Tutorial Lenovo Thinkpad t520 MacOS Catalina 10.15.8 & High Sierra 10.13.6 (Intel HD 3000)

[sirLeguan]

Hello, today I would like to share my success in installing Catalina and High Sierra in my T520.



Specs of my T520:
-i7-2640M 2.80GHz Sandy Bridge
-16gb ddr3-1333MHz
-256gb SSD
-Intel HD 3000 + Nvidia NVS4200M (not used)
-Trackpad and keyboard mouse work, and surprisingly multitouch in trackpad also works.

I managed to get it working well enough. Graphics card detected although some small glitches occur here and there. (for Catalina)
Bluetooth and wifi work as well as airdrop and airplay.

High Sierra works fantastically, very fast, no glitches. Wifi, Bluetooth, trackpad and keyboard all detected.
I didn't use the dosdude1 High Sierra patcher as it's not needed for this Laptop.

The T520 has a wifi card that isn't supported by MacOS. Therefore a new Broadband wifi card needs to be installed. I used BCM94352HMB.
But first, a whitelisted bios needs to be installed. First update Bios to 1.49 and then flash the new modded one. (Only works through Windows 7!) <- important

Bios settings that worked for me:

The rest leave as default.

Just make sure you use the Catalina Patcher: https://dosdude1.com/catalina/ to create the installation media.

I'll include my EFI files to download (to use please generate a System Serial Number as there isn't one).
I use OpenCore Auxiliary Tools.

Catalina (works).zip is the Catalina compatible EFI file. With this you can update to the last version which is 10.15.8
High Sierra (works).zip is the High Sierra safe EFI file which I tested successfully.

For any questions I am happy to answer.

 

[sadp]

Thank you so much for this efi and bios, i will test tomorrow, got my t520 for 30eur today to play with windows xp will check your efi as well

 

[sadp]

ok so tested your efi it does not boot on my t520 42435HG what bios settings you set?

 

[Edhawk]

You need to use the standard Intel bios settings, linked below.

Desktop Sandy Bridge | OpenCore Install Guide

 

[sirLeguan]

ok so tested your efi it does not boot on my t520 42435HG what bios settings you set?

Startup > UEFI/LEGACY Boot : UEFI Only
Startup > Reserve memory for UEFI Boot Manager : Enabled

Config > Display > Graphics Device : Integrated Graphics
Config > Display > OS Detection for NVIDIA Optimus : Disabled (if you have discrete GPU)

Config > CPU > (everything enabled)

(That's what I used)

Sometimes a specific usb port might not see the usb, try a different port.

 

[sadp]

@sirLeguan thank you reply and new additions to your post and for all work you did.

Tried HS EFI same (tbh im interested in this even more than Catalina one) because i think its possible to install nvidia web drivers and make nvs4200m work in HS with some patching. But for me it does not boot even to oc bootpicker.

I think my t520 is different from yours, my machine has 1600x900 screen, i7-2720QM cpu, yours seem to have 720p screen, sadly one USB port is broken in my machine, tried two different ports does not boot to bootpicker, i think it has still something to do with how my bios is set up, tried variuos settings which you shown and other combinations still no boot, then trying to boot it just returns to f12 meniu immediatly or blackscreen for few secs and returns to f12 menu, tried boot-args -v but it seems its not even trying to boot.

I think it has to do smth with other bios options like virtualization, amt, dmv alloc and other settings probably. Just to be sure i will try another usb flash drive (this usb drive boots oc installer with other machine efis well).

Any other EFI related to t420 does not work as well sadly

I have hackintoshed variuos machines this is the first one which i am unable to boot anything. For example i got t470 machine as well and that works flawlesly with Ventura everything seems to work.