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macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
ScreenSavers said:
Like I told him before. What’s the point of trying to install Catalina on a 2011 laptop HDD anyway? Talk about unusable...
Click to expand...
The point? Well, seeing that Catalina is running well on many 2008 laptops (mine included)... this thread IS for unsupported Macs. Perhaps advising a change from HDD to SSD would be more apposite.
 
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I have a 2009 with ssd running fine.

My 2011 is faulty anyway so i just like to use it for playing around.
I dont care about this hdd.

Once again:
How to install it?
 
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olad said:
The point? Well, seeing that Catalina is running well on many 2008 laptops (mine included)... this thread IS for unsupported Macs. Perhaps advising a change from HDD to SSD would be more apposite.
Click to expand...

Obviously that’s what I meant. The HDD aspect of it is pointless. Get a 120GB Crucial SSD on Amazon for $22 and call it a day.
 
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16v said:
I have a 2009 with ssd running fine.

My 2011 is faulty anyway so i just like to use it for playing around.
I dont care about this hdd.

Once again:
How to install it?
Click to expand...

You cannot install to a drive that has SMART errors. You can restore an image from Carbon Copy Cloner or try creating a partition with a version of Disk Utility before they introduced the error check, but Catalina will convert it to APFS and run the SMART scan anyway, so I don't think you actually CAN install Catalina on a failing drive.
 
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An interesting observation.

When I first installed onto my MBP it was bc Apple had an issue servicing a machine they replaced, hence me NEEDING to use another machine and decided to test this. Used Carbon Copy Cloner to move the data over then applied the patches to the cloned drive.

Oddly enough even though my Mac doesn't support the OS officially, nor Unlock with Apple Watch the function worked until my next OS Update / Point Install then the feature went away, disappeared from the Security Preference and does not show as supported under the Wifi Adapter in Profiler.

Any thoughts? Would love to get this working again?

System:

Mid 2009 13" MBP

WiFi Adapter:

Card Type: AirPort Extreme: (0x14E4, 0x8D)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.102.31)
 
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jowaju said:
You cannot install to a drive that has SMART errors. You can restore an image from Carbon Copy Cloner or try creating a partition with a version of Disk Utility before they introduced the error check, but Catalina will convert it to APFS and run the SMART scan anyway, so I don't think you actually CAN install Catalina on a failing drive.
Click to expand...
O.k.
So there is no chance to stop smart test?
Bc when trying to install mojave it doesnt say smart error. But after a few seconds it stops installing saying there are no packages found. But date is set correctly...

Ccc is what i will try on weekend.
 
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16v said:
O.k.
So there is no chance to stop smart test?
Bc when trying to install mojave it doesnt say smart error. But after a few seconds it stops installing saying there are no packages found. But date is set correctly...




Ccc is what i will try on weekend.
Click to expand...


How long ago did you make the installer USB drive? Try setting the date back to 12-18-18 and reboot, then try installing again. Some of the installers from earlier this year expired a few months ago and will give that error when the date has passed.
 
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This macOS Catalina (10.15) forum is one of the most posted in MacRumors, thanks largely to dosdude and the other geniuses who deeply understand the system. And whilst many people have easily installed Catalina on their unsupported Macs, it seems that even more have had trouble - just like me. I've got a MBP8.2 and a Mac Pro 5.1. Installation of 10.15 on the MBP 8.2 was a breeze, but the only way I could get Catalina running on the MP 5.1 was to install in it a 120 GB SSD clone of the MBP startup disk.
The Mac Pro has a GeForce GT 120 512 MB graphics card, 32 GB of RAM, a BroadCom BCM43xx wifi card and a separate Broadcom BT 2.0 bluetooth card. Catalina now works perfectly on the MP 5.1, apart from minor problems with the Photos app.
In my attempts to upgrade to 10.15.2, I decided to install another clone of the 120 GB startup disk in Bay 2 of the 5.1, so that if the upgrade process corrupted the system on the startup disk, I could quickly restore operations from the Bay 2 clone (the Catalina installed on the startup disk does not have a Recovery partition or "mode"). Naturally I tried to boot from the Bay 2 clone - either with the Bay 1 drive installed or not installed (and not hot-swapped either!) - just to check that the Bay 2 drive was bootable. However, the 5.1 will not boot from the Bay 2 drive, despite it being apparently identical to the Bay 1 drive. The cloned SSD in Bay 2 was created using SuperDuper! v 3.3.1. What is happening here, and why?
I would appreciate any offers of help here - and thanks for reading this.
 
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rdfincher said:
This macOS Catalina (10.15) forum is one of the most posted in MacRumors, thanks largely to dosdude and the other geniuses who deeply understand the system. And whilst many people have easily installed Catalina on their unsupported Macs, it seems that even more have had trouble - just like me. I've got a MBP8.2 and a Mac Pro 5.1. Installation of 10.15 on the MBP 8.2 was a breeze, but the only way I could get Catalina running on the MP 5.1 was to install in it a 120 GB SSD clone of the MBP startup disk.
The Mac Pro has a GeForce GT 120 512 MB graphics card, 32 GB of RAM, a BroadCom BCM43xx wifi card and a separate Broadcom BT 2.0 bluetooth card. Catalina now works perfectly on the MP 5.1, apart from minor problems with the Photos app.
In my attempts to upgrade to 10.15.2, I decided to install another clone of the 120 GB startup disk in Bay 2 of the 5.1, so that if the upgrade process corrupted the system on the startup disk, I could quickly restore operations from the Bay 2 clone (the Catalina installed on the startup disk does not have a Recovery partition or "mode"). Naturally I tried to boot from the Bay 2 clone - either with the Bay 1 drive installed or not installed (and not hot-swapped either!) - just to check that the Bay 2 drive was bootable. However, the 5.1 will not boot from the Bay 2 drive, despite it being apparently identical to the Bay 1 drive. The cloned SSD in Bay 2 was created using SuperDuper! v 3.3.1. What is happening here, and why?
I would appreciate any offers of help here - and thanks for reading this.
Click to expand...
Do it with CCC. You will have no problem. And be sure is the right format. SIP must be disabled.
 
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Hi all!

I've been keeping my early 2009 iMac alive and current with this great forum. Well, my wife has a 2008 MacBookPro and has been reluctant to have me frankenstein her laptop. Finally did, but I did so systematically with each system. Now has the latest version of Mojave on it, Still tweaking some problems but getting there. I notice in her Software Update it actually identifies Catalina as an option. Never saw or had that on my iMac. Can that option be used to move on to Catalina or does the patched USB install drive have to be used?

Thanks in advance for the feedback.
 
psu7276 said:
Hi all!

I've been keeping my early 2009 iMac alive and current with this great forum. Well, my wife has a 2008 MacBookPro and has been reluctant to have me frankenstein her laptop. Finally did, but I did so systematically with each system. Now has the latest version of Mojave on it, Still tweaking some problems but getting there. I notice in her Software Update it actually identifies Catalina as an option. Never saw or had that on my iMac. Can that option be used to move on to Catalina or does the patched USB install drive have to be used?

Thanks in advance for the feedback.
Click to expand...
Dont you dare to touch that! 😂
 
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jowaju said:
How long ago did you make the installer USB drive? Try setting the date back to 12-18-18 and reboot, then try installing again. Some of the installers from earlier this year expired a few months ago and will give that error when the date has passed.
Click to expand...
This worked for mojave...
And there is no smart error message.
Why?
 
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MarvinRouge said:
Yes, that's a good idea! I haven't tried yet because disconnecting the keyboard is cumbersome but I might try that first. I have an official Apple USB keyboard from about the same time as the MacBook.



The two MacBook Pros I'm talking about have an optical drive and the power button is separated from the keyboard.

But apart from this method (which might very well be the best, you are right!), is there anything I need to understand regarding the patches? Are there specific to every model? To every graphic card, processor?

Bonus question: Is it possible to use the latest versions of Keynote and Pages after upgrading a 2011 MBP to Catalina? One of the only reasons to upgrade is that I want to be able to edit shared iCloud documents, which requires them.
Click to expand...

UPDATE: I successfully changed the keyboard of the computer. I used these two tutorials. That was the longest teardown of the machine I've ever done, but definitely worth it and I now have a functioning keyboard! Also, I managed to clean 9 years of dust and hair which probably means less fan noise for the 9 years to come.

After that, I upgraded the system to Catalina with your installer (worked in a breeze and really good job with the patch update integration) and I can now share iCloud documents again!

As an answer to my question, the way your patcher works in automatically determining the needed patches but also letting you choose the model and the hard drive on which to apply the patches would have made it possible to upgrade the system and patch it from another computer. That could be useful for someone else with a similar keyboard problem who doesn't want to teardown everything!

Thanks a lot for your help!
 
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New question: has anyone tried to use Bootcamp assistant to install Windows 10 on a machine which (according to Apple) doesn't support it?

I've had a bootcamp partition with Windows 10 on my Early 2011 13" Macbook Pro before but I had to trick the assistant because Apple only officially supports Windows 7 on the machine.

I just started the assistant again after upgrading to Catalina and sure enough it asks me if I want to install Windows 10. But has anyone tried? Is it safe?
 
AlexyFoxy said:
Ahem:p... Can anyone respond!
Click to expand...
Catalina tends to perform the same as Mojave 90% of the time, and substantially worse occasionally (for reasons I don't understand, web pages behave as if they're unaccelerated). That said, I'm on a 2010 machine and I only very rarely get an actual freeze/beachball, even in fairly heavy apps like Photoshop.

Do you have a spinning HDD in there? If so, that's definitely why. Get an SSD. If not, what are you doing when it freezes? Watch Activity Monitor and see if a process' CPU usage spikes at the same time. Bad performance can be caused by about a million things so there is no way we can understand your problem with no info!
 
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Does anyone have an idea how I can reactivate the hotplug of my
eSata controller in an MBP 5.2? With Mojave 10.14.6 with a modified
AppleAHCIPort.kext, plugging an SSD into the eSata port on the laptop
works perfectly. Now from Catalina 10.15 Final it is no longer possible.

The option in Clover for HackBook with KextToPatch is also no longer possible.

It would be so nice if I could simply plug the SSD into the eSata socket with a special cable to access the data from the external SSD.

It works so well with Mojave 10.14.6
If someone has a tip I would be happy to hear something.
 
I have a MacBook Pro 2009 with patched Catalina 10.5.1.
I tried to upgrade the OS to 10.5.2 but it doesn't see the patch USB at boot option screen.
It appears that a special APFS booting doesn't check presence of the patch USB (v1.3).
Is there' any way to disable the special APFS booting so that it can see the patch USB?
 
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