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Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
Hey folks,

I am about to install Mojave on my iMac Early 2008 (2,8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB ram, Nvidia Geforce 8800).

Would Mojave be my best choice of OS, compared with Catalina and High Sierra? The iMac will mainly be used for web browsing and watching streamed video.

Will the internal Wifi (AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8C)) work? Else, what wifi usb dongle would work?

Thanks a lot, looking forward to get this going!
The major remaining issue getting Mojave to run on the older "blackback" and "silverback" DVD iMacs is getting hardware acceleration enabled, the lack of which is irritating and renders many programs nonfunctional. As far as I am aware, this issue has been solved for blackback Core 2 Due machines (2009ish), but not the newer silverback iMacs (2010-2011). IF THIS HAS BEEN SOLVED FOR SILVERBACKS, SOMEONE LINK THE SOLUTION!

Aside from that, Mojave uses a bit more ram than High Sierra, so that may be an issue with a 4gm system. (From your C2D processor speed rating, I get the impression you're using a 24" machine, and AFAIK all of those had DD3 ram, meaning a pair of used 4gb or 8gb sticks shouldn't be hard to source if you're on a tight budget.)

If you do install Mojave on an older machine, and it creates an APFS partition to put itself in, check software update and continue installing updates until it's maxed at 10.14.6 (18G103), and then and only then use Disk Utility to create an HFS+ (MacOS Extended Journaled) partition on the drive, clone to the new install into it, restart into that cloned partition, verify that it works, an then you can erase the first partition back to HFS+, and clone back (thereby claiming the fastest portion of the disk, if it be a rotational or Fusion drive). If the machine has its original drive, you can check its health with the free utility DriveDX (although you might have to located an older version).
 

puremind2000

macrumors member
Sep 29, 2018
31
44
Hello Everyone:

Is there any way I can restore the original BootROM for my MacBook Pro 5,2 using RomTool from @dosdude1 if I don't have my original ROM backup file when I applied it ?

Seems that makes FileVault incompatible with BigSur OCLP... and I can say it breaks the installation when trying to FileVault.

Thank you for any help!
 

Macschrauber

macrumors 68030
Dec 27, 2015
2,976
1,483
Germany
Hello Everyone:

Is there any way I can restore the original BootROM for my MacBook Pro 5,2 using RomTool from @dosdude1 if I don't have my original ROM backup file when I applied it ?

Seems that makes FileVault incompatible with BigSur OCLP... and I can say it breaks the installation when trying to FileVault.

Thank you for any help!

I am pretty sure FileVault has nothing to do with the boot rom.

You can use the tool in my signature and send me a dump. I guess this could be cleaned as well like the firmware from MP5,1 I do.
 

puremind2000

macrumors member
Sep 29, 2018
31
44
I have managed to force a firmware reinstall following this link

The key was the step 8 missing in other guides I've seen around:
8. Press spacebar and copy --recovery --verbose in terminal.


Unpacking the firmware Boot ROM or SMC Version Information: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3706.

MacBookPro5,2 will be updated to MBP52.008E.005

from here

Full list of Mac Models here

Not sure if that will undo what @dosdude1 APFS patcher did... but hoping for the best.

Will take a while now to encrypt the partition, hoping this will be the solution!
Will come back to confirm / deny if this can help others to use OCLP overwriting the firmware with this method.

Edit:
Confirmed this method works and is the safest.


1. Check in Report what is your Boot ROM.

2. Obtain the pkg from Apple for your machine with the exact same version.

3. Unpack the file(s) with the command pkgutil and commands as per the link above.
pkgutil --expand mystubbornpackage.pkg path/to/expand

4. Find the BootROM file in those packages. Get the EXACT matching version with your BootROM as per step 2.

5. Using a not file vaulted BigSur installed with OCLP, and execute the "sudo bless" command as the link above. Do not forget step 8 to add " --recovery --verbose " after the <whatever>"LOCKED.scap" filename

6. Restart the computer and let it do the job. It will boot, beep loudly, and after a few minutes it will be firmware restored.

7. Enable FileVault with BigSur and profit. Working 100% with OCLP.

Obviously, use at your own risk, but seems safe.

Thanks everyone that helped posting steps here and there!
 
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Macschrauber

macrumors 68030
Dec 27, 2015
2,976
1,483
Germany
you should all be very careful replacing the firmware. It contains machine IDs, Board IDs, etc.
Please check with my tool if the firmware and the crc32 checksums are still ok.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
==CURRENT SITUATION== (mid-August, 2023)

* Both dosdude1 and OpenCoreLegacy solutions have been found to enable Mojave to run on optical-drive iMacs back to certain 2008 models.

* HOWEVER, getting hardware-acceleration and wifi enabled are devils-in-the-details (among other problems): so far, these two particular issues appear to only have been solved with some 2008 and 2009 "blackback" core 2 duo 24" iMacs. I am not aware of successful hardware-acceleration achievement on 2010 or 2011 "silverback" intel 21.5" and 27" iMacs, or of wifi achievement on 2009 core 2 duo silverbacks. Without hardware-acceleration, the operating-system is usable for basic office functions, but you can forget about anything video-related.

(Note: I am only counting ready-use packages such as dosdude and OCL. Solutions requiring substantial finicky hackery are discounted. If YOU have a solution enabling both hardware-acceleration and wifi on silverbacks, please post your replicable procedure.)

Caveats:

* Mojave is a pig compared to High Sierra. You're going to have to turn a lot of garbage off the get it to run acceptably on machines of limited capacity. You're going to want to (or be required to) disable SIP and MRT minimally, and probably also Spotlight indexing and iCloud syncing. Fully disabling all notifications, and enabling the installation of apps downloaded from anywhere, are also veritable requirement for sanity-preservation. Many of these "features" were also present in High Sierra, but that prior OS managed to sip memory and access drives much more frugally.

* APFS (Mojave's default file-system) seems expressly designed to grind rotational-drives to pieces, and, since Apple has been considered among the quintessential "evil big tech" companies for quite awhile now, will cheerfully accuse them of willful "planned obsolescence" qua deliberate destruction of their customers' hardware via drive-failure, especially as regards the 2012+ "thinside" machines that are not possible to take apart non-destructively. Fortunately, Mojave will still run in an HFS+ partition, and can still be easily cloned with older versions of Carbon Copy Cloner (so just format a volume to extended-journaled, and then clone the installation).

* 4gb of ram is barely enough (at least until further debloating solutions are found). Apple alleges that Mojave only needs 2gb to run, but it will absolutely cache off the drive the moment you launch anything more intensive than a text-editor. In practice, you're going to want at least 6gb of ram. (Mojave runs quite nicely on a 2008 blackback 24" with 8gb of DDR3 ram and a 7200rpm rotational drive with HFS+ partitioning.)

~ ~ ~

Q. "If Apple is evil and made Mojave crappy, why are you sticking with it?"

A. Because I can run more software on it than any other configuration, as it's the last version of the OS to support that vast mountain of 32bit software (that Apple and it's accredited business partners don't want you to use anymore). I use Macs to work, not immerse myself in Apple's corralled-herd ecosystem of Safari/iCloud/iTunes/iPhone/IOS/etc (in fact I never use those, preferring platform-independent 3rd-party solutions every time, and this sentiment goes back to the early days when VLC media-player was the about the only way you could watch film content on a Mac)

There are still several browsers and productivity suites with 2023 updates that run on Mojave. Lastly, Mojave is apparently able to run on any intel machine with in some cases very little tweaking, meaning you could potentially run it on an i9 platform significantly faster than anything Apple currently markets.

As the last 32bit-supportive OS, a tweaked Mojave-in-HFS distro will (I predict) become the go-to for those refurbishing intel-processor iMacs.
 

nospamboz

macrumors regular
Oct 3, 2006
241
73
APFS (Mojave's default file-system) seems expressly designed to grind rotational-drives to pieces, and, since Apple has been considered among the quintessential "evil big tech" companies for quite awhile now, will cheerfully accuse them of willful "planned obsolescence" qua deliberate destruction of their customers' hardware via drive-failure

Oh, evil Apple destroying hard disks pre-dates APFS.
 
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Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
Oh, evil Apple destroying hard disks pre-dates APFS.
That's more a case of nonchalant thuggery than outright premeditated murder. --When Apple rated APFS-mandating operating-systems as kosher for 2019 base-model (5400rpm rotational-drive) iMacs while forcibly-obsolescing High Sierra, it knew exactly what it was doing: dicking its customers right in the bunghole. (Mojave cloned to HFS+ is the only way to reasonably use those machines, unless you love taking apart thinsides.)

For the love of god, is there a fork-macos/hfs/32bit/open-apps project on github yet? Or a Linux clone distro that actually runs Mac apps?
 
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PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
Does anyone have a solution for the glitchy safari/google chrome and the dvd player not working? I used vlc since it wasn’t playing on regular video player but vlc was glitching just like safari and google chrome. Disney plus is glitching for me even just to play videos but netflix and youtube run videos just fine. Netflix glitches when browsing for videos. visiting apple forums website glitches badly. Any solutions to all?

im on an imac 2011

i deleted the AMDradeon3000x.kext to fix the colors since that’s the only solution I saw for it so far(hopefully there’s an updated solution?)

i also used the patch for the applegva high sierra framework but it didnt seem to solve the dvd issues or glitchy site issues.
 
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Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
Does anyone have a solution for the glitchy safari/google chrome and the dvd player not working? I used vlc since it wasn’t playing on regular video player but vlc was glitching just like safari and google chrome. Disney plus is glitching for me even just to play videos but netflix and youtube run videos just fine. Netflix glitches when browsing for videos. visiting apple forums website glitches badly. Any solutions to all?

im on an imac 2011

i deleted the AMDradeon3000x.kext to fix the colors since that’s the only solution I saw for it so far(hopefully there’s an updated solution?)

i also used the patch for the applegva high sierra framework but it didnt seem to solve the dvd issues or glitchy site issues.
Install MaxFanControl if you haven't already, and set your iMac's three fans to "Ambient", (internal hard-drive if rotational), and (processor), respectively. --Why? You have a 2011, and I suspect it may be overheating internally, causing your graphic card to spasm.
 

PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
From the crystalldea site? I didn’t find maxfancontrol only macs fan control and I only found the ambient sensor setting under preferences and by international harddrive and processor do you mean putting the fan setting to HDD?
 

PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
Install MaxFanControl if you haven't already, and set your iMac's three fans to "Ambient", (internal hard-drive if rotational), and (processor), respectively. --Why? You have a 2011, and I suspect it may be overheating internally, causing your graphic card to spasm.
From the crystalldea site? I didn’t find maxfancontrol only macs fan control and I only found the ambient sensor setting under preferences and by international harddrive and processor do you mean putting the fan setting to HDD?


Sorry I’m new to all this. I just figured out how to reply…

I think I got it. I set all 3 fans to ambient but still cant find the internal harddrive and processor option you’re talking about, and the video is still spassing in vlc and disc still wont play in dvd player and google chrome is still glitchy. Unless i have to restart my computer to apply changes or something?
 
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PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
Does anyone have a solution for the glitchy safari/google chrome and the dvd player not working? I used vlc since it wasn’t playing on regular video player but vlc was glitching just like safari and google chrome. Disney plus is glitching for me even just to play videos but netflix and youtube run videos just fine. Netflix glitches when browsing for videos. visiting apple forums website glitches badly. Any solutions to all?

im on an imac 2011

i deleted the AMDradeon3000x.kext to fix the colors since that’s the only solution I saw for it so far(hopefully there’s an updated solution?)

i also used the patch for the applegva high sierra framework but it didnt seem to solve the dvd issues or glitchy site issues.
Update: not sure what happened but I was trying to get netflix to work on safari 14 since google chrome was too glitchy(something about installing silverlight or updating to a html5 browser) safari 14 is the latest version i saw in software update and it wasn’t working so I scoured the internet for a solution. Downloaded app cleaners, deleted silverlight plugin(this might have been the solution to glitchy chrome?) and nothing worked to fix netflix on safari BUT it doesn’t matter because I’m back to using chrome anyways as default since it’s not glitchy anymore. I can browse netflix with no glitches, and go to any site without it glitching. disney plus works as well which it wasnt working before(wouldn’t load in). The mac fan solution did help cool down the system since the temperatures were showing over 100 Fahrenheit for pretty much everything.
vlc is still glitching playing videos, but I found a solution:

to convert the video disc file to webm and run the file on chrome to play the video.
 

PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
Hi I’m having issues with minecraft I was wondering if anyone had a solution.

I got the error:

GLFW error 65545: NSGL: Failed to find a suitable pixel format.
Please make sure you have up-to-date drivers (see aka.ms/mcdriver for instructions).

I saw a thread mentioning i need opengl 4.4 (the app I installed to check my version says i have 4.1) i was wondering if there’s a opengl.framework file i could download to replace it or a workaround? I tried running minecraft on a windows 10 virtual machine(fusionVM) and i got the same error there as well.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
Update: not sure what happened but I was trying to get netflix to work on safari 14 since google chrome was too glitchy....
For Mac browser alternatives, consider Vivaldi and Opera. Also, murder ads with extreme prejudice: every browser gets Adblocker Ultimate and uBlockOrigin extensions.
 

PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
For Mac browser alternatives, consider Vivaldi and Opera. Also, murder ads with extreme prejudice: every browser gets Adblocker Ultimate and uBlockOrigin extensions.
Thank you. Do you have any suggestions for Minecraft fix? It says something about formatting the pixels. I posted the error I got in a comment above
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269

PurpleFlaw

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2023
7
0
Let me guess: This game plays fine under MacOS High Sierra, but croaks in Mojave...? (Apple, in its desire to force-obsolesce all of its 2009-11 "silverback" iMacs and various other hardware by withholding certain drivers and kexts from Mojave, also stymied many games requiring OpenGL hardware-acceleration.)
I havent tried it in macos high sierra since the imac I got gifted to me couldnt reinstall the os(I didn’t try the usb method but with internet recovery and regulary recovery it stopped loading at the end and was showing -471 seconds left). I had el capitan os(installed os with usb) before I upgraded to patched mojave. Do you think I should downgrade to high sierra or is there a fix for mojave?
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
I havent tried it in macos high sierra since the imac I got gifted to me couldnt reinstall the os(I didn’t try the usb method but with internet recovery and regulary recovery it stopped loading at the end and was showing -471 seconds left). I had el capitan os(installed os with usb) before I upgraded to patched mojave. Do you think I should downgrade to high sierra or is there a fix for mojave?
If your iMac is a 2009, 2010, or 2011 "silverback" DVD model, then it cannot run Mojave with hardware-acceleration enabled (at least not yet). You'll have to use High Sierra (which is perfectly fine). Don't forget to repartition the boot volume back to MacOS Extended Journaled in Disk Manager.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
Worked well on imac early 2009 20"
but after every restart brightness return back to minimum. doesn't save last chosen state.
This is a common problem with many Macs, and is typically solved by zapping PRAM exactly one time during startup.
 

CurtisBilly

macrumors member
Nov 1, 2006
45
27
Has anyone gotten Mojave running on a a 2019 Mac Pro 7,1?

My interest is to install and run Adobe CS6 Master Suite. I know the installation of CS6 is (mostly) possible on both a 2018 Mac mini and a 2019 MacBook Pro 15.4", both of which natively can run Mojave.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2022
453
269
Has anyone gotten Mojave running on a a 2019 Mac Pro 7,1?
Have your tried yourself (i.e., with a Mojave USB boot drive*)? ...these were first sold with Catalina in 2019, or so says the never-wrong internet.

(*If you don't have one, install Carbon Copy Cloner version 4 or 5 on a machine with a Mojave installation, use Disk Utility to create a MacOS Extended-journaled (*not* APFS!) partition of [boot volume used space + ~5gb] size on an external USB drive, then clone the boot volume into that new partition. Restart/Option-key to verify the completed copy successfully boots.)

Anyway, there is an existing thread for this, but it went dormant three years ago, so it's hard to say if anyone's had any luck since then.
My interest is to install and run Adobe CS6 Master Suite. I know the installation of CS6 is (mostly) possible on both a 2018 Mac mini and a 2019 MacBook Pro 15.4", both of which natively can run Mojave.
CS6 is bread-n-butter 32bit old-school that runs perfectly fine in Mojave, and also thrown out all of the Adobe, Google, and Microsoft crud in the Library/Launch daemons folders).
 
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