campospedro9]

Hi and welcome back!

Your macbook is trying to boot from the internal hdd, you will need to start it up holding option, then select your usb to boot from, then when clover loads you can select the internal hard drive. MacOSX sees the macbook as what it is and its unpatched for that model, what clover does is tell os x that its a mid 2009 air which was supported. The efi can be transferred to the internal hdd by mounting the internal hdd efi partition and the usb drives efi partition then just drag and drop from usb to hdd. After doing that just reboot for the last time holding option and before you click on the new internal clover hold control to set it as the default boot device, that way it will boot to clover without holding option! Hope this helps!

When i think you can’t help me anymore, you do this.

It worked perfectly. Thank you again, Dan.

Now, what about those kext for battery, bluetooth and others? Where did you get’em?

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

The kexts for the battery, bluetooth etc I never found unfortunately (however might be able to be found with some more googling and research I just didn't have the time on my hands for that). I had a kext for the graphics, the other thing I found is if you edit the platformsupport.plist file to support the macbook, the battery percent comes back, meaning that part is supported, HOWEVER... the machine locks up and doesn't respond to keyboard, trackpad or usb mouse inputs but is still doing things in the background so possibly fixable. The kext for the graphics drivers is just a google search away by typing in "Intel GMA X3100 Kext El Capitan". There were people doing hackintoshes with those kexts back when El Capitan was new and they seemed to work on the mba (appeared in about this mac etc). Machine is technically useable with graphics kexts installed but I don't recommend this as a daily driven macbook, not that it is the greatest idea to use El Capitan on a daily basis anyway due to its age. I did almost have audio working but can no longer remember what I did to get it semi-working, I remember it was a realtek kext that had the volume buttons working but no audio from headphones or internal speakers. I also remember using an app on the macbook which went into detail about device specs etc telling me exactly what I needed but again can't remember the exact name of it and have wiped my air since due to mucking around without clover. I am happy enough to give it a good crack at getting things working in my spare time but my schedule is jam packed at the moment so progress will be slow from me unfortunately. Might pick it up again when I get some more free time (probs will) but currently my air is in a laptop bag tucked away beside my bed so I don't lose it 😂. If you make any progress with finding extra kexts feel free to stick links etc on here for others to see, I will do the same thing if I get time! The main reason I put this up here was to see if anyone knew which kexts might help as I didn't really have the time to do the research as I said earlier. Might be able to get some time to do it over the weekend but up until then I have only got late evenings so not much time to do stuff like install os x and research kexts. Last I remember I was focusing on trying to make it work natively as it does boot if "allowed" on the platformsupport.plist file, that method is probably your best chance to get everything to work perfectly but you will need to use the clover boot to install kexts to the OS to make usb/keyboard/trackpad work. My hope is that once they are working and you are able to get into the system everything else will work, worst case you have more direct access to the hardware as there is no spoofing at any stage. This should bring you as far up to date as I currently am!

Really hope this helps,
Dan

 

[campospedro9]

The kexts for the battery, bluetooth etc I never found unfortunately (however might be able to be found with some more googling and research I just didn't have the time on my hands for that). I had a kext for the graphics, the other thing I found is if you edit the platformsupport.plist file to support the macbook, the battery percent comes back, meaning that part is supported, HOWEVER... the machine locks up and doesn't respond to keyboard, trackpad or usb mouse inputs but is still doing things in the background so possibly fixable. The kext for the graphics drivers is just a google search away by typing in "Intel GMA X3100 Kext El Capitan". There were people doing hackintoshes with those kexts back when El Capitan was new and they seemed to work on the mba (appeared in about this mac etc). Machine is technically useable with graphics kexts installed but I don't recommend this as a daily driven macbook, not that it is the greatest idea to use El Capitan on a daily basis anyway due to its age. I did almost have audio working but can no longer remember what I did to get it semi-working, I remember it was a realtek kext that had the volume buttons working but no audio from headphones or internal speakers. I also remember using an app on the macbook which went into detail about device specs etc telling me exactly what I needed but again can't remember the exact name of it and have wiped my air since due to mucking around without clover. I am happy enough to give it a good crack at getting things working in my spare time but my schedule is jam packed at the moment so progress will be slow from me unfortunately. Might pick it up again when I get some more free time (probs will) but currently my air is in a laptop bag tucked away beside my bed so I don't lose it 😂. If you make any progress with finding extra kexts feel free to stick links etc on here for others to see, I will do the same thing if I get time! The main reason I put this up here was to see if anyone knew which kexts might help as I didn't really have the time to do the research as I said earlier. Might be able to get some time to do it over the weekend but up until then I have only got late evenings so not much time to do stuff like install os x and research kexts. Last I remember I was focusing on trying to make it work natively as it does boot if "allowed" on the platformsupport.plist file, that method is probably your best chance to get everything to work perfectly but you will need to use the clover boot to install kexts to the OS to make usb/keyboard/trackpad work. My hope is that once they are working and you are able to get into the system everything else will work, worst case you have more direct access to the hardware as there is no spoofing at any stage. This should bring you as far up to date as I currently am!

Really hope this helps,
Dan

Hello Dan. Good morning

Hopefully everything about the boot is now ok.

Now, about the kext, I downloaded the GMA X3100 kext but it is not installing.. i guess i have to uninstall other graphic kext… right?

My best regards,
Pedro

 

[ImDanTheBoxMan]

Hello Dan. Good morning

Hopefully everything about the boot is now ok.

Now, about the kext, I downloaded the GMA X3100 kext but it is not installing.. i guess i have to uninstall other graphic kext… right?

My best regards,
Pedro

I don’t think I ever uninstalled any kexts, what I seem to remember is using kext beast or something along those lines to install the x3100 kext directly to the operating system instead of clover. Can’t remember which one of the folders I installed it to but think I might have just done both and had one work so try that.

Hope this helps you get the graphics up and running,
Dan