Experience running our M15x on macOS Sierra 10.12.5!

Hey everyone, I thought that I would share my experiences installing macOS on our M15x. Mind you this is very work in progress, it has come pretty close to fully functional. Also, there is specific hardware that must be run on our system to get mostly everything working. (macOS is VERY picky with hardware.) Namely our WiFi/BT cards and graphics cards. There may be more work involved depending on the GPU installed on your M15x. I can't take credit for all of this. Everyone from tonymacx86.com was really helpful and there are plentiful of guides and tools you need there to get everything up. I can post an install guide in tonymacx86 if people would like it once I get everything fully functional. Here is more info about my system:

System: Alienware M15x + boot loader (Legacy r4097 : macOS Sierra 10.12.5) on Optical Drive Bay and (Windows 10 Home) on Notebook Drive Bay
CPU: Intel i7-920XM + Intel PM55 Chipset
Graphics: nVidia Geforce GTX 970M 6GB (Dell 10DE:13D8)
Intel Ibex Peak High Definition Audio (8086:3B56) (Codec IDT 92HD83C1X)
Intel Gigabit PCI-E Network adapter (Intel 82577LC Chipset)
AzureWave AW-CE123H (BCM94352HMB) (14E4:43B1) Our Intel WiFi cards will not be supported.
480GB Seagate SATA II SSD (Notebook Drive Bay) It will use SATA II speeds.
250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD (Optical Drive Bay) It will use SATA II speeds.
16GB DDR3 PC1333 RAM (Crucial Ballistix Sport)
Hitachi CA-10N DVD-RW/BD-ROM Combo Drive (Using a USB Drive enclosure.)

And now what is working and not working:

Graphics: Working with MacBook Pro 8,2 SMBIOS, nVidia Web Drivers and boot loader patches for board-id's.
Audio: Working via DSDT patches and audio kext + AppleHDA Disabler. Audio ID : 3
Mouse/Keyboard: Working via Synaptics PS2 Kext.
Bluetooth: Working with a WiFi Guide for BCM94352HMB. BTLE + Handoff supported.
LAN: Working perfectly using the Intel Gigabit kext.
WIFI: Working with the guide for BCM94352HMB. AirPort + Airdrop supported.
Sleep: Does not work. Maybe an issue with my DSDT in Sierra.
Battery: Working with DSDT/SSDT edits and a battery kext.
Power Management: Working correctly via patching DSDT/SSDT.
USB: Did not focus on DSDT patches yet for this.
Trim Support: Working properly via boot loader DSDT patch.
Brightness: Working on F4/F5 buttons and slider on pref pane with a custom DSDT/SSDT.
Blu-Ray: Working with VLC Player and Blu-Ray Codecs installed in the player executable.
HDMI Audio: Working with audio kext and Graphics card installed.

 

Nice work! +REP. How about AlienFX? Is there a tool that can be used with MacOS?

 

Very nice! Just a quick note the optical drive is SATA I not II so max 150mb/s transfer rate. Better to put cheaper mass storage options in there. Mass SSD storage at good prices now coming available.

 

Both SATA interfaces in the M15X are SATA II.

 

Wow you learn something new everyday! I really thought the ODD was limited to SATA I ! Great news an SSD would actually work well. Raid 0 I guess not possible...

 

Yeah, there was a thread about this a while back. Confusion came about because of the way the ports are labeled in the BIOS (HDD port is labeled SATA2 and ODD port is labeled SATA1), but those are just labels and have nothing to do with the speeds. This can be confirmed with a program like HWInfo to check the negotiated speed of the port. Also, the motherboard schematics indicate that both ports use the SATA2 interface.

Unfortunately RAID is not possible because of the HM55 chipset.

 

There is currently no app or software to control AlienFX on macOS. However your settings for lighting are retained from Windows. So If you dual boot Windows/macOS, you can always boot into Windows, adjust as necessary and restart back into macOS. As far as the ODD port being SATA II, Kosti is right. I checked it via the system information section. Let me know if you have any more questions, and I will update as more changes on my system.