macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[Sevenfeet]

Hi guys. In a previous post I mentioned I was gonna try installing Catalina on my Mac Pro 3,1. Unfortunately last week my Mac Pro wouldn't start ( I don't mean boot, I mean power on). A diagnostic led turned on.The one with ERRB sign. After a small research I changed the PSU and my Mac now would power on but still no boot screen.The only options left are : motherboard and cpu replacement. I know this is not the right place to ask, but is there anything else I should try before replacing them? I've tried resetting from the motherboard but still no use. I should also mention that I did't install Catalin yet as this problem occurred before trying to do so.

This happened to me recently. The only way I got my 3,1 to come back was to leave it unplugged from power for over a week. Actually in my case it took nearly 3 weeks for it to come back but I had gotten information on the internet that a week was enough. i have no idea why this works but I'm typing on my 3,1 and I thought too that it was a lost cause.

 

[jhowarth]

This happened to me recently. The only way I got my 3,1 to come back was to leave it unplugged from power for over a week. Actually in my case it took nearly 3 weeks for it to come back but I had gotten information on the internet that a week was enough. i have no idea why this works but I'm typing on my 3,1 and I thought too that it was a lost cause.

I had a similar problem with my MacPro 3,1 when I was using a generic miniPCI card and a BCM94360CS2...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/802-11AC-B...390688?hash=item3afea5ef20:g:qnUAAOSw-RhaY2u5

After upgrading to an iMac BCM94360CD and better miniPCI card

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-PCI-E...303760?hash=item362c781f10:g:t4QAAOSwofxUbzDF

the motherboard led boot failures disappeared. So that seems to be a potential source a failure to keep in mind.

 

[reneroeten]

hello guys, first of all a big big thank you to dosdude1 for all his fantastic work !
that being said, i have a MBP 3.5 (late 2009) last night i upgraded to 10.15.1 from 10.15
when i tryd to install the update directly to the hd it did not work and booted to the old version.
i made a USB drive and all went well and i'm on 1.15.1 now ! ofcourse i have the same issues as many of u guys like airdrop no showing, imovie crashes among other things but overall i'm pretty happy with all

again a big thanks to Dosdude1 for making this possible !

p.s.
is there a way to enable airdrop on a MBP 3.5 ?

 

[dongle0815]

Always ensure your SIP is disabled by entering command in terminal status csrutil . Since we are using patched os on our unsupported macs this step is very important. Then use the 1.2.1 patcher to install over your existing 1.5.0 Catalina.

Perfect... Now on 10.15.1
Is there an "out of the box" solution for the DisplayPort. I've seen that others use different tools. But would be nice to figure out the real problem.

 

[producer26]

This happened to me recently. The only way I got my 3,1 to come back was to leave it unplugged from power for over a week. Actually in my case it took nearly 3 weeks for it to come back but I had gotten information on the internet that a week was enough. i have no idea why this works but I'm typing on my 3,1 and I thought too that it was a lost cause.

It might be a thing with the capacitors and they need to decharge. I'll leave it for a week and I'll try installing Catalina again.

 

[GSXB]

10.15.1 installed with no patches from the patcher,
alll working fine. Added Lilu, innie and appleALC HDMI sound working
all pci drives now seen as internal

 

[s4mf]

10.15.1 installed with no patches from the patcher,
alll working fine. Added Lilu, innie and appleALC HDMI sound working
all pci drives now seen as internal

So you mean, You could install original Catalina without any patches to your system ?
if yeah, how ?

 

[diegonishi]

10.15.1 installed with no patches from the patcher,
alll working fine. Added Lilu, innie and appleALC HDMI sound working
all pci drives now seen as internal

How this is possible?

 

[GSXB]

So you mean, You could install original Catalina without any patches to your system ?
if yeah, how ?

I deselected auto patch and used the patcher to create the usb installer, then used it as normal to install Catalina. I used “ hacktool “to install the WiFi kext I had from a previous beta build all usb and sound are working as the should

 

[alphascorp]

So you mean, You could install original Catalina without any patches to your system ?
if yeah, how ?

How this is possible?

Hello
In MP4,1 & 5,1 no post-installation patches are needed.
Only the creation of a patched USB stick is necessary to install Catalina.
The only fact that Apple does not allow the installation of Catalina on these machines is that they are not originally equipped with Metal capable GPU and the WiFi card is no longer supported.

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

Wow! macOS 10.15.1 with @dosdude1 1.2.1 has solved my issue regarding caps lock PC USB wired keyboard led not lightning. CPU still uses 40% resources indexing files of USB connected partitions (especially hfs+) and pendrives after boot. But I have a workaround: simply unmounting them, idle CPU usage quickly goes down to 4%, as you can see on images attached. Now my unsupported MacMini 2010 is perfect 😀

 

[ASentientBot]

hello guys, first of all a big big thank you to dosdude1 for all his fantastic work !
that being said, i have a MBP 3.5 (late 2009) last night i upgraded to 10.15.1 from 10.15
when i tryd to install the update directly to the hd it did not work and booted to the old version.
i made a USB drive and all went well and i'm on 1.15.1 now ! ofcourse i have the same issues as many of u guys like airdrop no showing, imovie crashes among other things but overall i'm pretty happy with all

again a big thanks to Dosdude1 for making this possible !

p.s.
is there a way to enable airdrop on a MBP 3.5 ?

iMovie crash is because it's been updated to use Metal. You'll have to find an older version and then avoid updating it.

@jackluke has posted a fix for AirDrop.
[automerge]1572541191[/automerge]

It might be a thing with the capacitors and they need to decharge. I'll leave it for a week and I'll try installing Catalina again.

Is it possible that unplugging it and holding down the power button for 1-2 minutes will speed up the process? I've never owned a Mac Pro but that can help with similar issues.

 

[Yiorlis59]

Catalina 15.1 successfully installed on MBPro 5,5..!with dosdudes1 latest patcher!!!
installation was smooth..no problems at all!!! Thank you Dosdude1!! and thank you
all of you on this thread!! Good luck newbies!!!What about the skylight patch?

 

[TimothyR734]

Catalina 15.1 successfully installed on MBPro 5,5..!with dosdudes1 latest patcher!!!
installation was smooth..no problems at all!!! Thank you Dosdude1!! and thank you
all of you on this thread!! Good luck newbies!!!What about the skylight patch?View attachment 874013

View attachment 874012

BlueSky 1.4.4 is not compatible with 10.15.1 until a fix for SkyLight is made as it will cause random app crashes if you try and use BlueSky 1. If you put this CatalinaAutoMount /Library/LaunchDaemons folder reboot then replace the HIToolbox in /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A folder reboot then you will have a whitemenubar for light mode but still have grey sidebars in finder

 

[Phoenix Fire]

Hi, I recently installed Catalina on a Mac mini 3.1
It apparently works all good, but I had some strange errors at the boot saying that some images and png are missing. Is only my problem? Can I fix it in any ways?
Thanks

 

[TimothyR734]

Great news about a patch tool to get the old Aperture, iTunes and iPhoto running on Catalina!

View attachment 873315

Thank you I installed iTunes and works great
[automerge]1572551853[/automerge]

 

[zfrogman]

BlueSky 1.4.4 is not compatible with 10.15.1 until a fix for SkyLight is made as it will cause random app crashes if you try and use BlueSky 1. If you put this CatalinaAutoMount /Library/LaunchDaemons folder reboot then replace the HIToolbox in /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A folder reboot then you will have a whitemenubar for light mode but still have grey sidebars in finder

Hello TimothyR743, Same thing here after successfully installing 10.15.1 (Thanks! and kudos!! to Dosdude and his 1.2.1 to MBP 8,2 (15" 2011 with disabled dGPU) ; After installing HiToolbox to its destination folder copying SkyLightOriginal to /System/Library/Privateframeworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A immediately crashed the system with a reboot stuck at initial Apple/boot progress screen. had to reinstall OS from USB patcher to get system back. However I had not yet put the CatalinaAutomount in launchdeamons folder beforehand although I doubt it would have made a difference. Will wait for Bluesky update. cheers Zfrogman

 

[macguru9999]

I downloaded 15.1 on a supported machine, made a fresh install usb, installed over 15.0 , all works fine. But its a pity autoupdates are blocked, and even if you download the upodate , it wont run....

 

[TimothyR734]

Hello TimothyR743, Same thing here after successfully installing 10.15.1 (Thanks! and kudos!! to Dosdude and his 1.2.1 to MBP 8,2 (15" 2011 with disabled dGPU) ; After installing HiToolbox to its destination folder copying SkyLightOriginal to /System/Library/Privateframeworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A immediately crashed the system with a reboot stuck at initial Apple/boot progress screen. had to reinstall OS from USB patcher to get system back. However I had not yet put the CatalinaAutomount in launchdeamons folder beforehand although I doubt it would have made a difference. Will wait for Bluesky update. cheers Zfrogman

The CatalinaAutoMount gives you permission to make changes without resorting to the terminal. The HIToolbox is a newer version from 10/17 Skylight however is broken and it was last updated 10/9 which it did work for a bit then all sudden crashes were happening but so far knock on wood the HIToolbox that is from jackluke is holding steady and does give you the white instead of grayish menubar which works for me until a updated BlueSky and a patched Skylight is made. I don't mind the grey sidebars
[automerge]1572553287[/automerge]

I downloaded 15.1 on a supported machine, made a fresh install usb, installed over 15.0 , all works fine. But its a pity autoupdates are blocked, and even if you download the upodate , it wont run....

Dosdude is revamping the Catalina Patcher that should fix the Software update in system preferences

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Dosdude is revamping the Catalina Patcher that should fix the Software update in system preferences

I hope that's the case. It would be interesting to hear from dosdude1 himself how close we are to that target.

 

[TimothyR734]

I hope that's the case. It would be interesting to hear from dosdude1 himself how close we are to that target.

from discord
dosdude1Today at 12:01 PM

No, I'm actually going to make a completely custom softwareupdated implementation, that not only ignores system checks, but also ensures post-install patches are not overwritten during the update process.

 

[Vyzantion]

Software update has changed in a weird way. Each time I run it, it refuses to run, saying that it ran a few minutes ago (it actualy lists the time when it ran). This happened sometimes before this update, but mostly not. If I ran SilentKnight, that checks for updates of hidden security features like XProtect, but also of main updates, it runs as before. I usually connect the internet after install of the OS, after I install the boot loader and reboot. This time I forgot to remove the ethernet cable and the OS updated XProtect and Gatekeeper during the initial configuration of the OS, although I realised about this and removed it before the end of the configuration. Has this issue happened to anybody else? Can you check for updates in System Preferences?

 

[dr.chaos]

I haven't installed it from the patcher, so I can't be 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure that the "AMD Metal Driver SSE4.2 Emulation Layer" is my SSE 4.2 emulator (MouSSE) and nothing else (no other AMD-related patches). If that's the case, it should be completely transparent - if you never use any SSE4.2 instructions, it will never do anything and you'd never know it was there. It really shouldn't affect something as late as post-login processing; if it was going to be flaky, I'd expect it to happen when the kernel first loads.

If you'd like to try removing it (since you're using an nVidia card, it's probably not doing anything useful for you anyway), open a terminal window and try the following:

1. sudo mount -uw /
2. cd /System/Library/Extensions
3. sudo rm -rf AAAMouSSE.kext
4. cd /
5. sudo kextcache -i /

Then reboot to see if anything changed. (I'm not sure how @dosdude1's patcher keeps track of installed patches, so the patch updater might nag you about the missing kext. If so, he might be able to suggest a cleaner method of permanent removal.)

Do let me know if removing MouSSE helped the problem. I'm not sure how I'd proceed to debug in that scenario, though...

Man thank you!!!!

That did the trick. Removed it from Extensions and rebooted about a dozen times. No errors.

Patch Updater does not seem to mind. It believes the patch is still installed.

Thanks again!

 

[maxo3]

I've posted about my problem a couple of days ago but I'm doing it again in hope that dosdue1 will read it and perhaps able to figure out the issue.

I'm running couple of Xserves one of them is 2,1 the other is 3,1. I upgraded to Catalina with dosdude1 patcher 1.1.9 with 15.0.33 apple installer without any problem.

Now I'd like to update to 10.15.1 but it just simple doesn't work for me. Using 1.2.1 I tried to install the 10.15.1 (15.1.03) update but while the patcher is copying files to /tmp folder InstallESD.dmg show up for a short while than disappears altogether. After it reboots it starts on the old system with no installation. during the whole process, a warning comes up that says "The followiwng disk images coudn't be opened" listing the InstallESD.dmg. Obviously because it's not there.

csrutil status shows the following:
Apple Internal: disabled
Kext Signing: disabled
Filesystem Protections: disabled
Debugging Restrictions: disabled
DTrace Restrictions: disabled
NVRAM Protections: disabled
BaseSystem Verification: disabled

 

[TimothyR734]

Software update has changed in a weird way. Each time I run it, it refuses to run, saying that it ran a few minutes ago (it actualy lists the time when it ran). This happened sometimes before this update, but mostly not. If I ran SilentKnight, that checks for updates of hidden security features like XProtect, but also of main updates, it runs as before. I usually connect the internet after install of the OS, after I install the boot loader and reboot. This time I forgot to remove the ethernet cable and the OS updated XProtect and Gatekeeper during the initial configuration of the OS, although I realised about this and removed it before the end of the configuration. Has this issue happened to anybody else? Can you check for updates in System Preferences?

The Software update in System Preferences is broke in Catalina even though it will notify you of updates from the App Store and if you use Safari Technology Preview but dosdude is working on a fix for it in a new Catalina Patcher