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macOS 10.12 Sierra Unsupported Macs Thread
- Thread starter redheeler
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Hey good idea about clover. It didn't work, but I did get clover to boot which was new to me. Anyway, is there anything I can do to make it work? Ironically, it's reading my Mac as a late 2009 MacBook Pro which I think is a good thing.
Clover automatically chooses an appropriate SMBIOS based your hardware. You can define any SMBIOS you want in your config.plist. I am not sure what settings within Clover are required for Sierra to be booted, haven't checked the forums yet and haven't tried on my Hackintosh yet. It may require a new build of Clover that has been updated for Sierra.
FWIW, I did notice a small thing that made me very happy. iPhoto(from my Mavericks install) does at least still work 
Oh ok. My point still stands, it's based on the board ID not the model. The board ID is somewhere in hardware. The board ID of macmini1,1 stays the same even after flashing 2,1 firmware and upgrading to a core 2 duo, so you still have to edit platformsupport.plist
I'd say we will have to way. And if that's the case, it'll be July before we have a working clover.
Why? So we can continue adding to our already over populated landfills?
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FWIW, I tried booting the installer using Clover on my main Hackintosh which identifies as 5K iMac and it stopped at something related to USB and eventually I got the blinking
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Platform support is defined by both the board ID and the model. In the case of the Mac Pro 4,1 and 5,1, the board IDs are the same, which is why simply flashing the 5,1 firmware on the 4,1 allows Sierra to install without issue.
FWIW, I tried booting the installer using Clover on my main Hackintosh which identifies as 5K iMac and it stopped at something related to USB and eventually I got the blinking.
Do you think perhaps flashing the late 2009 MacBook firmware to a early 2009 MB would do the trick? There's just a small difference in clock speed. That's it.
Are you talking about flashing a MacBook5,2 with MacBook6,1 firmware? If so, I am not sure.
Yep my 2008 MacPro with 24gb ram, 1TB SSD, 3gb GPU will no longer be supported ??? Despite being a faster computer than many 2011/2012/2013 iMacs ..... Annoying as hell, but I certainly won't be replacing it with a new MacPro just because Apple now deem it past it's support worthiness.
Actually the two computers are quite different with their major common traits being the GPU and the CPU family. The late '09 has more in common with the 2008 Aluminum Macbook than it does with the mid-09 Macbook, and those in turn have a lot in common with the 2009 13" Macbook Pro(although the latter combines audio in and out on one port plus adds a FW800 port and SD Card reader).
At this point, I'd guess the '08 Aluminum Macbook is the "low hanging fruit" in terms of compatibility in this series, although I lack the serious know-how to make it work(and also don't have that computer).
I replaced an Early 2008 board with an Early 2009 board. Everything hooked up, has been running, will be running etc. The thing Apple doesn't want you to know, is they didn't change board designs until 2010 with the MacBook unibody.
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That's exactly what I'm suggesting
The LB swap is well known and documented. I've actually been keeping my eyes open for another Blackbook to do it in.
What I'm saying is that the late '09 Macbook(unibody) is quite a different computer from the pre-Unibody early and mid '09 Macbook.
I guess the next step would be to get one and see if everything hooks up. If it does, then we know it's firmware will work. I don't care if the USB slots are different or anything like that. I mean hard drive, speakers, mouse+keyboard etc. if they connect, and work, we know that the firmware will work.
There's more to it than USB ports...
Here's a top of my head list of differences:
Late '09 lacks Firewire
Late '09 has glass buttonless trackpad
Late '09 uses DDR3 RAM(the big one as far as I'm concerned)
Like I said, they have a lot more in common with the '08 Aluminum than anything else-in fact I'd go as far as to say that a late '09 is more-or-less a lightly upgraded Al Macbook in a plastic case.
I've been doing some testing of my own, and here's what I've figured out so far. After installing a copy of 10.12 on a hard disk using a supported Mac (a Late-2009 MacBook in this case), and modifying /System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist to include unsupported Board IDs and such, it successfully booted and seemed to work perfectly on my Mid-2009 MacBook (DDR2, non-unibody, GF9400M), with one exception: USB didn't work whatsoever (mentioned previously). That means the keyboard, trackpad, and all of the USB ports wouldn't work. Everything else, including audio, seemed to work perfectly fine, being at the main macOS set-up screen. I then decided I'd try and copy the IOUSB*.kext files from an El Capitan install to the install of 10.12, but after doing so (permissions issue?) found that the machine would still use the /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/prelinkedkernel file for the kextcache, and failed to rebuild it on boot. This means that even though I've modified the /S/L/E folder, the system is still using the original kexts stored in the kextcache. I think that if someone can figure out how to somehow get the USB working, then 10.12 should work perfectly on any unsupported Mac. The one thing I really don't understand, though, is why the USB doesn't work. Both the Late-'09 and Mid-'09 MacBooks use the same chipset (nVidia MCP79), so wouldn't that mean the USB controller is the same as well? Just doesn't make much sense to me. As I mentioned previously, though, the USB is the the ONLY thing hindering these Macs from running 10.12.
I'm not ruling out the possibility entirely(in fact I'd love to have my mid-09 running it as that has been my test bed for the last several releases) but I just don't think it will work the way you suggest.
Of course, I think a lot of us are holding out for the MP 1,1/2,1 crack
Wouldn't work. The only reason upgrading the firmware in the 4,1 Mac Pros tricks Sierra is because the 5,1 shares the same board ID. There is no way to change the board ID.
I wonder if this might be the issue. Is everyone trying to boot using a USB drive?
I booted it with the drive internally, which got the system up and running, but couldn't do anything due to a nonfunctional USB bus.
Those differences wouldn't contribute to the lack of support for macOS 10.12 Sierra unless the linked kexts changed this time around. In my previous thread, the main issue was the USB/Bluetooth Kexts.
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Here are the Beta USB Kexts that I was testing with El Capitan on older Unsupported Macs:
OS X Extractor - Beta USB Kexts.zip
They will need to be adjusted a little.
The PrelinkedKernel must be changed and will have to at least try the Clover Bootloader with SIP disabled.
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I'm trying this now with my system (MacBookPro5,4). I'm thinking the USB bus not working in Sierra is the reason why it keeps stopping just under 3/4 of the way there since I'm using a USB stick.
[doublepost=1465924493][/doublepost]@dossdude1 Got it booted on my MBP5,4 with only the edited platform support Plist files, but it seems to be stuck with the progress bar completed. You have to boot from a non-USB drive, so I'm thinking SATA and FireWire will work fine.