macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[16v]

I bought a 2011 mbp 13". It says sensor failure... and it looks like the hdd is faulty.
So its not a problem to install a new hdd and do a clean install, but first i wanna test the "new one"...

 

[jhowarth]

That machine doesn't natively support APFS so you'll have to use either the Boot ROM patch (see the wikipost) or the APFS startup script (included in the patcher app if I remember correctly). Only the firmware patch will enable the recovery partition to work, but it can brick your machine in rare cases -- it writes to a ROM chip on the motherboard. The other option just installs to your hard drive but it causes a delay and some scrolling text in the early boot process.

I would suggest that alternative is to simply select boot volumes in Startup Disk (available both in System Preferences and on the USB installer). In my experience, HFS+ has had slightly better stability and performance on old hardware, but that could just be me. I'm sticking with it for now anyways.

Edit: This is amazing. No clue what caused it really, but it went back to normal after a reboot. I love it!View attachment 821377

The MacPro 3,1 seems to be one of the most well behaved machines for flashing the Boot ROM patches. I don't recall seeing anyone ever report a single failure. On mine, booted from an SSD, it completed within a couple of minutes.
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I’m interested in doing this on my MacPro3,1 as booting from a stick requires putting back the GT120 gpu card (I’m happily running a non-flashed MSI Hawk GTX760 with black boot screen). Last time it was a bit tricky getting the GTX760 detected again afterwards and seemed a bit sensitive to the slot and order of the cards.

So hoping that updates through App Store would drop in without having to access the USB bootdrive - if that is what going the APFS route could provide.

I guess converting from HFS+ to APFS is still an option (booting from another drive) without erasing the SSD? Then patching afterwards? If it only costs losing the space now partitioned to recovery drive. I may have misunderstood this.

Keep in mind that you will issues having both a legacy non-Metal card and a Metal one installed under Mojave at the same time. The former will require the legacy video patches whereas the later will require those not to be installed.

 

[jackluke]

Honestly, I got similar issue even on non-real mac. If you take a look here probably you know what APPL have done with "EFI Firmware" since 18D109 or 18Exxx. #CMIIW

You know got the same issue on a supported Metal mac, distractedly I used a patched combo 10.14.3 combo pkg (for HFS+) and installation went fine but without the EFI firmware upgrade, I got many issues and verbose error messages, then I've relaunched the correct untouched 10.14.3 dmg and strangely it has done only the EFI firmware update, then everything worked fine, but apart this most likely AAPL is seriosly trying to stop OpenGL, only full installer will tell for sure.

 

[XMPL]

my MacBook 5,1 (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) using El Capt, try upgrade to Mojave 10.14.3.2, after create USB drive using Mojave Patcher v1.2.3 and then boot the USB Patcher, its got Prohibition logo , am i have to download another Mojave version other than 14.3.2?? thanks b4

 

[k-yo]

Keep in mind that you will issues having both a legacy non-Metal card and a Metal one installed under Mojave at the same time. The former will require the legacy video patches whereas the later will require those not to be installed.

True, but I'm using the GT120 only for booting from the USB stick so not having the patch does not bother too much.
[doublepost=1549995377][/doublepost]

Well done for getting the GTX760 to work. Mojave sometimes does not seem to like having the GT120 and a Nvidia Kepler card in the machine at the same time. Most people get it to work after removing the GT120 once they have used it for the boot screen. Ideally, a card with the Mac efi is the ideal solution but they have become quite popular now and therefore more expensive.

As for using the system updates in preferences to avoid having to use the boot screen and usb - you may be lucky at times. It really depends on what files the update overwrites. If they are part of the patch then you will normally need to patch after the update. Some times this will need a boot from the usb installer as Mojave will not boot until patched. But on occasions, if you are lucky, Mojave will boot after an OTA update and can then be patched using Patch Updater in utilities. For example, I was able to update from 14.2 to 14.3 without using the USB installer. So sometimes you will be ok but on occasions you will have to put the GT120 in and use the usb installer.

You can convert a HFS+ drive to APFS using disk utility. This should convert your drive without any loss of data but back up first! You will need to boot from the usb and then use the disk utility to unmount the drive you want to convert. If you then right click on the unmounted drive you will find the option to convert to APFS. I suggest this as your recovery partition probably will not work. If it does then you can use the recovery partition instead of the usb installer. If you have another drive on the mp3.1 with Mojave (like I have a clone for backup) then you can use this to boot then use disk utility as outlined. As a personal preference, when Mojave first came out, I like to do a clean install by reformatting the drive and then migrating data back. I outlined this in my previous post.

If you do go APFS then do not forget to apply the APFS patch. This will normally select itself if the drive is APFS but double check. Start up will involve some scrolling text and is a little bit longer. To avoid this dosdude1's ROM patcher tool can be used but as has been said can brick your machine if it goes wrong.

Thanks! Sounds like the benefits of APFS may be limited in that I would possibly need to resort to the GT120 for the patch boots anyway. Perhaps better not fix what's not broken. Swapping graphic cards indeed has caused some headache as (in addition the MPro3,1 facing its side to a narrow space) the order in which the cards & boots is done seems to affect whether I can get a picture or not. And leaving the GT120 in the machine seems not to be an option at all. I did a clean install of Mojave initially (and actually had to do it another time as I got the GTX760 and the legacy video patch would cause problems). I am on 10.14.2. now.

All in all getting the GTX760 (for 50 € + cables really) was a sound choice as (only since Sierra or High Sierra) Apple's own Aperture/Photos would run terribly slow when trying to edit RAW image files. Seemed like it would offload processing to the GPU and apparently that was not a bad guess since the GTX760 made a huge difference. Almost got a GTX660 but then I read about some issues with that, and figured a 680 or 760 should be fine. No flashing the card, no web drivers, all seems well.

 

[Flacko]

True, but I'm using the GT120 only for booting from the USB stick so not having the patch does not bother too much.
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Thanks! Sounds like the benefits of APFS may be limited in that I would possibly need to resort to the GT120 for the patch boots anyway. Perhaps better not fix what's not broken. Swapping graphic cards indeed has caused some headache as (in addition the MPro3,1 facing its side to a narrow space) the order in which the cards & boots is done seems to affect whether I can get a picture or not. And leaving the GT120 in the machine seems not to be an option at all. I did a clean install of Mojave initially (and actually had to do it another time as I got the GTX760 and the legacy video patch would cause problems). I am on 10.14.2. now.

All in all getting the GTX760 (for 50 € + cables really) was a sound choice as (only since Sierra or High Sierra) Apple's own Aperture/Photos would run terribly slow when trying to edit RAW image files. Seemed like it would offload processing to the GPU and apparently that was not a bad guess since the GTX760 made a huge difference. Almost got a GTX660 but then I read about some issues with that, and figured a 680 or 760 should be fine. No flashing the card, no web drivers, all seems well.

I agree with your decision. If you find a Mac efi GTX680 at a good price then I can recommend that as a good card for the mp3.1 and Mojave. Will be interesting to see how 10.14.4 will go looking at the problems members are having with the beta.

 

[jhowarth]

I agree with your decision. If you find a Mac efi GTX680 at a good price then I can recommend that as a good card for the mp3.1 and Mojave. Will be interesting to see how 10.14.4 will go looking at the problems members are having with the beta.

The approach I took was to purchase an stock EVGA GTX 680 2GB model on eBay for around $128 and then flash it myself with the Mac Edition ROM image for that model which is widely available on the web. If you stray from the EVGA 2GB model, flashing gets more complex as tweaked images have to be used for 4GB models and other brands.

 

[Romanesq]

In the fwiw category, added a second SSD to an early 2008 15" Macbook Pro Penryn.

The first SSD was running in 10.14.2 fine but had a weird issue of the screen going black at times.
The second SSD installed yesterday now sits in the SATA position and this one formatted in APFS.
Loaded 10.14.2 and then using migration assistant utility from the first SSD went fine. An upgrade with software update went without a hitch to 10.14.3. Ran the patch again but saw someone had not done so on a similar 2008 notebook without running the patch and everything went fine.

So a clean install on a new SSD running 10.14.3 is going well on a new SanDisk SSD Plus 480GB with no quirky intermittent going to black screen as before. That problem could have been a carryover of old OS junk, who knows. The keyboard backlight is not working but that is probably a monitor cable or logic board issue.

Thanks to our Mighty Dosdude1 who has given great life to machines going back more than a decade with the current Mac OS. Must throw some ducats his way. Superb work.

 

[jhowarth]

Tardé dos días en repararlo. Cada vez que encendía el MacBook Pro solamente emitía pitidos y no se encendía. Tardé 2 días en encontrar la solución. El cd lo tuve que crear desde un equipo windows utilizando TransMac. Entonces metí el cd en el MacBook Pro, conectado a la corriente. Lo encendí y comenzó a actualizar el firmware y a funcionar con normalidad. Al ver que había podido repararlo volví a intentar con APFS Rom Patcher y esta vez funcionó todo perfectamente y ya puedo arrancar el Macbook Pro desde discos APFS de forma nativa

That doesn't sound right. My understanding is that dosdudes APFS ROM patcher applies the ROM patches immediately which is entirely different from Apple's approach which queues up the firmware patches to be applied on the next restart.

 

[scrub10rd]

I have a Macbook5,2 with 8GB of RAM on 10.14.2

What is the best browser in your experience for it? Safari seems sluggish sometimes. I'd rather not use Chrome

 

[Sveto]

Let me put this in plain words. First Apple lured us into buying their overpriced, but nice looking hardware, with defects in design and structure, comprised since day one of outdated components, and with software support due to end just a few years later. Now the giant goes the next logical step, it actively works into breaking the few loopholes, which made it possible to put this constantly crippled, locked down and oversimplified to the taste of the plebs macOS on our "old" boxes. Anything better would be a crime.

 

[scrub10rd]

Let me put this in plain words. First Apple lured us into buying their overpriced, but nice looking hardware, with defects in design and structure, comprised since day one of outdated components, and with software support due to end just a few years later. Now the giant goes the next logical step, it actively works into breaking the few loopholes, which made it possible to put this constantly crippled, locked down and oversimplified to the taste of the plebs macOS on our "old" boxes. Anything better would be a crime.

$5 have been deposited into your Western Union account

 

[Sveto]

I have a Macbook5,2 with 8GB of RAM on 10.14.2

What is the best browser in your experience for it? Safari seems sluggish sometimes. I'd rather not use Chrome

I use mainly Vivaldi on both macOS and Windows. It is the best browser in my point of view. It uses Chrome rendering engine and extensions from the Chrome store. It has none of the spying and crippling software Google implements into Chrome. Basically latest Chromium, without any negatives and only endless goodies added. You can change completely the appearance to your liking (many themes, plus full editing control). You can group related tabs into stacks and if you have many stacks with many tabs, you can save all of them into a session and come back to it whenever you like. There are so many customizations and settings available, that your head will spin off like a ball.

 

[ASentientBot]

Let me put this in plain words. First Apple lured us into buying their overpriced, but nice looking hardware, with defects in design and structure, comprised since day one of outdated components, and with software support due to end just a few years later. Now the giant goes the next logical step, it actively works into breaking the few loopholes, which made it possible to put this constantly crippled, locked down and oversimplified to the taste of the plebs macOS on our "old" boxes. Anything better would be a crime.

I got this MacBook7,1 in 2011. No, it wasn't cheap. $1000 new for the base model. But it had 7 years of completely free software updates. It's been rock solid; every repair was because I broke something. Find me a cheaper PC that beats that.

And people love to bash macOS for being "locked down" and "dumbed down" but you're just repeating a worn-out myth. Yes, it's minimalist and intuitive to use. But if you're really a power user, there's a lot of tinkering and automation you can do. Ease of use and power aren't mutually exclusive.

And -- it's silly to think they're breaking this stuff on purpose. They just don't care.

 

[flygbuss]

Let me put this in plain words. First Apple lured us into buying their overpriced, but nice looking hardware, with defects in design and structure, comprised since day one of outdated components, and with software support due to end just a few years later. Now the giant goes the next logical step, it actively works into breaking the few loopholes, which made it possible to put this constantly crippled, locked down and oversimplified to the taste of the plebs macOS on our "old" boxes. Anything better would be a crime.

Can we please leave this kind of discussion and posts to MR announcement threads? There are plenty of them with plenty of room for bashing. Let’s focus here on helping each other and finding solutions for our solid working horses. May we be able to get some more years out of them. Thank you all for your afford and incredible work!

 

[Apples555]

I'm typing this from a 2010 2.4 13" MacBook Pro running Mojave. The only issue seems to be the dark gray tone of the Finder bar. I don't know how dosdude got around the requirement for Metal architecture, but here it is.

Runs fine on this ancient computer. It's still my daily driver, so this is great.

I am looking to upgrade soonish...

 

[16v]

Hm... bought a mbp early 2011 15" on ebay.
Has an amd card. So mojave wont work well...
Dann... too late...

 

[flygbuss]

Hm... bought a mbp early 2011 15" on ebay.
Has an amd card. So mojave wont work well...
Dann... too late...

These books are quite solid, I bought one back in 2011. The problem is the AMD gpu. Mine failed twice. The first time in 2017 and one year later the replaced chip failed as well. Although it is possible to replace the logic board with the one from it’s successor. (2012 MBP) I don’t know how much you spent in the book, but if you can get your hands on a logic board (check PowerBook medic). An exchange might be worth it.

 

[NiloGlock]

Just use Offline methods:
1. Download macOS Mojave 10.14.3 Supplemental Update.
2. Extract *.pkg (from *.dmg), assumed it' s located on ~/Downloads
3. Edit "Distribution" file for forcing installation on HFS+, Terminal:

Spoiler

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ pkgutil --expand [PackageName].pkg NewFolder
$ cd NewFolder && ls
$ nano edit Distribution
// or using your fav. xml editor, Find for:

function FileSystem1(prefix) {
    if (my.target.filesystem && my.target.filesystem.type == 'hfs') {
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

// change to:

function FileSystem1(prefix) {
    if (my.target.filesystem && my.target.filesystem.type == 'hfs') {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

// Save.
$ cd ~/Downloads
$ pkgutil --flatten NewFolder [PackageNameHFS].pkg

4. Try updating with your new modified [PackageNameHFS].pkg

I'm trying to do this but unfortunately Distribution file, for me, it's blank.

I'm typing this from a 2010 2.4 13" MacBook Pro running Mojave. The only issue seems to be the dark gray tone of the Finder bar. I don't know how dosdude got around the requirement for Metal architecture, but here it is.

Runs fine on this ancient computer. It's still my daily driver, so this is great.

I am looking to upgrade soonish...

Here you can find a patch: https://github.com/SpiraMira/HybridMode-Public/

 

[Larsvonhier]

Hm... bought a mbp early 2011 15" on ebay.
Has an amd card. So mojave wont work well...
Dann... too late...

You might turn off the AMD chip and use internal graphics to get HW acceleration.

 

[alphascorp]

I'm trying to do this but unfortunately Distribution file, for me, it's blank.

Hi, it's strange that your file is empty, with which text editor do you open the "distribution" file? I managed to open it with Texedit ...



Try with another text editor like TextWrangler, (now replaced by BBEdit), Smultron, MacVim, Atom, Komodo edit ...
MacVim, Atom, Komodo edit are free

 

[16v]

These books are quite solid, I bought one back in 2011. The problem is the AMD gpu. Mine failed twice. The first time in 2017 and one year later the replaced chip failed as well. Although it is possible to replace the logic board with the one from it’s successor. (2012 MBP) I don’t know how much you spent in the book, but if you can get your hands on a logic board (check PowerBook medic). An exchange might be worth it.

250€... and disabling amd gpu makes it slower? (They are expensive in germany)

2012 logicboard means a new mainboard? So then i have a 2012 mbp?

 

[flygbuss]

250€... and disabling amd gpu makes it slower? (They are expensive in germany)

2012 logicboard means a new mainboard? So then i have a 2012 mbp?

Basically, yes. I don't know if it's worth the money, that really depends on the price of the new board.
You would also need a new bluetooth card, but these are quite easy to get.
Everything else will remain the same.
I think if you don't plan on using it with an external display just the Intel graphics will be fine.
I couldn't deactivate it because my AMD never came back to life.

 

[Doblesecure]

It is posible to merge continuity activator patch with this installer?

I have a MacBook 5,1 successfully patched to Mojave and I’m trying to use the continuity Activation Tool with a BT 4.0 dongle but its doesn’t work

If not, Any thoughts?

 

[avz]

my MacBook 5,1 (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) using El Capt, try upgrade to Mojave 10.14.3.2, after create USB drive using Mojave Patcher v1.2.3 and then boot the USB Patcher, its got Prohibition logo , am i have to download another Mojave version other than 14.3.2?? thanks b4

Trying a different USB drive might solve your problem, as not all USB drives are created equal when it comes to booting on Macs.