macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[sibok]

Hi, would someone be so kind to tell me if there's any kind of issue with the brightness (backlight) on early 2009 iMac 20" Core 2 Duo 2,66GHz?

I've just installed MacOS Catalina - though dosdude macOS Catalina Patcher tool which managed the OS download and USB creation - on an early 2009 iMac 20" Core 2 Duo 2,66GHz with upgraded 8GB RAM and Samsung EVO 860 SSD and it's suffering the brightness issue. Keyboard controls and System Preferences -> Display -> Brightness slider doesn't work in the way, pressing keyboard brightness keys on the keyboard or sliding brightness slider through System preferences does nothing. Brightness keeps low and it's not possible to change it through the mentioned methods. Don't know if that's a known bug which can be solved or not. The Finder and top bar transparency issue has also arised for light desktop theme. Hope you can give me some feedback for the brightness issue.

The brightness issue as well as the transparency one happens both on Catalina and Mojave. High Sierra seems is not suffering none of the previous issues.

 

[pchyen]

Hi! Love this thread.

Was wondering if someone can help me with Airdrop for a 2011 MacBook Air on Catalina or if it is even possible?

MBA 4,1.
"IOName" = "pci14e4,4353"
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xE9)

thanks!

 

[Wooser]

How did you disable the dGPU on Catalina?

my temps are hot on Catalina, but I didn't do anything post install. I don't want to break sleep/wake.

CPU core 71.5
GPU die 62.5
GPU prox 60.2
iGPU 70

Those are about the temps I get, but those have been the usual temps since my dGPU died way back when. I used the same method posted before (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/267581/gpu-problem-boot-hangs-on-grey-screen/295805#295805) but I went back in to my High Sierra partition (same temps there, by the way) and did the things outlined in a previous post (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27861131).

After running kextstat | grep AMD, com.apple.AMDRadeonX3000 doesn't show up, but neither does com.apple.kext.AMDSupport. Maybe that's the reason the kext isn't loading? I am also using gfxCardStatus to force the iGPU after boot. That might be the reason I'm not getting power to the dGPU. Either way, I'm getting normal backlight control and sleep functions.

 

[jackluke]

Hi! Love this thread.

Was wondering if someone can help me with Airdrop for a 2011 MacBook Air on Catalina or if it is even possible?

MBA 4,1.
"IOName" = "pci14e4,4353"
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xE9)

thanks!

Here is, use the attached only for MacBookAir4,1 and apply following this method: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27887552

 

[Hoosier72]

Trying to create usb Catalina patcher and I continually am getting "Error Saving BaseSystem Image". I've tried 3 different usb's and a partitioned ssd external drive. Tried to create usb on iMac running Mojave and MacBook Air running Mojave and same error. Anyone know what is creating this error and preventing it from creating the usb patcher. Same error with Mojave Patcher. usb's are 16GB and I made a partition 32gb.

 

[TimothyR734]

Trying to create usb Catalina patcher and I continually am getting "Error Saving BaseSystem Image". I've tried 3 different usb's and a partitioned ssd external drive. Tried to create usb on iMac running Mojave and MacBook Air running Mojave and same error. Anyone know what is creating this error and preventing it from creating the usb patcher. Same error with Mojave Patcher. usb's are 16GB and I made a partition 32gb.View attachment 870702

Are you formatting your usb HFS-Extended Journaled with guid portion map

 

[pchyen]

Here is, use the attached only for MacBookAir4,1 and apply following this method: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27887552

Thank you! Will try it tomorrow morning and report back.

 

[oliveira131]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post for this project.
I started a "research" to modify a Intel HD 3000 kext with Metal support.

The idea is simple: HD 3000 is very close to HD 4000 in VA Driver and GL driver (GL not much, but still some shared features). Based on this, I modify the HD 4000 Metal driver to HD 3000.

Is very primary with few hex modifications but I think this is possible.

In attachment is the modifications, is not functional yet (load the desktop but Finder not load). Have issues with signature for MTL Driver and I don't have test on the originals macOS Frameworks (only in patched). Also have in attachment the patched kext for MacbookPro8,1 AirDrop support, if anyone needs for this model (MacBook Pro 2011).

If anyone have this original files for macOS Catalina (without patch) and can send to this post, I will appreciate (I know, I can extract of the pkgs files in macOS installer, is only for more speed and less work to me.. 😅). These files are:

• CoreDisplay.framework
• OpenGL.framework
• GPUSupport.framework
• SkyLight.framework

In the coming days I will continue with the research and testing in this kext.

 

[0134168]

You're welcome, let me know if AirDrop worked, because I had a doubt that your "0xF5" Wifi card might need patching the "AirPortBrcmNIC" instead of "AirPortBrcm4360" driver.

In case you lose Wifi after my patch, simply use the dosdude1 post-install and re-apply his "Wifi-patch".

No luck, @jackluke . After applying, no wifi. I send a curios picture, after a few seconds, buttons come to normal. Sadly, I lost Wifi even after reaplying Catalina patches. But don´t worry, it´s not my main system, just a second SSD just for testing.

 

[ASentientBot]

Unless I missed it, nobody has tested 10.15.1 DP2 with the patches yet. I just installed it and I'm pleased to announce that acceleration is still working!

Have a great weekend everybody!

 

[avz]

Unless I missed it, nobody has tested 10.15.1 DP2 with the patches yet. I just installed it and I'm pleased to announce that acceleration is still working!

View attachment 870757

Have a great weekend everybody!

I did not realise that about this Mac window is supposed to be transparent as well. Mojave does not seem to have it.

 

[nekton1]

[OT] This is right off topic and long but ... . perhaps dosdude1 or another hardware nerd (like me) has an answer.

A friend gave me an "ancient" MacBook Air late-2011 (core i5 ) that had suddenly stopped booting with no green/amber light on the Magsafe; he claimed no liquid spill.

I opened it and removed the logic board (820-3023A). All the spill indicators were white but there was bad green corrosion at C7986 next to U7720 and R7986. I cleaned it off but still no boot.

I then replaced C7986, R7986 and U7220 and reassembled. It boots fine and NVRAM reset works as expected. It also passes Apple Hardware Test both extended and short with no trouble found.

However, after a fresh install (took 16 hours!) of Mojave using dosdude1's patcher, it is clear the CPU is very slow (seems to be throttled to 800 MHz) and the track-pad is jerky. The fan is running constantly at a highish speed but not max. It is not running hot.

The MBA only has a clean Mojave installed on an erased and formatted Apple SSD and no other applications at all.

The oldish (about 390 charges) battery is seen fine and charges to 98% and the MagSafe shows green when at 98% and amber at lower charges. The MagSafe lamp does the correct 1-s blink when SMC is reset in the normal Apple-recommeded way. If the battery is disconnected, it powers up as expected after about 5 seconds after the Magsafe is connected.

In other words, all the HW seems normal.

After the components replacement, this is what I have tried so far:

1. Reset SMC and NVRAM normally following Apple’s procedure—no change
2. Run long and short versions of Apple Hardware Test—no problems found. I was expecting Temp Sensor code error, but nothing. (Does AHT not find logic signalling issues?—see below)
3. Removed fan and cleaned as well as heatsink radiator fins—no change
3a. Changed fan—no change
4. Removed CPU heatsink and replaced Apple’s cheap CPU grease with Arctic Silver—no change
6. Swapped trackpad cable for known good—no change.

After a lot of reading, I think the prochot signalling is not working as expected. To check this, I installed Ubuntu 19.10 and used msr-tools to disable the prochot CPU register (0x1FC) and sure enough, the slowness problems caused by CPU throttling are gone and it works fine running at 1.7 GHz.

So three questions:

1. Does anyone here know of a Mac utility, command, or way to hack the Mac "Bios" to disable prochhot signalling in the same way as msr-tools in Linux or ThrottleStop in Windows?

2. Pins 1, 2, and 3 on U7720 (all PP3V3_SO) are connected to R5060 which is connected to Pin 6 of Q5060 which has some pins handling prochot connected to SMC. Since U7220 was just replaced and has this relationship, does it make sense to start looking at U7720 again? Perhaps there is bad soldering on a pin—it's a small SOB to solder. I suppose I should also check the resistances around Q5060 and Q5059. (Just thinking out loud).

3. Has anyone here had this prochot signalling issue causing CPU throttling and if yes, what was the hardware component fix?

Thanks—any advice most appreciated.

 

[jackluke]

No luck, @jackluke . After applying, no wifi. I send a curios picture, after a few seconds, buttons come to normal. Sadly, I lost Wifi even after reaplying Catalina patches. But don´t worry, it´s not my main system, just a second SSD just for testing.

I understood why, give me some minutes and I re-upload the correct patched Wifi driver for your machine.

Try this, it will 99% work for your machine: MBP8,3 AirDrop Catalina.zip

This way, open a Catalina Terminal:

sudo mount -uw / ; killall Finder
open /S*/L*/E*/

replace on-the-fly the two kext (do not merge) after from Catalina Terminal copy/paste one line at once:

sudo chown -R 0:0 /S*/L*/E*/
sudo chmod -R 755 /S*/L*/E*/
sudo kextcache -i /

(the "kextcache" takes some minutes to complete)

At next reboot you should have again Wifi and AirDrop in Catalina Finder.

I also re-uploaded the correct patched file here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27889487

 

[astronyu]

Can someone confirm, once I have Catalina install using the patch, is it safe to install upcoming updates? Or should I turn off update?

@jackluke, can I also ask a patch Airdrop for my Macbook Pro 13 Early 2011 (MacBookPro8,1) too?

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ % ioreg -l | grep "board-id"| awk -F\"'{print $4}'

ioreg -r -n ARPT | grep IOName

system_profiler -detailLevel basic | grep "Card Type"


awk: no program given

  |   "IOName" = "pci14e4,4331"

2019-10-19 15:04:27.796 system_profiler[566:10604] SystemInfo-AccessoryFW - 10-9a-dd-79-33-55: no firmware version info available

2019-10-19 15:04:36.152 system_profiler[604:11223] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be

2019-10-19 15:04:36.162 system_profiler[604:11223] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be

          Card Type: AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0xD6)

*not sure why the terminal shows my username @surfacepro3.

 

[ASentientBot]

I did not realise that about this Mac window is supposed to be transparent as well. Mojave does not seem to have it.

It's not lol, I forgot to turn off some tweaks when I took that screenshot. Oops

The only appearance difference on a fully-supported Mac would be in the window outlines and light mode. Transparency in dark theme is 100% functional on both Mojave and Cat.

 

[jackluke]

Unless I missed it, nobody has tested 10.15.1 DP2 with the patches yet. I just installed it and I'm pleased to announce that acceleration is still working!

View attachment 870757

Have a great weekend everybody!

Very good, how do you made the "dark mode" Catalina Finder windows translucent ?

They looks less darker, I'd say a lighter dark, nice.

 

[ASentientBot]

Very good, how do you made the "dark mode" Catalina Finder windows translucent ?

They looks less darker, I'd say a lighter dark, nice.

I'm working on a method using Objective-C method swizzling to tweak the system appearance. It's not really relevant to this project (I didn't mean to include it in the screenshot -- had it on for a couple weeks and totally forgot about it) but I'll tell you when I finish and post it somewhere.

Some people like https://github.com/w0lfschild have already done similar things, with varying degrees of success.

macOS tweaking/theming doesn't seem to be a very big scene, but it has a lot of potential, I think. And a lot of our analysis and patching skills can come in handy there. I'm just learning now

 

[jackluke]

Can someone confirm, once I have Catalina install using the patch, is it safe to install upcoming updates? Or should I turn off update?

@jackluke, can I also ask a patch Airdrop for my Macbook Pro 13 Early 2011 (MacBookPro8,1) too?

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ % ioreg -l | grep "board-id"| awk -F\"'{print $4}'

ioreg -r -n ARPT | grep IOName

system_profiler -detailLevel basic | grep "Card Type"


awk: no program given

  |   "IOName" = "pci14e4,4331"

2019-10-19 15:04:27.796 system_profiler[566:10604] SystemInfo-AccessoryFW - 10-9a-dd-79-33-55: no firmware version info available

2019-10-19 15:04:36.152 system_profiler[604:11223] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be

2019-10-19 15:04:36.162 system_profiler[604:11223] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be

          Card Type: AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0xD6)

*not sure why the terminal shows my username @surfacepro3.

You got "awk: no program given" because for the "board-id" there are some space to put, so better copy/paste in a Catalina Terminal, example:

ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber | awk '{print $4}' (This is not needed)
ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk '{print $4}'
ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk -F\" '{print $4}'

however yours should be this: Mac-50619A408DB004DA

 

[astronyu]

For the board-id there are some space to put so better copy/paste Terminal, example:

ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber | awk '{print $4}' (This is not needed)
ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk '{print $4}'

however yours should be this: Mac-50619A408DB004DA

I try make an AirDrop patched for that model.

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ % ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber | awk '{print $4}'

"C02F99G8DH2H"

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ % ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk '{print $4}'

<"Mac-94245B3640C91C81">

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ %

Here are the results.

 

[jackluke]

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ % ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber | awk '{print $4}'

"C02F99G8DH2H"

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ % ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk '{print $4}'

<"Mac-94245B3640C91C81">

yeetz@SurfacePro3 ~ %

Here are the results.

Give me some minutes, I took the wrong Mac-id before, that's why I should ask the output of that "board-id" commands.

Try this attached for your machine, how to apply follow this method: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27890884

 

[Rappo]

I'm working on a method using Objective-C method swizzling to tweak the system appearance. It's not really relevant to this project (I didn't mean to include it in the screenshot -- had it on for a couple weeks and totally forgot about it) but I'll tell you when I finish and post it somewhere.

Some people like https://github.com/w0lfschild have already done similar things, with varying degrees of success.

macOS tweaking/theming doesn't seem to be a very big scene, but it has a lot of potential, I think. And a lot of our analysis and patching skills can come in handy there. I'm just learning now

@ASentientBot

I believe you are the one accredited with getting acceleration to work.
I have a 2011 8,3 MacBook Pro and just started getting the stripped screen of death.
I am still on Mojave but looking to go to Catalina.
I want to try and just run on the Intel GPU first. Can you please point me to the place with instructions to do this. I have been searching the forum all afternoon and I have read everyone of the posts in this thread since it started and know I have seen it somewhere but can’t find it now.

 

[astronyu]

Give me some minutes, I took the wrong Mac-id before, that's why I should ask the output of that "board-id" commands.

Try this attached for your machine, how to apply follow this method: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27890884

Thank you. Will try and report results. Fyi, I do have wifi working, just not the Airdrop.

Just curious, once I ran the command

sudo mount -uw / ; killall Finder
open /S*/L*/E*/

It will open Extensions folder. I then just need to copy the 2 kext file into the folder and ran these commands, correct?

sudo chown -R 0:0 /S*/L*/E*/
sudo chmod -R 755 /S*/L*/E*/
sudo kextcache -i /

 

[astronyu]

Thank you. Will try and report results. Fyi, I do have wifi working, just not the Airdrop.

Just curious, once I ran the command

sudo mount -uw / ; killall Finder
open /S*/L*/E*/

It will open Extensions folder. I then just need to copy the 2 kext file into the folder and ran these commands, correct?

sudo chown -R 0:0 /S*/L*/E*/
sudo chmod -R 755 /S*/L*/E*/
sudo kextcache -i /

EDIT:
Replaced the 2 kext file and rebooted. Tried to send something from my phone to mbp via Airdrop but cannot see each other.

 

[slimmy18222]

Hello to all,

MacBook Pro 5,2 (mid 2009) 17 inch, with Crucial 128 SSD, 4Gb RAM and ROM, successfully flashed with dosdude1's Catalina patch. The problem is that i get a poor experience in everyday use. It became too slow and sluggy. It takes about 40s to open random app. That could be missing acceleration? I don't know if the problem may be related to 4gb ram, as with Mojave pacher i got no problem at all, just beauty experience and full functionality

 

[jackluke]

EDIT:
Replaced the 2 kext file and rebooted. Tried to send something from my phone to mbp via Airdrop but cannot see each other.

Try to set from AirDrop Catalina Finder panel "Allow to be discovered by Everyone" from both the Mac and from phone settings, and enable Bluetooth either on Mac and on phone, otherwise try to use any Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongle on your Mac.

And both devices (macOS and iOS) connected to the same Wifi-Network.