macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[lamerz78]

DiskUtility from your iMac APFS HighSierra.

ehm..... restore option?

 

[Starplayr]

You could try a SMBIOS to point to a newer Mac Pro, in order to avoid some issues regarding updates and downloading the Catalina install app from App Store. But if this configuration seems to work, I guess you can stick to it. Do you also use FakeSMC?

Yes. I might try a newer board and Mac ID (might try one at a time, and see what Apple Reads for SW updates), but keep the EFI info to where it's at. Would be nice to do software updates.

 

[bondiblueuk]

Running Catalina on three machines:
2007 iMac 24" with T9300, 6GB RAM and 256GB SSD - runs a treat!
2009 iMac 27" with Quad Core i5, 12GB RAM and 256GB SSD - like a new computer!
2011 MacBook Pro 13" with 2.7GHz i7, 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD - ditto!

 

[astronyu]

After many hours of research, patching, and fighting with Apple's codesinging enforcement, I have FINALLY managed to create a 100% WORKING installer patch for macOS Catalina installers! This will allow you to install Catalina on your system, just like you would on a supported Mac! Download and info can be found here. I will be making another post later today explaining exactly what I did to get this working. Remember, this is the first iteration, so I expect there to be bugs that I'll need to work out. Enjoy!

HELP, installation on MBP 13"Late 2011 went on until 4 minutes remaining then throws me "Error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."

Anyone can help?

 

[jhowarth]

It appears that the new 15.0.33 full installer is incompatible with the 1.1.7 Catalina Patcher. The installersetupd appears to crash when the patched installer is setting up the installation. Of course this was my first usb installer created under Catalina rather than Mojave so I am assuming that isn't the problem.

 

[Pluda]

It appears that the new 15.0.33 full installer is incompatible with the 1.1.7 Catalina Patcher. The installersetupd appears to crash when the patched installer is setting up the installation. Of course this was my first usb installer created under Catalina rather than Mojave so I am assuming that isn't the problem.

Do you have firewall off? I had that problem and was firewall blocking.

 

[jhowarth]

Do you have firewall off? I had that problem and was firewall blocking.

I've installed patched Catalina literally a hundred times and have never had this problem. The only difference is that I am using a untested full installer and creating the patched installer under Catalina rather than Mojave. Currently recreating the patched full installer for 15.0.32 under Catalina to verify that isn't the issue.

 

[astronyu]

It appears that the new 15.0.33 full installer is incompatible with the 1.1.7 Catalina Patcher. The installersetupd appears to crash when the patched installer is setting up the installation. Of course this was my first usb installer created under Catalina rather than Mojave so I am assuming that isn't the problem.

Is that likely the caused of this issue of mine?

HELP, installation on MBP 13"Late 2011 went on until 4 minutes remaining then throws me "Error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."

Anyone can help?

 

[jhowarth]

Is that likely the caused of this issue of mine?

Yes. "Error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again." is exactly the error I see. I am tempted to retry it with a copy of the 15.0.33 full installer downloaded from a supported machine but doubt I'll get a different result.

 

[astronyu]

Yes. "Error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again." is exactly the error I see. I am tempted to retry it with a copy of the 15.0.33 full installer downloaded from a supported machine but doubt I'll get a different result.

Thanks for confirming. I'm restoring backups for my mac. Wonder if I can try look for an older catalina image and run the installer again to see if that works.

 

[jhowarth]

Thanks for confirming. I'm restoring backups for my mac. Wonder if I can try look for an older catalina image and run the installer again to see if that works.

I always keep the previous one around until I've confirmed that the new one works.

Update: Confirmed that a patched installer from 15.0.32 built under Catalina with Catalina Patcher 1.1.7 works normally.

 

[lamerz78]

ehm..... restore option?

View attachment 869777

Nope.....HS is in APFS container....error during restore option....

I’m trying CCC from Catalina.....but I have doubts.....

Tried CCC from HS results in error.... boot land to black screen and then shut down automatically.

Also ordered from Amazon Thunderbolt/Fireware adaptor.....last option.....until reswap the video card 2 times🤬

Edit:
Order Amazon CANCELLED !!!!

The cloning option with CCC was successfully accomplished!!!!!

THE IMAC boots from its internal SSD !!!

Now I’ m restoring from time capsule....

See you tomorrow to final cheers!

🎉

 

[dosdude1]

I always keep the previous one around until I've confirmed that the new one works.

Update: Confirmed that a patched installer from 15.0.32 built under Catalina with Catalina Patcher 1.1.7 works normally.

I'll be fixing this shortly.

 

[nandor690]

Mac Pro 3,1

What I am doing is editing the board # to enable the Display Port which broke in the GM and a some betas before it.

I tracked down where the iMac 10,1 27 2009 board ID is, and it is in 4 files and they are not all kexts. I know I can probably put my board ID there and remove where my board ID is listed elsewhere, but I am in the middle production work and don't have the luxury right now. I'm doing work for some pretty big clients and I can't miss a deadline. I spent the entire weekend searching for a good fix and finally settled on Clover for now and then a did a file search where the IDs I am looking for are located, but stopped there.

It's running fine with clover and will do something else when time permits. I am back on Mojave for my production stuff and have Catalina GM on 3 other partitions that I can mess with. One production and two I can hack away at.

Side note, it appears Apple has improved Apple Software Restore 'asr' on Catalina 10.15 GM, but I had problems with it when trying to clone 10.15.1 beta and after fighting with it went back to the GM and I plan to just stick with Apple's official releases at this point.

All you should have to do is figure out which kext are for that graphics and edit the frame buffer or use a previous kext from a beta that it worked on to get it working again. in the long run it would be better to do that instead of using Clover

 

[crjackson2134]

Can someone tell me exactly what the post install patch selection does on a MP51 with updated metal GPU, Updated WiFi w/BTLE and all options working?

Catalina runs fine without any of the post install patches or the APFS thingy.

Do the post install patches help on this machine in some other way, or should they just all be turned off on this machine?

 

[dosdude1]

Can someone tell me exactly what the post install patch selection does on a MP51 with updated metal GPU, Updated WiFi w/BTLE and all options working?

Catalina runs fine without any of the post install patches or the APFS thingy.

Do the post install patches help on this machine in some other way, or should they just all be turned off on this machine?

All that's installed on a MacPro4,1 and 5,1 is the compatibility check bypass boot args entry, so the system actually boots, and the Legacy WiFi Patch so the stock WiFi cards continue working. This will not affect functionality with newer WiFi cards. No other patches are installed.

 

[crjackson2134]

All that's installed on a MacPro4,1 and 5,1 is the compatibility check bypass boot args entry, so the system actually boots, and the Legacy WiFi Patch so the stock WiFi cards continue working. This will not affect functionality with newer WiFi cards. No other patches are installed.

Thank you for the quick reply. I downloaded a new copy of the patcher and a new copy of Catalina installer. I was trying to install over my CURRENT Catalina GA install to get the supplemental update. So far it's not working. I get this....

 

[Pinarek]

where can I download the Catalina 10.15.1 DP1 19B68f as a full installer? with the Catalina Patcher 1.1.6 comes only the 10.15 Final with the build number 19A600 as 15.0.33, that's not the 10.15.1 DP1 I actually need to install on unsupported Mac. Thanks for tip.

 

[dosdude1]

Thank you for the quick reply. I downloaded a new copy of the patcher and a new copy of Catalina installer. I was trying to install over my CURRENT Catalina GA install to get the supplemental update. So far it's not working. I get this....
View attachment 869822

This is an issue with the latest installer app, a new Catalina Patcher version will be available momentarily to fix this.

 

[Starplayr]

Yes. I might try a newer board and Mac ID (might try one at a time, and see what Apple Reads for SW updates), but keep the EFI info to where it's at. Would be nice to do software updates.

Supplemental Update not possible even when Emulatiing a Supported Mac. I tried twice. Error occurs during a reboot. More copy protection.

Installing Sup. Update to a USB SSD and will clone using Apple Software Restore.

Here is the CLI command that I use

sudo asr restore -s /Volumes/SourceMac -t /Volumes/TargetMac --erase --noverify
[automerge]1571190084[/automerge]

All you should have to do is figure out which kext are for that graphics and edit the frame buffer or use a previous kext from a beta that it worked on to get it working again. in the long run it would be better to do that instead of using Clover

It is not a graphics driver issue. I have stated this a few times on the Discord and here. I know the files that are affected and have posted them for those who are interested. I would swap out the IDs necessary, but I am busy working two programming jobs at the moment and have very little time for tinkering. I spent last weekend checking out all the Graphics drivers, Kexts. most are identical to a working beta and I have swapped out those drivers and nothing changed. There are 3 areas affected: 2 BlueTooth files, 1 very large 73 MB SQLite Database file on the User's Data partition and one Private Framework. I have given enough info for anyone else to carry on the torch.

Clover works fine by the way. One reason I haven't bothered.

What the real deal is Apple remove whatever configures DisplayPort on serveral models including many iMacs. Many users are using to turn on ScreenRecording for their Drivers and that has something to do with it. But the drivers themselves are fine and not all drivers are showing up in the ScreenRecording area.

My workaround is to use a board ID that still has DisplayPort turned on but still allows my Mac to boot without a KP. I found 2 so far.

 

[Pinarek]

@dosdude1 thank for answer.. ok i waiting for new Installer for 10.15 and/or 10.15.1 DP1 from you.

 

[crjackson2134]

This is an issue with the latest installer app, a new Catalina Patcher version will be available momentarily to fix this.

Awesome, I’ll be out of town until Saturday anyway. Thanks a million....

 

[osxfr33k]

I did a wonderful thing that now requires me to put in my AMD non metal MacPro5,1 GFX card just so I can get to the startup screen by holding down the Option key. Whatever you do don't make the mistake I did.

While on Mojave 1TB hard drive APFS I decided to partition it to 3 containers since one was going to be OSX extended Journaled for the Catalina installer, and the 3rd partition as APFS for Catalina. All that worked out perfectly fine but before I was ready to install Catalina like a dummy I decided for some stupid reason to have the startup disk to the installer and I think you can guess what happened from there. The installer was not APFS so therefore there was no support to change the startup disk or to bless the Mojave partition in APFS to boot back to it. Diskutil had no support to mount Mojave either, so after trying just about everything I decided to just insert the GFX card that has the supported EFI rom to see everything going on before the desktop is reached. I think I should have kept the Catalina Installer partition as APFS and for some reason when I created the 3 partitions it lost the Mojave Recovery partition.

Should the USB Flash drive installer be partitioned as GUID and formatted as APFS or MacOS extended Journaled if everything on that Mac will be APFS?


Edited:

I was actually getting the message that the firmware did not support what I was trying to do using the startup disk and when I tried to mount a APFS partition from Diskutil it would also give me the firmware message have to assume it was because I was on the non APFS partition.

 

[Starplayr]

Goodbye to my Beta partition. Supplemental Update partition.

DisplayPort is still broken.

btw, it looks like the required inversion process has been removed in ASR on 10.15 GM and Sup Update.

[automerge]1571193827[/automerge]

Goodbye to Beta partition. Cloning Supplemental Update partition.

DisplayPort is still broken.

btw, it looks like the required inversion process has been removed in ASR on 10.15 GM and Sup Update.

 

[astronyu]

1.1.8 is out! Going to try now, thanks.

1.1.8 - 10/15/2019

• Added installer app support for macOS 10.15.0 w/ supplemental update (app version 15.0.33)
• Added new Volume Control Patch for some iMac systems
• Fixed an issue with the APFS booter implementation