Dear People,
Dortania didn't lie on the guide: patience was needed. But at the same time, I gotta say that the developers behind Opencore made this process ridiculously painless, considering. They all have my immense gratitude.
Scenario:
I have an old 2010 MBP with High Sierra, which has some unfixable issues with its motherboard (a crack somewhere near the network card, which makes it drop the card if I move the case - thus it is unable to function as a portable computer). In the past year I have bought a used, but still pretty powerful Desktop PC which I have been using with Windows. It is a lovely machine, but I was missing some of the convenience features of macOS. So after seeing an old video of Chris Titus installing macOS with Opencore, I decided to give the process a try.
Specs:
MB: ASUS Z270-P
CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K (Kaby Lake)
GPU: MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB with the GP106 chip
RAM: 2x8 GB Kingston HyperX 2400Mhz RAM
Storage: Kingston KINGSTON SNV2S500G M_2 SSD (only macOS installed on it)
NC: Realtek RTL8168H/8111H PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
AudioCodec: ALC887
USB WifiDongle: Mercusys AC650
Install difficulties:
At first, I tried following Chris's method to make the installer in a Linux Live environment, but I couldn't boot into the Installer. After that I reverted back to following Dortania's Opencore guide, and went with making the USB installer under windows. That also didn't work, and I got stuck at the same point: I couldn't boot into the Installer after selecting it in the Opencore menu.
By the third time I only changed one thing: I opened up my MBP and made the install-media through it. I used a new, huge flash drive, which had 3 partitions: an EFI which I made with Opencore, the installer partition I made with createinstallmedia in macOS terminal (Here I also added the installers for the macOS security updates 2020-05 and 2020-06, the Web Drivers for the GPU, installer for my USB Wifi Dongle's driver and all Opencore software I could think of), and a Time Machine backup of my main drive in the MBP - to use during the Install, if successful. It seems that my issue was the formatting of the Install Media partition, and formatting it from macOS finally made it "right." After this I was able to Install macOS.
After the successful install of build 17G66, I copied all Installers and Opencore software onto the computer, mounted the EFIs (first the USB's and then the SSD's), and moved my Opencore EFI to the SSD. Then I installed the security updates, and during the first restart I have set my UEFI boot order to prioritize the local Opencore EFI. This made all subsequent reboots and installs much faster. (The security updates are a prerequisite for the latest WebDrivers for Nvidia cards, and macOS 10.13.6 build 17G66 doesn't even have an associated web driver.) Finding the proper driver for the USB Wifi dongle took some time, but in the end I have found some random mac driver specifically for AC650 adapters, tried it, and it works (I did the trials on my MBP).
After this I had to tinker with some things: I have created a MAC address for my computer, and set up a nice serial number - which will hopefully remain functional - activated apple services successfully (messages, icloud, appstore, etc all work).
I did the beautification of the Opencore Menu, and finally have found the right alcid for my audio codec, so that both the headphone out and the audio line out work now (for me layout ID 12 was the one).
What works: basic desktop functionality seems flawless. GPU, Sound, iServices also work.
Didn't test yet: Sound-in, video on all possible HDMI and display ports, sleep and hibernation (irrelevant for my use-case). And probably a heap of other things.
The whole process took roughly a week, I tinkered with it on my free evenings. It was great fun. Thanks to all the people who worked on opencore, and the people on the sub whose past threads and current replies often helped me overcome a specific issue.
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