macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[Insleep]

Guys...stop asking if it works on your machine or how to do it...people here are working on a patch that will be ready when Mojave comes out to the public in the fall. We're on beta 1 right now, there are lots of things to work out, and there's lots of time before fall hits, so for the love of god, please stop.

 

[parrotgeek1]

Nice, i was finally able to install Mojave DP1 on my iMac Late 2009 27".
I needed to boot in -x in order to finish the setup and get to the desktop. Finder and AirPort doesn't work.
Everything else is working fine. I can connect my KB and mouse via bt and ethernet for internet access.

Now i need to buy a new GPU and WiFi card to get this ready for mojave

Install airportatheros40.kext from 10.13.5 io80211family/contents/plugins with kexts utility
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If you edit PlatformSupport.plist, the system will boot. I don't prefer this, because Apple's Software Update can easily overwrite this file.
If you add no-compat-check to boot args via nvram, the system will boot, but resetting PRAM clear this too.
I think, the best place for boot args, is /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist, because it will be never overwritten by a Software Update.

I agree. dosdude1's patcher puts them in boot.plist

 

[nekton1]

if you have a raspberry pi, bus pirate, or any other device with an SPI controller available, you can buy a SOIC-8 clip and re-flash the actual spi flash chip on your mac using a good dump from around the internet, mainly ghostlyhaks.com... they have plenty of efi firmware dumps, and all you have to do is hexedit the serial number to match yours.

It would be a great help if you would post a link to the details (pinouts) of the cable connection between the SOIC-8 cable and the RPi 3b+ GPIO pins. Also do you have a recommended SOIC-8 clip model? There seem to be a few.

 

[dogslobber]

I have the same computer. How did you accomplish this ? Did you install from usb bootstick adding "-no_compat_check" to kernel boot arguments or did you install on virtual machine ? Thanks,

No, I installed to a Mojave supporting Mac then SuperDuper’d to an external drive and hacked the plist for platforms, then booted that external drive on the iMac.

 

[iphone2g&3gfan]

My 2nd Gen. h*ckintosh laptop (Asus A43SJ) uses Nvidia Fermi GF119 (non-Optimus), QE/CI are well enabled but since macOS Sierra-hSierra-Mojave; the main problem is WindowServer crash if changing Display resolution.

(sorry, was using 10.11.6's DVD Player.app, I didn't get it under 10.14 Beta)

Metal platform however, a little bit confusing me. Apple SysInfo said, it is Metal supported. But OpenGL Ext. Viewer said it doesn't (though I'm pretty sure it is not metal capable, I've done with small metal utility to test and it didn't run). I then tried to disable metal support using lvs1974's NvidiaGraphicsFixup with "ngfxgl=1" boot-arg, now no longer get Metal support (as seen on SysInfo, not sure if it disabled completely) that lead me to new problems: damn slow Preview.app, QuickLook, TextEdit, Notes, Safari.. ouch.. almost all built-in mac apps #LoL, and unfortunately still getting windowserver crash with non-native display resolution, invert color from accessibility, flash screen when error occurred, nightshift, even changing display color profiles.

A few posts back there was some info that Fermi cards have OpenGL acceleration under Mojave DP1, and that WindowServer enables OpenGL on those acceleration kexts (so quartz extreme.) Metal is NOT supported, its just that WindowServer uses its OpenGL renderer on a native OpenGL driver.
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It would be a great help if you would post a link to the details (pinouts) of the cable connection between the SOIC-8 cable and the RPi 3b+ GPIO pins. Also do you have a recommended SOIC-8 clip model? There seem to be a few.

https://ghostlyhaks.com/blog/blog/hacking/18-apple-efi-bypass

And instead of any EFI password hexedits, just hexedit your Serial number into a clean dump which you can find by googling your model in the 'MacBookProx,x' format + as many details of your hardware config as you can get.

The pomona clip they talk about is what I have, and it works fine. Note if you have a macbook air or mbp retina then those don't use the SOIC-8 clip, but you can use it (unibody non retina macbook pro)
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Guys...stop asking if it works on your machine or how to do it...people here are working on a patch that will be ready when Mojave comes out to the public in the fall. We're on beta 1 right now, there are lots of things to work out, and there's lots of time before fall hits, so for the love of god, please stop.

Yup.

 

[nekton1]

Many thanks for the link—I already have a clean ROM dump so for the mac so "should" be easy!

 

[alexcorpse]

60% with hardware acceleration? Or only including the kexts?

the acceleration is not full but something is something and gives 512 vram and works partially

these are the kexts

 

[BookEmDanno]

Mojave on an unsupported Macbook Air 13" Mid 2011.

This is just an FYI.

I was able to install Mojave (via a supported MacMini 2012) on a USB thumb drive for use in booting up on my unsupported MBA2011.
After updating boot args on nvram = "-no_compat_check", I was able to boot my MBAir on Mojave.

BUT (and its a biggie), performance is very slow. I believe it's the same experience as folks on this thread has encountered.

I'm hoping that when dosdude1's patch is available, performance will be much improved.

Best regards and ~Mahalo!~

 

[e_ch]

Will GTX 460M Work with Metal/Mojave? I've found a nice offer for MXM one and thinking about upgrading from 5750 to run Mojave. Also, will it be possible to put wireless kexts from yosemite to avoid airport upgrade?

 

[Czo]

Will GTX 460M Work with Metal/Mojave? I've found a nice offer for MXM one and thinking about upgrading from 5750 to run Mojave. Also, will it be possible to put wireless kexts from yosemite to avoid airport upgrade?

MXM upgrades on iMacs disables EFI boot screen support (without this, you can boot to recovery or safe mode, but can't see anything) and disables backlight control (backlight will always on full brightness).

 

[rmendez011]

Dang, I thought I had something going, so, I made a Clover configurator, or whatever it's called, and I plugged it into my 2011 MacBook Pro, and I pressed the option key while booting, and selected "EFI" and the Clover bootloader shows up, and I select install MacOS 10.14 Beta, AND it starts booting up, but..... It gets stuck here.....

 

[e_ch]

MXM upgrades on iMacs disables EFI boot screen support (without this, you can boot to recovery or safe mode, but can't see anything) and disables backlight control (backlight will always on full brightness).

I know. Now i’m trying to figure out do gtx560m and 460m support metal and mac natively.

 

[Czo]

I know. Now i’m trying to figure out do gtx560m and 460m support metal and mac natively.

nVidia ceased out the driver support for Fermi (on Windows and Linux), so maybe this is the last year when Apple support it. Maybe Kepler is a better option.

 

[e_ch]

nVidia ceased out the driver support for Fermi (on Windows and Linux), so maybe this is the last year when Apple support it. Maybe Kepler is a better option.

Got it, no reason to change one dinosaur to another. Thanks.

 

[jackluke]

the acceleration is not full but something is something and gives 512 vram and works partially

these are the kexts

Hello everyone, following previously alex’s tips, I’ve done my tests and succeeded in booting Mojave Beta 1 on an external second apfs partition with Intel HD 3000 iGPU, well, the only needed kext is AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB possibly taken from a clean HS 10.13.5 installation, this kext in fact is the main responsible (at least on Intel HD 3000) of loading graphics FrameBuffer that fit the correct refresh screen resolution (to me it also brought the brightness dim control) and the VRAM allocation, but NO QE acceleration only CI with few glitches, I haven’t used any other kext named as HD3000, as alex stated before, I think there is no point to rename HD4000 in HD3000, he also referred renaming them in any info.plist and inside the kext's MacOS subfolder where the unix executable are, but you can’t inject the ID in this case 0x01268086, it will fail to boot because maybe can’t call a Metal missing feature plugin and so it crashes in kp or quick reboot, so it’s very unuseful to rename HD4000 kexts in HD3000, instead leave them as they are, untouched.

 

[ryl]

Hello everyone, following previously alex’s tips, I’ve done my tests and succeeded in booting Mojave Beta 1 on an external second apfs partition with Intel HD 3000 iGPU, well, the only needed kext is AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB possibly taken from a clean HS 10.13.5 installation.

Thank you for your feedback, is it usable or far too slow than running High Sierra?

 

[jackluke]

Thank you for your feedback, is it usable or far too slow than running High Sierra?

You are welcome, I would say it is enough usable, dark mode is fine, some artifacts somewhere during menu transitions, web browsing acceptable, Launchpad is slow to render, and some app like Maps will not work or with slowly graphics fps, some screensaver won't run, of course no comparison with High Sierra, I consider it the best last apfs capable for old supported macs, If I find some useful details I'll share my opinion.

 

[EugW]

You are welcome, I would say it is enough usable, dark mode is fine, some artifacts somewhere during menu transitions, web browsing acceptable, Launchpad is slow to render, and some app like Maps will not work or with slowly graphics fps, some screensaver won't run, of course no comparison with High Sierra, I consider it the best last apfs capable for old supported macs, If I find some useful details I'll share my opinion.

Thanks for the info.

Given that description, if someone wants APFS booting, they'd probably be better off just using High Sierra's verbose APFS booting, or if brave, a reflashed ROM with High Sierra APFS support. I'm sticking with HFS+ High Sierra though since I don't really see a huge advantage for APFS in my scenario. None of these old machines are my primary machines. My main desktop and laptop already natively support Mojave.

 

[balthazar.riviere]

Guys...stop asking if it works on your machine or how to do it...people here are working on a patch that will be ready when Mojave comes out to the public in the fall. We're on beta 1 right now, there are lots of things to work out, and there's lots of time before fall hits, so for the love of god, please stop.

Thank you Insleep. I just bought a late 2011 macbook pro (Intel graphics card)
before the mojave annoucement. I'm thinking to upgrade to ssd and 16gb ram. Do you think it's worth it? I want the lastest OS in my macbook and to work with updates but it's not sure if a feature patch will work. Thanks

 

[jackluke]

Thanks for the info.

Given that description, if someone wants APFS booting, they'd probably be better off just using High Sierra's verbose APFS booting, or if brave, a reflashed ROM with High Sierra APFS support. I'm sticking with HFS+ High Sierra though since I don't really see a huge advantage for APFS in my scenario. None of these old machines are my primary machines. My main desktop and laptop already natively support Mojave.

You are right, verbose mode is everything never without, single user mode even better, but when it boots correctly I like to see the relax apple logo, I keep also a Sierra 10.12.6 HFS plus for different purposes and you can also write to an apfs container but not managing the partition, reflashing ROM is not my best, but I like to play with EFI partition for custom multiboot os like Linux distros and Windows.

I agree, no significally advantages using apfs over hfs, indeed I prefer the HFS way of managing partitions, I feel the apfs a locked way to do, even if allows space to be shared between volumes on a disk, I guess you can stay hfs on HS and convert to apfs when you want, even if since Mojave it will be mandatory.

 

[howgee]

Thank you Insleep. I just bought a late 2011 macbook pro (Intel graphics card)
before the mojave annoucement. I'm thinking to upgrade to ssd and 16gb ram. Do you think it's worth it? I want the lastest OS in my macbook and to work with updates but it's not sure if a feature patch will work. Thanks

I have a 2011 17" MBP as well and am super appreciative of all the activity on this forum to get Mojave working on our older machines! That said, given the uncertainties of if (and how well) the new OS will work on our laptops, I'd probably hold off on spending money on upgrades until the official release. If you're happy with High Sierra (which should still receive security updates for a while), then the upgrades are fully worth it: I maxed out the RAM and added an SSD to the existing HDD a few years ago. Couldn't be happier with the performance, especially given the age of the machine.

As a word of caution, there are other things that can go wrong with an ageing machine: for example, I just started experiencing display quality issues that seem too costly to fix and might leave my machine in the dust soon. Something to consider since the upgrade parts wouldn't fit a newer MBP.

TL/DR: If you want guaranteed support for Mojave and reduce the chances of "wasting" money on upgrades in case of a failing machine, sell your 2011 MBP now (while it still supports the latest official OS) and get a souped up newer-gen model like a 2012+ MBP.

 

[scrub10rd]

It's my final exams week at university

studying is more important, do that

 

[Vilain]

Mojave on an unsupported Macbook Air 13" Mid 2011.


After updating boot args on nvram = "-no_compat_check", I was able to boot my MBAir on Mojave.

How do you do that??

 

[jackluke]

How do you do that??

In the previous posts others have explained how to edit a boot.plist file but I prefer these steps:

1) Boot in recovery mode
2) From recovery select Utilities and launch Terminal
3) from Terminal type without quotes: "csrutil disable"
4) enter your user password then type (with quotes this time the final part)
5) nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check"
6) Reboot from the apple icon on the upper left

 

[Vilain]

In the previous posts others have explained how to edit a boot.plist file but I prefer these steps:

1) Boot in recovery mode
2) From recovery select Utilities and launch Terminal
3) from Terminal type without quotes: "csrutil disable"
4) enter your user password then type (with quotes this time the final part)
5) nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check"
6) Reboot from the apple icon on the upper left

Ok but when i type this command in the terminal a receive error:

nvram: Error setting variable - 'boot-args' : (iokit/common) general error

i am in 10.13.5