This become spoon feeding, now! I stopped this 30 years ago with my own children and I am not willing to start it again. Help yourself! Google is easy use and you may learn something on this way... I already gave you all the sites to read.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs
- Thread starter 0403979
- WikiPost WikiPost
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
I started with a thread that discussed the installing metal cards into the mid 2011 iMacs.
The system has trouble coming out of sleep. The screen stays black with the mouse frozen. Then after you wake it up, the screen becomes static looking and freezes with moments allowing the mouse moving periodically.
As I wrote before, you will find the answers to most of your questions and problems in the other thread. Please check it out! Search for sleep and opencore there ....
Hi everyone! Frends present me MacBook Pro 5,1. I will install Catalina with macOS Catalina Patcher tool. How can I install Windows 10 on it? Standart methods (Boot Camp) doesn't work.
P.S. Sorry for my English.
P.S. Sorry for my English.
The dosdude's site has all the info. A word of caution though: while an immense effort was made to create a patcher that is very easy to use even for a complete PC beginner, it is advised to adequately assess your own abilities before "going all in".
You can't upgrade the video card on a laptop, what you have is what you will always have. Yes, if you put a new battery and an SSD, your machine will easily run Catalina with no issues. You should also consider upgrading the ram to 8GB or 16gb while you are doing the other upgrades, although the memory can easily be done in the future if you decide to wait.
Tracked down an interesting problem this weekend. I've read on here some people are having issues making a working Catalina Patcher USB drive. I hadn't run into it often myself, and when I did I would simply install to this machine from within Mojave, but I had an HFS+ Mojave install which won't allow you to upgrade to Catalina until you convert to APFS first. So I booted the patcher and went to Disk Utility to unmount the drive and convert to APFS. The drive was already unmounted (greyed out) and any attempt to mount it was met with the error message below :
Rebooted to try again, same issue. So I remade the USB patcher. Created successfully, but booting to it still produced the same error. Tried the same USB drive on another older Mac, and it worked fine. Booted to my Mojave patcher that I know works and no error, drive was mounted, converted to APFS no problem. Fixed the APFS volume so it could boot back into Mojave, attempted to run the Install to this computer option in the Catalina patcher, and it said SIP was enabled?! So I booted back to the non-working Catalina patcher, checked SIP status and it showed SIP status as unknown : Custom Configuration. Still the same Disk Utility errors, and when I clicked Reinstall Mac OS, this is the error I got:
Booted to the Mojave recovery partition, ran csrutil status and it said disabled, just as I expected.
Went ahead and typed in csrutil disable and it confirmed that it disabled SIP and to reboot.
Rebooted back to the SAME USB patcher that was not working previously and now disk utility mounted the drive on boot and I was able to successfully install Catalina 10.15.4 all the way through with the USB drive that just said this copy is damaged. I was able to successfully recreate the issue on no less than 4 different 2010 mac computers this weekend. A 2010 MacBook Air 11.6", 2010 MacBook Pro 13.3", a 2010 iMac 21.5", and a 2010 27" iMac. All 4 I used the same process :
1. Boot to known working Mojave USB patcher - use disk utility to restore Mojave image. Run Mojave patcher with default settings to install fixes for that model.
2. Boot into Mojave, run the patch updater to finish any needed patches. Reboot. Run the firmware update package to ensure APFS boot ability.
3. Boot to Catalina 10.15.4 USB patcher - attempt to unmount drive and convert to APFS. This is where the failures occurred.
TLDR - Simply re-running the csrutil disable command from any recovery partition seems to fix the "This copy of MacOS Catalina is damaged" error message. Apparently something somewhere is still enabled, even though it shows disabled when we query the status.
EDIT - Confirmed on 3 more machines today 2 identical MacBook7,1 2010 laptops and 1 2011 iMac Desktop. The 2011 iMac had High Sierra which actually showed SIP status as enabled. Again, as soon as I ran csrutil disable and rebooted, the USB drive magically worked again.
Rebooted to try again, same issue. So I remade the USB patcher. Created successfully, but booting to it still produced the same error. Tried the same USB drive on another older Mac, and it worked fine. Booted to my Mojave patcher that I know works and no error, drive was mounted, converted to APFS no problem. Fixed the APFS volume so it could boot back into Mojave, attempted to run the Install to this computer option in the Catalina patcher, and it said SIP was enabled?! So I booted back to the non-working Catalina patcher, checked SIP status and it showed SIP status as unknown : Custom Configuration. Still the same Disk Utility errors, and when I clicked Reinstall Mac OS, this is the error I got:
Booted to the Mojave recovery partition, ran csrutil status and it said disabled, just as I expected.
Went ahead and typed in csrutil disable and it confirmed that it disabled SIP and to reboot.
Rebooted back to the SAME USB patcher that was not working previously and now disk utility mounted the drive on boot and I was able to successfully install Catalina 10.15.4 all the way through with the USB drive that just said this copy is damaged. I was able to successfully recreate the issue on no less than 4 different 2010 mac computers this weekend. A 2010 MacBook Air 11.6", 2010 MacBook Pro 13.3", a 2010 iMac 21.5", and a 2010 27" iMac. All 4 I used the same process :
1. Boot to known working Mojave USB patcher - use disk utility to restore Mojave image. Run Mojave patcher with default settings to install fixes for that model.
2. Boot into Mojave, run the patch updater to finish any needed patches. Reboot. Run the firmware update package to ensure APFS boot ability.
3. Boot to Catalina 10.15.4 USB patcher - attempt to unmount drive and convert to APFS. This is where the failures occurred.
TLDR - Simply re-running the csrutil disable command from any recovery partition seems to fix the "This copy of MacOS Catalina is damaged" error message. Apparently something somewhere is still enabled, even though it shows disabled when we query the status.
EDIT - Confirmed on 3 more machines today 2 identical MacBook7,1 2010 laptops and 1 2011 iMac Desktop. The 2011 iMac had High Sierra which actually showed SIP status as enabled. Again, as soon as I ran csrutil disable and rebooted, the USB drive magically worked again.
Last edited:
Once you have the system on go to preference and select startup disk as your catalina start up disk again and try to boot system. sometimes it takes longer and you may have the black screen but dont give up. If you still dont get to your login the alt option key is the bet but there is an option. Search for @jackluke afpsopencore tool for catalina. There is a guide on how to use it and you can login through this tool. Cheers
[automerge]1587881735[/automerge]
Many times SIP shows disable but apparently it is not. so always before installing patched catalina run terminal from outside the system such as a boot drive and disable SIP which will give you smooth installation of patched catalina. Installation from usb stick is best bet but I too have got the errors you posted for which I have no answer but the steps I provided really works well. Also sometimes re formatting the usb stick helps or using a different usb stick
Last edited:
Hello and welcome. Here you are
Last edited:
Hi Minh, thanks for sharing. I am new to the forum and have same issue w Traditional and Simplified Chinese Input, how may I solve the issue? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.
@dosdude1 Hi first of all, thanks heaps for making it possible for my Late 2008 MBP to run Catalina! Just installed it few days ago and works like champ except for 2 important feature:
1) I can no longer input Chinese and Japanese properly and went through forums to find solution but no solid one yet, is it true that as my processor doesn't have AVX I won't be able to type these characters again?
2) Hand gesture (3 finger swipe) for trackpad no longer existing though I can still scroll up/down/left/right
Just hope to check if these are beyond what my MBP limitation? If so I have just consider downgrading back to Mojave.
Thanks in advance.
1) I can no longer input Chinese and Japanese properly and went through forums to find solution but no solid one yet, is it true that as my processor doesn't have AVX I won't be able to type these characters again?
2) Hand gesture (3 finger swipe) for trackpad no longer existing though I can still scroll up/down/left/right
Just hope to check if these are beyond what my MBP limitation? If so I have just consider downgrading back to Mojave.
Thanks in advance.
@dosdude@nekton1 @antony34 I know absolutely nothing about Japanese, but I took a brief look into your issue and I was able to reproduce it.
I think I know why this only happens on unsupported Macs, even if they have Metal GPUs: a dependency of the Japanese Input Method process requires AVX, which will obviously be a problem on a Penryn-based computer like a MacPro3,1 or my MacBook7,1.
Evidence
See the crash report:
View attachment 867296
When I find that address in the executable...
View attachment 867295
That instruction doesn't exist in our CPUs, hence the Illegal Instruction error.
Possible Fix?
I tried replacing/usr/lib/libmecabra.dylibfrom Mojave, but this causes some missing symbol errors in/System/Library/Input Methods/JapaneseIM.app, so I had to replace that too.
This gets the plugin working well enough for a text box with Japanese characters to appear when I type (as I said, I know nothing about the language so I have no idea of any terminology here).
View attachment 867305
Unfortunately, it seems flaky and I still frequently see Japanese Input Method crash reports popping up.
Not quite sure where to go from here... it's progress though, right?At least we have a good idea of the root issue, if not a fix yet.
Perhaps someone else has some insight. I hope this helped!
Amigos! I have three Macs:
Mac Mini 3,1 on unsupported HS 10.13.6, with DIY Fusion Drive formatted HFS+
MBP 5,5, with DIY Fusion Drive HFS+, likely with unsupported Mojave 10.14.x(?) and not going past boot screen after a failed upgrade
MBA 4,2 on supported High Sierra 10.13.6 (last supported version)
Because all three machines are used to access a Photo Library on an external USB, I feel it is best for me to keep them on the same version of OSX.
I am looking to fix the botched MBP 5'5 and get all three Macs on the same OS, and was hoping for advice from those of you who have these machines on the pros and cons of the scenarios below, and what scenario you would choose based on your experience:
A) Revert back to High Sierra on the MBP 5'5 so all three machines are on 10.13.6. (If so, I will need to do a clean install. If that's the case, should I stick with HFS+ on the DIY Fusion drive, or should I go APFS? What pros and cons of going to AFPS in this scenario?)
or
B) Upgrade all three Macs to unsupported Mojave
or
C) Upgrade all three Macs to unsupported Catalina
My main concern with upgrading to Mojave or Catalina is impaired performance and stability compared to High Sierra. Similarly with moving from HFS+ to APFS. However, I'm hoping to hear that my concerns are unfounded (or if not, that's OK too). Thank you for your input.
Mac Mini 3,1 on unsupported HS 10.13.6, with DIY Fusion Drive formatted HFS+
MBP 5,5, with DIY Fusion Drive HFS+, likely with unsupported Mojave 10.14.x(?) and not going past boot screen after a failed upgrade
MBA 4,2 on supported High Sierra 10.13.6 (last supported version)
Because all three machines are used to access a Photo Library on an external USB, I feel it is best for me to keep them on the same version of OSX.
I am looking to fix the botched MBP 5'5 and get all three Macs on the same OS, and was hoping for advice from those of you who have these machines on the pros and cons of the scenarios below, and what scenario you would choose based on your experience:
A) Revert back to High Sierra on the MBP 5'5 so all three machines are on 10.13.6. (If so, I will need to do a clean install. If that's the case, should I stick with HFS+ on the DIY Fusion drive, or should I go APFS? What pros and cons of going to AFPS in this scenario?)
or
B) Upgrade all three Macs to unsupported Mojave
or
C) Upgrade all three Macs to unsupported Catalina
My main concern with upgrading to Mojave or Catalina is impaired performance and stability compared to High Sierra. Similarly with moving from HFS+ to APFS. However, I'm hoping to hear that my concerns are unfounded (or if not, that's OK too). Thank you for your input.
Guys, I am new to this and appreciate some help - how do you replace these Frameworks? Corz apparently drag and drop to replace did not work for me......
Thanks in advance.
Hello everyone,
just want to add this to the unsupported Macs thread in case this helps anyone else with DisplayPort initialization issues. Apple has changed the way AppleGraphicsControl kext loads with Mac OS 10.15.4, a board ID must be present withinAppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext to properly load. On the iMac MXM thread I have added all 5 iMac board ID's to the kext to prevent a blank login screen/lack of Displayport output. Hope this can be used to help any other Mac models, I should attempt this on a MacPro 5,1 to see if there is any Displayport output issues as well.
just want to add this to the unsupported Macs thread in case this helps anyone else with DisplayPort initialization issues. Apple has changed the way AppleGraphicsControl kext loads with Mac OS 10.15.4, a board ID must be present withinAppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext to properly load. On the iMac MXM thread I have added all 5 iMac board ID's to the kext to prevent a blank login screen/lack of Displayport output. Hope this can be used to help any other Mac models, I should attempt this on a MacPro 5,1 to see if there is any Displayport output issues as well.
Hi everyone my apologies if this has been addressed in the past 422 pages. But first THANK YOU DosDude for these super super easy installs! I have a 2010 mac mini that I use as a home theater computer, mainly for iTunes (I have a family apple music subscription as well as several high end audio files) and we love watching our vacation photos on the screen during screensaver. It has become our morning ritual.
My question pertains to speed and internet.
Last year I used your mojave patcher on my mac mini, yesterday I decided to upgrade the same computer by using your patcher again (from mojave to catalina). Everything works BUT windows are lagging and slow to load and my Ethernet connected internet is only get about a 2.4 mb download although my actual orbi devices and other computers are clocking 125mb. I tried wifi to no avail.
I have referred to this page https://techsviewer.com/macos-catalina-slow/ and tried everything but the clean install and Clean My Mac app. I also booted off the install drive and cleaned the caches as suggested to see if that would help.
I am attaching a picture of my specs. Does anyone have any suggestions?
My question pertains to speed and internet.
Last year I used your mojave patcher on my mac mini, yesterday I decided to upgrade the same computer by using your patcher again (from mojave to catalina). Everything works BUT windows are lagging and slow to load and my Ethernet connected internet is only get about a 2.4 mb download although my actual orbi devices and other computers are clocking 125mb. I tried wifi to no avail.
I have referred to this page https://techsviewer.com/macos-catalina-slow/ and tried everything but the clean install and Clean My Mac app. I also booted off the install drive and cleaned the caches as suggested to see if that would help.
I am attaching a picture of my specs. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks for the info, I'll be adding this to the next build of Catalina Patcher, along with the other changes you proposed.
You should always keep one machine with high sierra. Since Mojave and Catalina requires some updates of high sierra.
if you install Mojave in your machines you can run 32bit apps which is the last of Mac OS to allow it. Also it requires afps format so does Catalina.
if you want the feel of all different OS then keep all 3 . one each in respective machines.
It is all matter of choice. Catalina is a bit troublesome but if you get all going then it works like a charm on unsupported machines. Except you may have to do away with airdrop or hands off depending upon what wifi/bluetooth card you have.It only works for broadcom cards.
Since you have photo library on external usb stick there should not be an issue opening it in any of system. You can just press option while clicking on photo app and selecting the library.
Rest since the choice of OS is subjective its best for you what you like. cheers
[automerge]1587966488[/automerge]
Thats wonderful @dosdude1 . Cheers
[automerge]1587966837[/automerge]
Tks @highvoltage12v . Wonderful for imac 2011 upgraded mxm cards such as we having these blank screen issue. Could you provide the link to the patched ktext file. Tks
Last edited:
Thank you for the input, @Dilli. Having the different OSes is surely an intriguing suggestion which I will give more thought to. If so, guess it makes sense to keep the MBA 4'2 on High Sierra as it is supported. My experience on Photos is each OS seems to run its own version of the photos app, and the library gets automatically upgraded when opened with newer versions of the app, and then isn't backward compatible. Is there a workaround?
Thank you for the heads up on issues with unsupported Catalina. Losing Airdrop would be a bummer, so I'll play close attention.
By the way, I was able to get my MBP 5,5 to boot by updating to 10.14.6 with the latest patcher tool. Interestingly it left the Fusion Drive in HFS+. Is cause for worry? Thank's again!
Thank you for the heads up on issues with unsupported Catalina. Losing Airdrop would be a bummer, so I'll play close attention.
By the way, I was able to get my MBP 5,5 to boot by updating to 10.14.6 with the latest patcher tool. Interestingly it left the Fusion Drive in HFS+. Is cause for worry? Thank's again!
These should be added separately, because I guess his changes won't work for non-metal acceleration on dual GPUs machine, because is using stock Catalina: AGPM, AMCCSControl and AGC kext with its stock Catalina AGC plugins as AGDP (with iMac board id added), Mux and so on .
Last edited:
I have my MBA 4,2 with all three OS. Catalina works really well and since this machine has broadcom card airdrop and hands off work too. I never face any issues with photo library with any OS. Catalina and Mohave is having similar photo app. You should follow how to load the photo library with option key while pressing the photo app and this gives you the benefit of which library to choose. Photo library is database and can be opened with high sierra or mojave or catalina. I had no issues of backward compatibility etc . This is the work around I mentioned.
Hi everyone, first i’d like to thanks @dosdude1 @ASentientBot @jackluke @parrotgeek1 @Rastafabi @oliveira131and every person who contributed to this amazing work !!!
I’ve done the Catalina update (the latest) on my MacBook Pro 7,1 mid-2010 and upgrade it with 2x 8Go RAM and a new BX500 Crucial SSD (in France, it cost me about 130 euros) and… IT WORKS LIKE A CHARM. I’ve the feeling that I’ve got a brand new computer for a small amount of money.
However, I still got a minor issue : Siri doesn’t work. It won’t open at all, from the taskbar or from the dock app.
The console says :
Is anyone having an idea of what’s going on ? I’ve searched Siri related posts on the thread, but haven’t found a solution.
Thanks !!
I’ve done the Catalina update (the latest) on my MacBook Pro 7,1 mid-2010 and upgrade it with 2x 8Go RAM and a new BX500 Crucial SSD (in France, it cost me about 130 euros) and… IT WORKS LIKE A CHARM. I’ve the feeling that I’ve got a brand new computer for a small amount of money.
However, I still got a minor issue : Siri doesn’t work. It won’t open at all, from the taskbar or from the dock app.
The console says :
Is anyone having an idea of what’s going on ? I’ve searched Siri related posts on the thread, but haven’t found a solution.
Thanks !!
J'ai le même Mac que toi, c'est MBP 7,1. Parfois, Siri n'apparaît pas sur la barre, même sur des modèles pris en charge – il faut cocher les cases à plusieurs reprises, et en plus de ça hein: les voix ne téléchargent pas souvent en arrière-plan sur les Macs patchés. On peut vérifier les installations sur le rapport système, y compris les voix hors ligne.
Pour moi, je devais télécharger les voix manuellement depuis les serveurs d'Apple
- ce catalogue a tout:Si tu appuies sur ⌘F, tu peux utiliser la fonction Find pour rechercher "CustomVoice_fr_FR". J'ai cherché "CustomVoice_en_IE_aidan.pkg" parce que j'voulais la voix masculine irlandaise pour mon système.
Par exemple, le lien pour le mien est
En plus de la barre en haut de l'écran, essayez de faire glisser l'application de
/System/Applications/Siri.app vers le Dock, qu'on peut trouver sur Launchpad aussi – j'espère que ça marchera.N'oubliez pas de profiter du format APFS plus rapide pour votre nouveau SSD
Last edited:
J'ai le même Mac que toi, c'est MBP 7,1. Parfois, Siri n'apparaît pas sur la barre, même sur des modèles pris en charge – il faut cocher les cases à plusieurs reprises, et en plus de ça hein: les voix ne téléchargent pas souvent en arrière-plan sur les Macs patchés. On peut vérifier les installations sur le rapport système, y compris les voix hors ligne.
Pour moi, je devais télécharger les voix manuellement depuis les serveurs d'Apple
Si tu appuies sur ⌘F, tu peux utiliser la fonction Find pour rechercher "CustomVoice_fr_FR". J'ai cherché "CustomVoice_en_IE_aidan.pkg" parce que j'voulais la voix masculine irlandaise pour mon système.
Par exemple, le lien pour le mien est View attachment 909740
View attachment 909747
En plus de la barre en haut de l'écran, essayez de faire glisser l'application de/System/Applications/Siri.appvers le Dock, qu'on peut trouver sur Launchpad aussi – j'espère que ça marchera.
N'oubliez pas de profiter du format APFS plus rapide pour votre nouveau SSD
Merci beaucoup !! En effet il fallait simplement cocher/décocher les cases pour que Siri s'active.
J'ai téléchargé la CustomVoice_fr_FR grace à ton fichier mais ça a installé la voix Canadienne en plus, la voix française était en fait déjà correctement installée.
Et merci du conseil, je pense que j'ai bien formaté le disque, par contre saurais tu pourquoi j'ai désormais deux volumes ?
For non french speaking readers, issue solved, I just have to check/uncheck items in siri menu several times in order to activate it, thanks