macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[impreza233]

Good morning. Two updates:
2)
Fredrik Andersson on Low End Mac Facebook group traced the GUI rendering in safe mode and concluded that I was wrong, and it is still using OpenGL. It has just been intentionally blocked when not in safe mode.
This means there is hope for using an OpenGL driver. cc @Czo any reverse engineering help?

Dirty playing of Apple, as usual. Like capping the processor speed on Leopard.

 

[montyboy_us]

Back in Lion you could delete PlatformSupport. Nowadays, you have to mod it, not delete it. Follow the format of the preexisting lines, and add the board-id from here: https://gist.github.com/rtrouton/e6cf0f4064aea52fac2e5116c4b05f2e
It is 'Mac-F221BEC8'.
Also add MacPro5,1 to the section with the model names. I have not edited the file in a while, so forgive me for my not-so-detailed description.

Hmm, replaced with appropriate numbers and still no luck. What other methods are there? I was looking around for DosDude's patcher source, but I guess it's not available, so I could see the approach to take when it comes to this MacPro 5,1 with 680GTX and Mojave booting.

 

[Czo]

Hmm, replaced with appropriate numbers and still no luck. What other methods are there? I was looking around for DosDude's patcher source, but I guess it's not available, so I could see the approach to take when it comes to this MacPro 5,1 with 680GTX and Mojave booting.

MacPro5,1 with Metal Capable cards are officially supported in the next beta (you can check this in the release notes in Apple's Developer portal), so please be patient, and wait for the next beta. I think, it will install without any hack and mods on your 5,1.

 

[visberry]

Yup.
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That's an Nvidia 320m, so you have the Web Driver chance + the OpenGL WindowServer/Apps chance.

Cool! Such a shame that they just ditched 2010 and 2011 in one go. Unlike Apple for that.

 

[macdos]

The 2008 computers have a kernel panic currently but we are investigating. They might need a patched kernel or SSE4.2 emulator, both of which can't happen until GM (we need XNU source code).

With an SSE4.2 emulator, you would not need to patch the GPU drivers, right? That's a win-win.

How much performance penalty would we be talking about with an emulator? From what I understand, SSE4.2 only covers seven instructions, most of which compare packed strings.

 

[Luckygreek]

I normally abstain from commenting on Forums, as a Mac user from the days of SI's, constantly having to purchase newer mac's to keep up with newer OS's, there's a point when you just say pass.
At the current price of Macs, even entry-level (PB's & Imacs) puts it out of reach (Maxed out iMac Pro could cost over $17K) for many, and to top it off, we can't upgrade to 10.14 if you fall into some of the unsupported categories. I understand there needs to be a cutoff, however, if you're running High Sierra, why not support those Mac's?
Thanks Apple!

 

[bookemdano]

I normally abstain from commenting on Forums, as a Mac user from the days of SI's, constantly having to purchase newer mac's to keep up with newer OS's, there's a point when you just say pass.
At the current price of Macs, even entry-level (PB's & Imacs) puts it out of reach (Maxed out iMac Pro could cost over $17K) for many, and to top it off, we can't upgrade to 10.14 if you fall into some of the unsupported categories. I understand there needs to be a cutoff, however, if you're running High Sierra, why not support those Mac's?
Thanks Apple!

Well, High Sierra was itself a continuation of the supported devices for Sierra. Like Mojave, Sierra axed off compatibility for older models (2007, 2008 and 2009 MacBook Pros, 2008 and 2009 MacBook Airs, 2007 and 2008 iMacs, the 2008 MacBook, the 2009 Mac Mini and XServe).

I mean if your rule is that Apple should always maintain compatibility with whatever devices the previous OS was compatible with then folks would be trying to run 10.14 on 2006 Mac Minis with Core Solo processors and such.

I know, it sucks but they have to draw the line somewhere. And it's not like this is anything new--they've been doing things this way for quite some time now.

 

[oldmacs]

I mean if your rule is that Apple should always maintain compatibility with whatever devices the previous OS was compatible with then folks would be trying to run 10.14 on 2006 Mac Minis with Core Solo processors and such.

And? Windows 10 will run on these machines relatively well. There are point that OS specifications need to be raised, but what Apple dropped was just stupid.

I know, it sucks but they have to draw the line somewhere. And it's not like this is anything new--they've been doing things this way for quite some time now.

Doesn't make it any better and it goes against the 'environmentally friendly' things that they rave about.

 

[e_ch]

I normally abstain from commenting on Forums, as a Mac user from the days of SI's, constantly having to purchase newer mac's to keep up with newer OS's, there's a point when you just say pass.
At the current price of Macs, even entry-level (PB's & Imacs) puts it out of reach (Maxed out iMac Pro could cost over $17K) for many, and to top it off, we can't upgrade to 10.14 if you fall into some of the unsupported categories. I understand there needs to be a cutoff, however, if you're running High Sierra, why not support those Mac's?
Thanks Apple!

Apple said they didn't cut OpenGL & CL off completely, so they could make 10.14 work on older machines or at least bring some features to High Sierra updates. I like some new things shown but they don't seem to be worth $2000 spent on a new iMac which I don't need for now because slightly upgraded 11,3 does everything I need flawlessly.

 

[Luckygreek]

Well, High Sierra was itself a continuation of the supported devices for Sierra. Like Mojave, Sierra axed off compatibility for older models (2007, 2008 and 2009 MacBook Pros, 2008 and 2009 MacBook Airs, 2007 and 2008 iMacs, the 2008 MacBook, the 2009 Mac Mini and XServe).

I mean if your rule is that Apple should always maintain compatibility with whatever devices the previous OS was compatible with then folks would be trying to run 10.14 on 2006 Mac Minis with Core Solo processors and such.

I know, it sucks but they have to draw the line somewhere. And it's not like this is anything new--they've been doing things this way for quite some time now.

Yes, I agree with you, there has to be a cutoff, after half a dozen Macs, I'm done for a while, my iMac late 2010 will have to for the time being. 5 Grand for baseline iMac Pro, & yes it's on par with G5's when they came out, just venting.

 

[TimothyR734]

its all about money you can get a low end new laptop running windows 10 for under $300 I can run windows 7 on a old 486 laptop windows 10 on a single core laptop but low-end new iMac $5000 thats way out of my price range I am happy with my early 2009 iMac it does what I need it to do

 

[e_ch]

I mean if your rule is that Apple should always maintain compatibility with whatever devices the previous OS was compatible with then folks would be trying to run 10.14 on 2006 Mac Minis with Core Solo processors and such.

All 11, 12 and 13-inch MacBooks and even latest mac mini models run slower than most iMacs of 2010 and 2011.

 

[bookemdano]

Yes, I agree with you, there has to be a cutoff, after half a dozen Macs, I'm done for a while, my iMac late 2010 will have to for the time being. 5 Grand for baseline iMac Pro, & yes it's on par with G5's when they came out, just venting.

Well the iMac Pro is not really a direct replacement for what you have, so I'm not sure why you keep bringing up its price tag. It's obscenely expensive because it is overbuilt and meant for people with huge budgets.

I bought a 2015 iMac 5K for $1300 brand new a few months ago. Considering the 27" IPS screen in it I think that is a really reasonable price. Yes it's a couple of years old and doesn't have Thunderbolt 3. But Apple will support it through 2022 and by then I'll probably want something else.

 

[yangm]

Could you guys stop spamming this thread with “but windows 10 runs on my 1998 machine just fine!” since the topic is “Run Mojave on unsupported hardware”? Thanks.

 

[bookemdano]

And? Windows 10 will run on these machines relatively well. There are point that OS specifications need to be raised, but what Apple dropped was just stupid.



Doesn't make it any better and it goes against the 'environmentally friendly' things that they rave about.

This same argument is going on in two different threads now, but basically MS has a monetary incentive to have Windows on as many PCs as possible. If Windows kept getting more bloated like Vista, they'd have probably lost a bunch of people to Linux or Chrome OS or even Macs. They knew if they made Win10 run smoothly on old machines people would use it. And each of those people have their data monetized by MS for fun and profit.

Apple is a hardware company. They'd rather not expend resources giving people free software updates for life on their 8, 9 and 10 year old computers. The environmentally-friendly pose they have is secondary to their number 1 priority which is profit. They make hardware and profit on it so they have an incentive to keep people buying new hardware.

 

[Luckygreek]

Well the iMac Pro is not really a direct replacement for what you have, so I'm not sure why you keep bringing up its price tag. It's obscenely expensive because it is overbuilt and meant for people with huge budgets.

After this many Mac's; SI, Quadra 900, Power Macintosh 6100, 8100, 9500, G3 (2) G4 (2) G5 (3) & late 2010 iMac, yeah price is always a concern. When is it not?

I bought a 2015 iMac 5K for $1300 brand new a few months ago. Considering the 27" IPS screen in it I think that is a really reasonable price. Yes it's a couple of years old and doesn't have Thunderbolt 3. But Apple will support it through 2022 and by then I'll probably want something else.

 

[videotape74]

I am currently typing this on a mid-2009 MacBook Pro thanks to the work that @dosdude1 has done but I am still pissed off that people are complaing about not being able to run Mojave on a almost 10 year old system...c'mon and get real! If you are so impressed that Windows 10 runs on your old system...switch! If not, be happy with everything you got out of your system and be thankful for dudes like @dosdude1 who have done all the work they have...when he didn't need to. Sure I'm disappointed that I can't run Mojave, but I'm not going to bitch about Apple...my computer is almost 10 years old!!!

 

[pprobine]

sXpTv or anyone else, Do you have a download we can borrow for the full .app so we can mod it without having to download it from the app store

I did the download in a High Sierra VM using VMware Workstation. Initiated it with the Beta Access Utility from High Sierra. No problems at all.

 

[iphone2g&3gfan]

That's precisely the question which we need answered. Oh gosh, I'm falling asleep. See everyone later...

Windows 10 actually supports even white MacBooks from 2006 as well… As well as the custom built PC I have from 2003 and it runs fairly smoothly for basic things.

Linux kernel 4.17 (just released) supports the Pentium Pro arch (i586) and in certain cases the i486 arch (486DX, 486sx and clones), so even better there But the point is, Apple's support is WAY less than the rest. And it's left in our hands to solve.
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I'm thinking it's the end of the line for those of us on the Mac Pro 3,1 since SSE 4.1 is likely an unpatchable limiting factor.

Well I still think there's hope, since nawcom did it donkey-years ago with an SSE3 emulator that 100% worked... SSE3 had more instructions than SSE4.2 so while us the new generation may need to learn how to add c and headers to XNU, it is still possible...
[doublepost=1528251488][/doublepost]

Good morning. Two updates:

1)
The kernel panic on MacPro3,1 is in fact caused by missing SSE4.2. This is bad in a way, but also good because it means all we need is a SSE4.2 emulator (which can be ported from hackintosh AMD kernels) but we need to wait until GM for the kernel source.

2)
Fredrik Andersson on Low End Mac Facebook group traced the GUI rendering in safe mode and concluded that I was wrong, and it is still using OpenGL. It has just been intentionally blocked when not in safe mode.
This means there is hope for using an OpenGL driver. cc @Czo any reverse engineering help?

This is great. I will try to get my hands on a Mojave system soon. I have one more thought: We can try to force the HD 4000 ACCELERATION kexts and .bundles BUT with the AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext since they all use a shared codebase for the OpenGL/MTL accelerators (just run strings on the binary, you'll see it's called "GraphicsDrivers-Intel" or something like that...

Just to plan, this would look like this:

1) Force load AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext.
2) Rename the HD 4000 Accelerators to the HD 3000 corresponding filenames so they are loaded by the Framebuffer kext.
3) Binpatch WindowServer/Framebuffer to load MTLDriver??
4) Profit.

The OpenGL-native on WindowServer is still the best hope for us all, though.
[doublepost=1528251609][/doublepost]

With an SSE4.2 emulator, you would not need to patch the GPU drivers, right? That's a win-win.

How much performance penalty would we be talking about with an emulator? From what I understand, SSE4.2 only covers seven instructions, most of which compare packed strings.

If we are planning to use the old drivers from High Sierra, then this wouldn't be a problem either way (since the GPU drivers ONLY used SSE4.1 on High Sierra). But, the OpenGL libraries (dylibs) and the rest of the system has CERTAINLY been recompiled with SSE4.2 optimizations. Binpatching them is tedious, and doing the emulator-in-kernel route would keep the platform stable with all apps.

 

[blindpcguy]

all im going to say is look these old macs served us well and alot of them would of been dropped without all the great people like @dosdude1 who have made patches and such if you can't run Mojave High Seirra will still have a couple years of support left and more with apps and the argument about windows 10MS makes money off data in W10 Apple makes money off hardware two diffrent incentives id say if i got 7 years out of a machine id be happy. we should be celebrating all thease great people that despite what apple does try their best to help us get newer macOS revisions when they don't have to and despite the odds theyr still trying thier best to get it working if at all possible all il say from here is keep up the good work guys and lets be thankful that we got thease amazing people doing this for us who cant

 

[iphone2g&3gfan]

Good morning. Two updates:

1)
The kernel panic on MacPro3,1 is in fact caused by missing SSE4.2. This is bad in a way, but also good because it means all we need is a SSE4.2 emulator (which can be ported from hackintosh AMD kernels) but we need to wait until GM for the kernel source.

2)
Fredrik Andersson on Low End Mac Facebook group traced the GUI rendering in safe mode and concluded that I was wrong, and it is still using OpenGL. It has just been intentionally blocked when not in safe mode.
This means there is hope for using an OpenGL driver. cc @Czo any reverse engineering help?

Alright, this seems like a single NOP patch. But, I've never done it This is VERY, VERY promising. It's probably just a simple if-then:

if(XNU.safemode=1) then
use.ui.dylib("$GPUDRIVER"GLDriver.bundle) = 1
use.ui.dylib("$GPUDRIVER"MTLDriver.bundle) = 0
else
use.ui.dylib("$GPUDRIVER"GLDriver.bundle) = 0
use.ui.dylib("$GPUDRIVER"MTLDriver.bundle) = 1
fi

There's still one problem with this. In safe mode, ONLY the framebuffer Kext should be loaded, right? So why is it using OpenGL SOFTWARE rendering? Is this due to the fact that Apple HASN'T yet made a software Metal renderer? Thus falling back to rendering the UI in OpenGL, and then running that through the software/cpu renderer? If this is true, then we can continue to rely on WindowServer's OpenGL so long as Apple doesn't develop that software renderer for Metal. Once that happens, they will completely strip the code out of WindowServer (located in PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework)

Lastly, could we get a link to Fredrik's post? I can't seem to find it, and I am going to try some experimenting of my own (I have a Hackintosh on HS with a Xeon E5645 + Radeon HD 5570, so just the GPU is the problem)
[doublepost=1528253002][/doublepost]

all im going to say is look these old macs served us well and alot of them would of been dropped without all the great people like @dosdude1 who have made patches and such if you can't run Mojave High Seirra will still have a couple years of support left and more with apps and the argument about windows 10MS makes money off data in W10 Apple makes money off hardware two diffrent incentives id say if i got 7 years out of a machine id be happy. we should be celebrating all thease great people that despite what apple does try their best to help us get newer macOS revisions when they don't have to and despite the odds theyr still trying thier best to get it working if at all possible all il say from here is keep up the good work guys and lets be thankful that we got thease amazing people doing this for us who cant

Absolutely, totally spot-on. I am not really an established person making the patches, but I've followed the "Unsupported Macs" threads all the way since 10.8 Mountain Lion, and I thought I'd finally try to help out. They do a great job, and they really go out of their way to help people. I'm sure they're thankful for that, that was really nice jdasikainen.

 

[e_ch]

Just to plan, this would look like this:

1) Force load AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext.
2) Rename the HD 4000 Accelerators to the HD 3000 corresponding filenames so they are loaded by the Framebuffer kext.
3) Binpatch WindowServer/Framebuffer to load MTLDriver??
4) Profit.

Is something like this possible to use ATI 5870 Accelerators with ATI 5750?

 

[sXpTv]

Hmm, replaced with appropriate numbers and still no luck. What other methods are there? I was looking around for DosDude's patcher source, but I guess it's not available, so I could see the approach to take when it comes to this MacPro 5,1 with 680GTX and Mojave booting.

Yeah, it doesn't work anymore, it automatically overrides the file at boot.
I also tried to lock the file but it still says it's not supported.

 

[AwlsomeAlex]

Just reading through this, what I'm getting out of it sounds like Safe Mode still loads OpenGL natively without Metal even being used, so what would be the flaws of making it so Safe Mode would HAVE to be loaded for debugging purposes on non-native machines? I honestly don't know if what I just said is a complete joke since I'm new in the MacWorld, as I had just acquired and upgraded an old MacBook Pro 2010 and hate to see supported dropped just so suddenly.

 

[e_ch]

Just reading through this, what I'm getting out of it sounds like Safe Mode still loads OpenGL natively without Metal even being used, so what would be the flaws of making it so Safe Mode would HAVE to be loaded for debugging purposes on non-native machines? I honestly don't know if what I just said is a complete joke since I'm new in the MacWorld, as I had just acquired and upgraded an old MacBook Pro 2010 and hate to see supported dropped just so suddenly.

As far as I remember in previous versions of MacOS Safe mode worked without gpu acceleration. There's no point to change it in 10.14.