macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[Starplayr]

I have some very good news. I was able to get Swift to run on the base system and as a result have CloneToolX running on a very small partition. It will be between 1-2GBs if not smaller. It is using the base system from Catalina with additions needed to run Swift. It works without video acceleration. The installer app will be removed as this disk is meant for disk cloning only.

I can also make an emergency disk from Mojave incase users find to be more compatible.

This will bring clonetool to great new levels and it will be able to compete with other widely known solutions.

CloneToolX will remain free, but I will be adding a tip jar to the app.

Anyways. This will allow cloning of any volume.

CloneToolX can also run from a regular macOS. It just can’t clone the startup disk directly.

Very excited to get this far in the game.

I may tweak a few things making the user experience a little better on the clonetool boot disk.

update: I was able to use my prelinked kernel from full Catalina B2 and was able to get WiFi working. Others should be able to do the same. I have not installed B3 yet, but the base system boot disk was made from B3.

I need to add Disk to Disk cloning. Finish the Daemon for when we want to use it on a regular OS. And should be pretty close to start testing it and seeing where holes need to be filled.

Very happy to have Swift on the base system. I have some other projects that may benefit from that.

If possible, I will try to get it all to fit on on .ISO for those that still burn CDs. It will definitely fit on a USB flash drive. And you will be able to carve out a small HFS+ partition anywhere. This may also run off a Virtual Machine, but I don't know if that has any use cases.

 

[TimothyR734]

I have some very good news. I was able to get Swift to run on the base system and as a result have CloneToolX running on a very small partition. It will be between 1-2GBs if not smaller. It is using the base system from Catalina with additions needed to run Swift. It works without video acceleration. The installer app will be removed as this disk is meant for disk cloning only.

I can also make an emergency disk from Mojave incase users find to be more compatible.

This will bring clonetool to great new levels and it will be able to compete with other widely known solutions.

CloneToolX will remain free, but I will be adding a tip jar to the app.

Anyways. This will allow cloning of any volume.

CloneToolX can also run from a regular macOS. It just can’t clone the startup disk directly.

Very excited to get this far in the game.

I may tweak a few things making the user experience a little better on the clonetool boot disk.

Looks awesome

 

[0134168]

I have the same machine. It runs well but Photos and Maps crashing is a deal breaker for me. Think I'll go back to Mojave.

Maps and Photos running great here. Dedicated GPU disabled.
[doublepost=1562223276][/doublepost]

I used Dosdude1’s nvram gpu disabling method(the old one)...can I still use the thunderbolt output?
It is on MacBook Pro early 2011 8,2

As far as I know the Thunderbolt port is directly wired to the Discrete AMD GPU. With the NVRAM flag used to disable the discrete GPU this will in term disable the use of the Thunderbolt port. OS X will still detect it as its still got power as the NVRAM flag does not Turn Off the discrete AMD GPU but just disables it.

Only just for the display out. Rest of thunderbolt features remain. But you can use an USB graphic card if you need to.

 

[jackluke]

I have some very good news. I was able to get Swift to run on the base system and as a result have CloneToolX running on a very small partition. It will be between 1-2GBs if not smaller. It is using the base system from Catalina with additions needed to run Swift. It works without video acceleration. The installer app will be removed as this disk is meant for disk cloning only.

I can also make an emergency disk from Mojave incase users find to be more compatible.

This will bring clonetool to great new levels and it will be able to compete with other widely known solutions.

CloneToolX will remain free, but I will be adding a tip jar to the app.

Anyways. This will allow cloning of any volume.

CloneToolX can also run from a regular macOS. It just can’t clone the startup disk directly.

Very excited to get this far in the game.

I may tweak a few things making the user experience a little better on the clonetool boot disk.

update: I was able to use my prelinked kernel from full Catalina B2 and was able to get WiFi working. Others should be able to do the same. I have not installed B3 yet, but the base system boot disk was made from B3.

I need to add Disk to Disk cloning. Finish the Daemon for when we want to use it on a regular OS. And should be pretty close to start testing it and seeing where holes need to be filled.

Very happy to have Swift on the base system. I have some other projects that may benefit from that.

If possible, I will try to get it all to fit on on .ISO for those that still burn CDs. It will definitely fit on a USB flash drive. And you will be able to carve out a small HFS+ partition anywhere.

If it's an xcode project you could "link your CloneToolX binary with libraries" removing from your linked libraries the Appkit.framework and adding for example your Appkit renamed as AppkitCloneToolX.framework (maybe also its internal exec in AppkitCloneToolX) so you could have 2 Appkit (one stock for BaseSystem and the other linked with your app) to avoid conflicts, even if from pictures seems your tool uses automatically the right framework to define that function.

 

[ASentientBot]

@******* What Mac do you have? For me, DP3 on a 2010 MacBook (GeForce 320m), the results are:
- Photos still crashes (still haven't found a patch that doesn't hide the thumbnails)
- Maps just shows black Edit: sort of works after a couple re-opens, but the street names keep disappearing and I got a couple OpenGL-related crashes in Satellite view
- Messages works fine
- Drift screensaver (new in this beta!) is just black
- Xcode DP3 is downloading, will edit when I try it, but am hopeful since DP2 worked is working great!

I'm confused by all the differing results here. Shouldn't everybody on a non-Metal GPU with my SkyLight/CoreDisplay replacements have the same experience? Very weird...

Anyways, I'm happy to report the same finding as the rest of you -- DP3 works generally the same as DP2

For anyone else who still likes doing things by hand, my steps for a full manual install on MacBook7,1 are attached as usual, as well as freshly-patched IOSurface and IOHIDFamily binaries for this version (@dosdude1 should probably update the versions in the patcher).

I'm (happily) a bit shocked that this project is still going strong. Interesting times lie ahead...

 

[jackluke]

@******* What Mac do you have? For me, DP3 on a 2010 MacBook (GeForce 320m), the results are:
- Photos still crashes (still haven't found a patch that doesn't hide the thumbnails)
- Maps just shows black
- Messages works fine
- Drift screensaver (new in this beta!) is just black
- Xcode DP3 is downloading, will edit when I try it, but am hopeful since DP2 worked

I'm confused by all the differing results here. Shouldn't everybody on a non-Metal GPU with my SkyLight/CoreDisplay replacements have the same experience? Very weird...

Anyways, I'm happy to report the same finding as the rest of you -- DP3 works generally the same as DP2
View attachment 846585

For anyone else who still likes doing things by hand, my steps for a full manual install on MacBook7,1 are attached as usual, as well as freshly-patched IOSurface and IOHIDFamily binaries for this version (@dosdude1 should probably update the versions in the patcher).

I'm (happily) a bit shocked that this project is still going strong. Interesting times lie ahead...

Same machine, but I'm still on DP2 and Maps.app is working (both 2d/3d view) with your Catalina OpenGL fallback, no Drift screensaver on DP2 , I may try to copy Drift from the supported DP3 machine on DP2 unsupported machine.

Do you plan to re-patch a SkyLight from 10.14.6 when final released ?
[doublepost=1562225999][/doublepost]The new Drift screensaver crashes also on a supported Catalina Metal machine.

 

[DuncanGarp]

Anyone that was able to successfully update to Beta 3 on an unsupported device, have the "Automatic" on System Preferences | Desktop & Screen Saver | Desktop | working for you ?

Thanks.

Follow-up on my "Automatic Desktop" question above since no one has responded either way.

[doublepost=1562227100][/doublepost]

@******* What Mac do you have? For me, DP3 on a 2010 MacBook (GeForce 320m), the results are:
- Photos still crashes (still haven't found a patch that doesn't hide the thumbnails)
- Maps just shows black Edit: sort of works after a couple re-opens, but the street names keep disappearing and I got a couple OpenGL-related crashes in Satellite view
- Messages works fine
- Drift screensaver (new in this beta!) is just black
- Xcode DP3 is downloading, will edit when I try it, but am hopeful since DP2 worked

I'm confused by all the differing results here. Shouldn't everybody on a non-Metal GPU with my SkyLight/CoreDisplay replacements have the same experience? Very weird...

Anyways, I'm happy to report the same finding as the rest of you -- DP3 works generally the same as DP2
View attachment 846585

For anyone else who still likes doing things by hand, my steps for a full manual install on MacBook7,1 are attached as usual, as well as freshly-patched IOSurface and IOHIDFamily binaries for this version (@dosdude1 should probably update the versions in the patcher).

I'm (happily) a bit shocked that this project is still going strong. Interesting times lie ahead...

To add a note on my successful update to beta 3 using @dosdude1's macOS Catalina Patcher 1.0b6, graphics acceleration is achieved (which I am assuming @ASentientBot's discovery/fix made it possible). Thank you both.

 

[ASentientBot]

Follow-up on my "Automatic Desktop" question above since no one has responded either way.

[doublepost=1562227100][/doublepost]

To add a note on my successful update to beta 3 using @dosdude1's macOS Catalina Patcher 1.0b6, graphics acceleration is achieved (which I am assuming @ASentientBot's discovery/fix made it possible). Thank you both.

The automatic light/dark theme changing (in General preferences) does not work, as it requires functionality in the new SkyLight/CoreDisplay frameworks that isn't present in the old versions used in the acceleration fix. I assume the automatic desktop feature is broken for the same reason. Not sure if there will be a fix anytime soon.
[doublepost=1562227804][/doublepost]

Same machine, but I'm still on DP2 and Maps.app is working (both 2d/3d view) with your Catalina OpenGL fallback, no Drift screensaver on DP2 , I may try to copy Drift from the supported DP3 machine on DP2 unsupported machine.

Do you plan to re-patch a SkyLight from 10.14.6 when final released ?
[doublepost=1562225999][/doublepost]The new Drift screensaver crashes also on a supported Catalina Metal machine.

You're right about Maps, it's mostly working for me after quitting/reopening it a few times. Weird.

Assuming that acceleration works on 10.14.6, that seems like a good idea, so most likely yes.

As for the Drift screensaver, there is a video on Twitter of it working... I wonder why it's crashing for you? I hope we eventually get to see it on OpenGL-only machines, but I somehow doubt it.

 

[jackluke]

The automatic light/dark theme changing (in General preferences) does not work, as it requires functionality in the new SkyLight/CoreDisplay frameworks that isn't present in the old versions used in the acceleration fix. I assume the automatic desktop feature is broken for the same reason. Not sure if there will be a fix anytime soon.
[doublepost=1562227804][/doublepost]
You're right about Maps, it's mostly working for me after quitting/reopening it a few times. Weird.

Assuming that acceleration works on 10.14.6, that seems like a good idea, so most likely yes.

As for the Drift screensaver, there is a video on Twitter of it working... I wonder why it's crashing for you? I hope we eventually get to see it on OpenGL-only machines, but I somehow doubt it.

About Maps.app you're right labels names keep disappearing but if you start from a little resized window they appear again, in my case 2d-view crash more often, about satellite view I noticed if you pinch-zoom very slowly it doesn't crash.

About Drift supported Metal machine, I can open its screensaver option but just a blank screen, and the Catalina installation is totally unpatched, weird.

 

[olad]

Apropos (of) nothing... I notice that Mojave's Unsupported thread started 04 June; reached 103 pages on 13 July 2018. Catalina's Unsupported thread started 03 June; has reached 103 pages by 04 July. I wonder if it will attain the dizzying height of Mojave's 655 pages (and more than 16,000 posts)! Long way to go yet. Happy Independence Day to all Americans on this thread.

 

[GSXB]

Latest DP3/PB2 release of Catalina WORKS with all current patches, INCLUDING the Legacy non-Metal video card patch! The current Catalina Patcher version can download and install it no problems.

View attachment 846179

the patcher worked and installed flawlessly, however I'm getting an error couldn't load trackpad preferences ? any ideas
scrap that I've enabled trim and rebooted trackpad preferences are now working
Dosdude you da man

 

[0134168]

@******* What Mac do you have? For me, DP3 on a 2010 MacBook (GeForce 320m), the results are:
- Photos still crashes (still haven't found a patch that doesn't hide the thumbnails)
- Maps just shows black Edit: sort of works after a couple re-opens, but the street names keep disappearing and I got a couple OpenGL-related crashes in Satellite view
- Messages works fine
- Drift screensaver (new in this beta!) is just black
- Xcode DP3 is downloading, will edit when I try it, but am hopeful since DP2 worked is working great!

I'm confused by all the differing results here. Shouldn't everybody on a non-Metal GPU with my SkyLight/CoreDisplay replacements have the same experience? Very weird...

Anyways, I'm happy to report the same finding as the rest of you -- DP3 works generally the same as DP2
View attachment 846585

For anyone else who still likes doing things by hand, my steps for a full manual install on MacBook7,1 are attached as usual, as well as freshly-patched IOSurface and IOHIDFamily binaries for this version (@dosdude1 should probably update the versions in the patcher).

I'm (happily) a bit shocked that this project is still going strong. Interesting times lie ahead...

Macbook Pro 8,3, late 2011, dedicated GPU disabled.

 

[testheit]

The automatic light/dark theme changing (in General preferences) does not work, as it requires functionality in the new SkyLight/CoreDisplay frameworks that isn't present in the old versions used in the acceleration fix. I assume the automatic desktop feature is broken for the same reason. Not sure if there will be a fix anytime soon.

@ASentientBot Couldn't you just include the Original SkyLight too and instead of inserting stub functions redirect them to the original function in the original binary (with this dlsym stuff)?

 

[LuisN]

About Maps.app you're right labels names keep disappearing but if you start from a little resized window they appear again, in my case 2d-view crash more often, about satellite view I noticed if you pinch-zoom very slowly it doesn't crash.

About Drift supported Metal machine, I can open its screensaver option but just a blank screen, and the Catalina installation is totally unpatched, weird.

same here in MBP 13' 2012. Not drifting...

 

[Althiometer]

Can we do the macOS Catalina DP3 update directly from Software Updater?

 

[haralds]

I had my Mac Pro 5,1 running nicely and upgraded to Beta 3. After ½ day that crashed and now will not load. Trying to reinstall with the DosDude1 patched installer that worked for the upgrade I get an error -29. bootargs -no_compat_check is still in place. SIP is disabled. Disks check out fine with First Aid.
Does anybody know what that error is?
I spent a lot of time configuring that system so I hate to lose it.
Has anybody tried adding an additional volume to a Catalina install and installing another rev of Catalina into that?

Plan B: booted into the patched installer and added a volume to the SSD holding Catalina. I installed into that and am now using the Migration Wizard to get the data, apps, and config transferred. This will take a bit even at 130MB/s. Once everything is running, I will simply delete the original volumes.

Good to have a 1GB SSD to play with this.

 

[jackluke]

@ASentientBot reading your "install.txt", you have changed your IOSurface fix , now is no more return to the "single user" function, but you found a different fix then, what's the difference with your previous fix ?

edit:
No, I misread, that is your IOHIDFamily fix, ignore this message

 

[macosdon]

Seems like you need a larger usb or something.

Hi, good news! Julian, I made an install disk again with your Beta 3 and the same USB disk. Although there were some warnings appeared again during the making, the patch command finally worked. Catalina can run on MB4.1, but the system is not stable, it will reboot unexpectedly and brightness can't be adjusted. I think the unstable is caused by the two WIFI kexts because I got the same result under 10.14.5 if I install these two WIFI kexts files. However, it's still a miracle for this old machine. Thanks for your guys' wonderful work! Here is the log when making USB install disk:

+ Installer support check passed.
/ What volume would you like to use?
/ Input a volume name.
/ Insta
/ Macintosh HD
/ Insta
+ Unmounted installer disk images.
> Creating installer disk.
> Created installer disk.
+ Renamed installer volume.
+ Mounting BaseSystem disk image.
+ Patched installer files.
+ Patched input drivers.
+ Patched platform support check.
+ Patched kernel cache.
+ Patched System Integrity Protection.
> Copying patcher utilities.
cp: /tmp/Base System/usr/patch/AMDShared.bundle/Contents/Resources/runtime.amdil_si.bc: No space left on device
cp: /tmp/Base System/usr/patch/AMDShared.bundle/Contents/Resources/runtime.amdil_si.builtin: No space left on device
cp: /tmp/Base System/usr/patch/AMD3800Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/AMD3800Cont+ Copied patcher utilities.
+ Unmounted BaseSystem disk image.
+ Converted BaseSystem disk image.
+ Mounted InstallESD disk image.
+ Patched installer package.
+ Unmounted InstallESD disk image.
+ Converting InstallESD disk image.
+ Removed temporary files.
/ Thank you for using macOS Patcher.

 

[Flacko]

To any mp3.1 users who have the standard Apple dvd drive. Is it recognised when using Catalina? Working fine under Mojave but not Cat b3. No sign of it in sys info and eject key on keyboard has no effect.

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

@ASentientBot thank you very much for your needful help!!! I have almost your hardware (Macmini4,1) and I'm sure that thanks to your and @dosdude1 's geniality my almost 10 years old Macmini mid 2010 (GeForce 320m, Core 2 Duo Penryn P8600 2.4 Ghz, 8 Gb RAM 1066 Mhz) will continue to work well with Catalina

 

[jhowarth]

To any mp3.1 users who have the standard Apple dvd drive. Is it recognised when using Catalina? Working fine under Mojave but not Cat b3. No sign of it in sys info and eject key on keyboard has no effect.

My guess is that the problem is related to the removal of AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext from Plugins directory of
IOATAFamily.kext in Catalina.

 

[gt2416]

Does anyone have issues with the home app ? On Catalina no switches show, they are all blank.
Microsoft Word, highlighting has some major graphical glitches, any workaround would be great.

 

[Flacko]

My guess is that the problem is related to the removal of AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext from Plugins directory of
IOATAFamily.kext in Catalina.

Thanks. That makes sense as PATA is a fairly old interface. I guess if I want to use the present DVD drive I might give putting that kext back into the plugins directory a try to see what happens. I do not use the DVD drive very often so no great loss and have an Apple SuperDrive somewhere I could also get up and running.

 

[jhowarth]

My guess is that the problem is related to the removal of AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext from Plugins directory of
IOATAFamily.kext in Catalina.

FYI, I can confirm on my MacPro 3,1 that booting from the patched DP3 Catalina installer, copying the IOATAFamily.kext from a Mojave volume with 'cp -R', fixing its ownership with 'chmod -R 0:0' and permissions with 'chmod -R 755' followed by reinstalling the patches to force a cache rebuild restores a functional Superdrive.

I do wonder if could use the Catalina IOATAFamily.kext with just adding the missing AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext to its Plugins instead of using the Mojave copy?

 

[Starplayr]

To any mp3.1 users who have the standard Apple dvd drive. Is it recognised when using Catalina? Working fine under Mojave but not Cat b3. No sign of it in sys info and eject key on keyboard has no effect.

I have two 3,1s. One still has its DVD drive connected, but it’s not running Catalina at the moment. I’ll plug a disk in and see what it does.