macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[astronyu]

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.

Yeah, I did just that earlier. Both phone and macbook were on the same wifi, bluetooth on and open to everyone.

 

[jackluke]

Yeah, I did just that earlier. Both phone and macbook were on the same wifi, bluetooth on and open to everyone.

Tested on a couple of machines and it works even with iOS 13, maybe try to log your MBP into the same iCloud account used for your phone. If still not working for you, then you need probably also a non-patched Bluetooth kext/framework. (I use the stock Catalina ones).

 

[astronyu]

Tested on a couple of machines and it works even with iOS 13, maybe try to log your MBP into the same iCloud account used for your phone. If still not working for you, then you need probably also a non-patched Bluetooth kext/framework. (I use the stock Catalina ones).

Mind if you could tell me more about this non-patched Bluetooth kext/framework?
Out of curiousity, anyone here with Early 2011 MBP 13 got Airdrop to work?

 

[StuBFrost]

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

I have a MacBook 5,1 which I upgraded from Mojave to Catalina and have the same issue. I also have a 4gb of ram and a 128gb ssd and performance is terrible to the point that I’m considering going back to Mojave.

 

[jackluke]

Mind if you could tell me more about this non-patched Bluetooth kext/framework?
Out of curiousity, anyone here with Early 2011 MBP 13 got Airdrop to work?

Are you sure you replaced both the files I attached before (MBP8,1 Airdrop Catalina.zip) without "Merge" but selecting "Replace All", a better method would be if you remove first your IO80211Family*.kext and then copy mine patched, because if you merged they won't work properly.

There is a lot of difference between "Merge" and "Replace" a file/folder in OSX, when you handle patched kext or framework they must be Replaced.

After applied my patched files, do you have in your Catalina Finder the AirDrop menu correctly showed ?
If so you need to plug a Bluetooth 4.0 usb dongle (also a PC one) to your Macbookpro8,1
because for AirDropping with the latest iOS 13 (or 12) a Bluetooth 4.0 authorization from the Catalina Mac is mandatory!

Moreover the MBP8,1 is particular because apple assigned to it two different board-ids:
Mac-50619A408DB004DA and Mac-94245B3640C91C81

while instead typically the board-id are common to almost all of the same machine model shipped from factory.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

A couple days ago I successfully used dosdude1's Catalina Patcher 1.1.7 to install the first release of Catalina (15.0.32) on my Mid 2009 Macbook (5,2) (contains 8GB of RAM) following the procedures in dosdude1's video, which is pretty much the same procedure as with earlier versions, except it's nice that we no longer have to boot back to the patched installer to install the patches. Prior to installing, I formatted the destination drive, a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD, as APFS (because we have no choice with Catalina), then I used the Catalina Patcher to create a bootable patched installer volume on a flash drive that was already partitioned into eight volumes.

All of that went fine, except at the first restart after the installation, after the non-native APFS boot text finished scrolling by, and the black screen with the Apple logo and progress bar appeared, it took about an hour and a half for the process to complete, during which the text under the progress bar kept alternating between "Estimating time remaining…", and "About XX minutes remaining…", starting with 26 minutes. When that was done, I restarted again, and this time I didn't get this delay. I wonder what's happening during this waiting stage.

Yesterday I found by reading here that dosdude1 released Catalina Patcher 1.1.9 to install the Catalina Supplemental Update (15.0.33), so I downloaded both and used them to overwrite my first patched Catalina installer flash drive volume, and used that to install over my Macbook's first installation. That went fine.

The patched installation has been running fine, and it seems a little faster overall than Mojave on this Macbook, which I'm guessing is at least partly due to the use of APFS, though as I learned through a little research, when you duplicate a file on an APFS volume, it doesn't really duplicate the file--it creates a kind of pointer to the original, and the "duplicate" contains just the changes you make to the file. Before I learned this, I did a timing test to duplicate a 1.5GB file, and I was surprised that it was almost instantaneous, which I didn't think even APFS could achieve. Turns out I was right.

The Maps and News apps are both working fine.

The only issue I'm seeing is an old one: the keyboard's Brightness up/down buttons (F1 and F2) don't work, even though Patch Updater shows that the Partial Trackpad/Keyboard Patch is installed. The buttons show the brightness adjustment icons onscreen, but the screen brightness stays the same. So as I've done before with earlier patched versions of MacOS, I put the Brightness Slider utility into my login items, and that's working fine, but I'm wondering if dosdude1 will be including a patch for this issue. I remember that one or two previous MacOS patchers from dosdude1 also didn't implement this patch at first, but did after a few days to a week or so.

 

[roysterdoyster]

I will be releasing a patch for this soon.

@dosdude1 This is indeed good news and very fine of you! I'm looking very much forward to having the backlit keyboard again on my MBP4,1 17-inch. Thank you very much, dosdude1

 

[johnsawyercjs]

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...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.

From what I've seen, there's no patch yet for the brightness buttons on our Mid 2009 Macbooks (5,2). Sometimes it takes dosdude1 a few days to about a week to include it. In the meantime, you can install the Brightness Slider utility (download it from www.macupdate.com), and then include it into your Login Items list (in the Users & Groups prefpane). It will put an icon for a brightness slider into the menu bar. It has a bug though, but not a deal-breaker: if you slide it all the way to its top, the screen brightness will dim to half or about a third, but just slide it a tiny bit below this, and you'll get full brightness again.

 

[jackluke]

AirDrop Catalina pre-patched (only for Broadcom cards) to those interested you should post the output of these Catalina Terminal commands:

ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk '{print $4}'
ioreg -r -n ARPT | grep IOName
system_profiler -detailLevel mini | grep "Card Type"
system_profiler -detailLevel basic | grep "Model Identifier"

Meanwhile here are some Wifi kext that I've pre-patched (tested and working) to AirDrop on Catalina unsupported Mac, they are hyperlinks so just click the one for your machine to download:

AirDrop Catalina MacBook7,1 and MacBookPro6,2.zip

AirDrop Catalina patched MacBook6,1.zip

AirDrop Catalina patched MacBookAir2011 4,2.zip

MacBookPro8,3 AirDrop Catalina.zip

AirDrop fix Catalina MacBookAir4,1.zip

MacBookPro8,1 Airdrop Catalina.zip (This machine has two different board-id)

Macmini4,1 AirDrop Catalina.zip

Macmini5,1 AirDrop Catalina.zip

MacBookPro8,2 AirDrop Catalina.zip


After downloaded, open a Catalina terminal and copy/paste:

sudo mount -uw / ; killall Finder

Then from Catalina Finder replace (do not merge) them inside your Catalina /System/Library/Extensions/

after from a Catalina terminal send these commands copy/paste one 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 AirDrop in Catalina Finder.

After you have a working AirDrop, I suggest to apply this additional fix to enable an extra AirDrop feature that apple removed from Catalina: "AirDrop Search for older Mac"

After a working AirDrop on Catalina, if you have also a Bluetooth 4.0 card (or BT4.0 usb dongle), to add Continuity (Handoff, hotspot, etc.) you can directly apply this script: catalinacontinuityfix.command.zip

Or check this other example: enable continuity from terminal

 

[Pluda]

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

Have you turned OFF your firewall? I had that dame issue. Was firewall blocking.

 

[0134168]

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

Gonna try it again. Thanks for your time.

 

[astronyu]

Are you sure you replaced both the files I attached before (MBP8,1 Airdrop Catalina.zip) without "Merge" but selecting "Replace All", a better method would be if you remove first your IO80211Family*.kext and then copy mine patched, because if you merged they won't work properly.

There is a lot of difference between "Merge" and "Replace" a file/folder in OSX, when you handle patched kext or framework they must be Replaced.

After applied my patched files, do you have in your Catalina Finder the AirDrop menu correctly showed ?
If so you need to plug a Bluetooth 4.0 usb dongle (also a PC one) to your Macbookpro8,1
because for AirDropping with the latest iOS 13 (or 12) a Bluetooth 4.0 authorization from the Catalina Mac is mandatory!

Moreover the MBP8,1 is particular because apple assigned to it two different board-ids:
Mac-50619A408DB004DA and Mac-94245B3640C91C81

while instead typically the board-id are common to almost all of the same machine model shipped from factory.

Yes, I actually chose the "Replace" option. The Airdrop icon seems to be correctly shown I think.
The only thing I didn't try was using a Bluetooth 4.0 usb dongle, I was testing using the built-in bluetooth on the MacBook.

 

[Pinarek]

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!

where did you load the full version of 10.15.1 DP2? to install it on an unsupported Mac?

 

[jackluke]

where did you load the full version of 10.15.1 DP2? to install it on an unsupported Mac?

He did not load the full version because apple don't deliver that for minor .upgrades, he is very skilled that's why successfully upgraded to .1 DP2 . For instance I'm still on Catalina beta 11 on unsupported mac.
[automerge]1571484785[/automerge]

Yes, I actually chose the "Replace" option. The Airdrop icon seems to be correctly shown I think.
The only thing I didn't try was using a Bluetooth 4.0 usb dongle, I was testing using the built-in bluetooth on the MacBook.
View attachment 870782

From your picture my patch worked, the aim is to make AirDrop to work between Mac on the same wifi network and it does as is, instead to make it work with an iOS 12/13 device you need to plug a Bluetooth 4.0 usb dongle to your Mac, it's a new requirement for Catalina.

 

[Pluda]

Hello, I’m reading this forum and you talk about cpu temperatures, gpu temperatures, diodes... witch software do you use to monitor those?
Thanks

 

[sibok]

Hi,

I've just installed MacOS Catalina on an early 2009 iMac 20" with upgraded RAM to 8GB and Samsung EVO 860 250GB SSD through macOS Catalina Patcher but it's suffering the following issues:
* Brightness is always at the lowest level and there's no way to adjust it. Tried keyboard brightness keys as well as System Preferences - > Display -> Brightness slider and also an Brightness slider from App Store. None of them seemed to work.
* On MacOS Catalina, when Light theme is in used, transparencies are not working. Applying BlueSky patch ends up errors and making the system unusable.

Also, I've tried to apply the APFS Bootrom patch from Dosdude1.com and after shutting down the computer, waiting for some minutes - even unplugging from electrical network - and then long pressing power on button, there's no way to make the computer boot into programming mode. Early 2009 iMac seems to have 3 leds and none of them are doing a rapid blinking as I understand it should do when entering into programming mode.


Any help on those issues would appreciated. Thank u so much

 

[Arnomacmini]

I made some kind of patch that should work but only on 2010 and 2011 machines (maybe 2009 too), what's the output of these terminal commands on your Catalina:

ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk -F\" '{print $4}'

ioreg -r -n ARPT | grep IOName

system_profiler -detailLevel mini | grep "Card Type"

Mine are:

Mac-F22C89C8

"IOName" = "pci14e4,4353"

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x93)


edit: I made an AirDrop patch (using a previous stock Catalina IO80211Family.kext) for MacBook Air 4,2 and JusVan reported that works correctly

Hello, thanks for your work .

I have a Mac mini mid 2011 (5,1) patched Catalina 10.15

My machine is Mac-8ED6AF5B48C039E1

"IOName" = "pci14e4,4331"
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xE4)

Have you please a patch for me for Airdrop Working on my Mac mini ?

Thanks a lot .

 

[jackluke]

Hello, thanks for your work .

I have a Mac mini mid 2011 (5,1) patched Catalina 10.15

My machine is Mac-8ED6AF5B48C039E1

"IOName" = "pci14e4,4331"
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xE4)

Have you please a patch for me for Airdrop Working on my Mac mini ?

Thanks a lot .

Here is, how to replace properly follow this method (but using this file attached only for Macmini5,1): https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27890884

 

[jowaju]

[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.

Check the touchpad cable, it can cause this exact issue with throttling if there is even a TINY bit of corrosion on it.

 

[jhowarth]

where did you load the full version of 10.15.1 DP2? to install it on an unsupported Mac?

The full version of 10.15.1 beta 2 actually is available but isn't of much use now because Catalina Patcher 1.1.9 creates a broken patched usb installer that fails with the same "Error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again." previously error seen with the 10.15.0 supplemental release and Catalina Patcher 1.1.7.

 

[astronyu]

He did not load the full version because apple don't deliver that for minor .upgrades, he is very skilled that's why successfully upgraded to .1 DP2 . For instance I'm still on Catalina beta 11 on unsupported mac.
[automerge]1571484785[/automerge]


From your picture my patch worked, the aim is to make AirDrop to work between Mac on the same wifi network and it does as is, instead to make it work with an iOS 12/13 device you need to plug a Bluetooth 4.0 usb dongle to your Mac, it's a new requirement for Catalina.

Many thanks for your help @jackluke, much appreciated. I have yet to test the Airdrop with other Mac but I'm glad to at least have this function back.

 

[sibok]

Does someone knows if DosDude MacOS High Sierra Backlight patch would work on MacOS Catalina?

 

[jackluke]

Many thanks for your help @jackluke, much appreciated. I have yet to test the Airdrop with other Mac but I'm glad to at least have this function back.

To those who have a working "Catalina Finder AirDrop panel" I suggest also to apply this additional fix to allow older OSX (from Lion till Mojave) to AirDropping with Catalina: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27486171

 

[Arnomacmini]

Here is, how to replace properly follow this method (but using this file attached only for Macmini5,1): https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-27890884

Thanks a lot ! It Works !

Great job !
I've a last question . How to update Catalina version .
I used patcher 1.1.9 but stil in 10.15 ?
Thanks a lot for all .

 

[Vinc26]

Hi there

Am I the only one who has lost the ability to play my movies purchased on the store? They start for 5 seconds, then the window closes.