macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[zfrogman]

I did for mine.

I got both an Intel 27in iMac and Intel 16in MBP in 2020, along with an Intel Mac Mini in this year. (I do alot of work with Windows, and need VM running Windows...so until/unless that gets addressed, the new M1 stuff is of diminished value to me over Intel versions. Since my line up prior to 2020 was 2009 27in iMac, MBP 8,2, and 2012 Mac Mini, I made the decision to "retool" to what I thought would be the last Intel based Macs. I should be good for years to come....hopefully by the time I'm dated again, the situation will change around MS Windows emulation/VM.) So focus has been mostly using those. (Sorry, I digress...)

The other day, I had some time and decided to do some testing on my 2011 MBP 8,2 which I'd sent to dosdude1 back in 2019 to get the deMux flash completed. He did, and it works flawlessly. It is SO nice not to have to do the PRAM dance for the defective AMD GPU... My MBP 8,2 also is upgraded with Samsung SSD & 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and had been running Mojave.

Anyway, noticed that FW was on 82.0.0.0.0, and so decided to do a new/fresh High Sierra install to get FW updated to latest. It didn't take that long, and I'm glad I did it. I STRONGLY suspect that 87.0.0.0.0 will be the last FW update for MPB 8,2. However, even though I downloaded the latest High Sierra installer to do this (via dosdude1 patcher), I did not see the FW update take place until after also downloading and installing the latest High Sierra SW Update patches from Apple. So keep that in mind.

After, I then used dosdude1 Catalina patcher USB drive to erase SSD & clean install....went well. Then used CatalinaOTAswufix to grab latest updates, repatched, and works great.

Since then, I thought to try Monterey using the OCLP route. That is what I'm running now, and still testing. While Monterey works OK, I am thinking Catalina seems better for MPB 8,2. I will probably run a few more days with Monterey, and might go back to Catalina after Christmas if I can't tweak Monterey install enough to my liking, or come across any more "anomalies"...

Anyway, I really would recommend IMHO, to just get the FW updated to 87.0.0.0.0 if you have the time. It will most likely be the last time you will need to install High Sierra to do a FW update on MBP 8,2.

Finny

Thanks for your reply Finny. During the Xmas period I'll see at doing it. Interesting your trial with Monterey. I stopped at Big Sur and there were so too many little "nuisances" with BS even tough I liked the UI (backlight, weird graphic artifacts in Safari and other little small graphic bugs) so I went back to Catalina that remains very smooth and stable. I still have the PRAM process and use the "force-IGPU-boot.sh in root if case I need to PRAM. I do like you use VM for such apps as project or Visio and on occasion for Word and Excel as some features do not exist yet or more cumbersome in the Mac Office version and like you intend to ultimately get the latest MBP with M1 in due time. (it should be able to run W10/11?). My approach would be that if I do goto a High Sierra install, I would "reinstall"Catalina with a time Machine restore of a backup prior to the High Sierra Install. Happy Holiday!
PS.Would be interested in knowing your impressions of Monterey as compared to performance, UI graphic and fluidity to Catalina

 

[Demontager]

I had problems with wifi with my MPB 8,1 (late 2011) until I began to manually check the post-install Broadcom patch. By default Catalina has it unchecked.

Yeap "Broadcom BCM4321 WiFI support patch" was disabled by default so i have applied it manually but seems nothing changed e.g. mine BCM4322MC not reconnecting after loosing signal. Also i tried Monterey with opencore and wifi reconnects there so its software related.(Not yet going to use Monterey because distorted UI colours.)

 

[Finbarr Cnaipe]

I do like you use VM for such apps as project or Visio and on occasion for Word and Excel as some features do not exist yet or more cumbersome in the Mac Office version and like you intend to ultimately get the latest MBP with M1 in due time. (it should be able to run W10/11?). My approach would be that if I do goto a High Sierra install, I would "reinstall"Catalina with a time Machine restore of a backup prior to the High Sierra Install. Happy Holiday!
PS.Would be interested in knowing your impressions of Monterey as compared to performance, UI graphic and fluidity to Catalina

For Windows 10/11 Virtual Machines, it is my understanding that in order to have reasonable performance on M1, there needs to be an ARM based Windows release. Currently, my understanding is that Microsoft has not released such a build for general license (to be used on ARM CPU like M1), and currently has an exclusive agreement with Qualcomm around this. But, the good news is that apparently did release info to the press recently that this exclusive agreement with Qualcomm was about to run out. So, that is the path I see in the future for M1 (or M2, etc.) running Windows 10/11 in a VM. But we won't see any "official" support for this unless/until Microsoft releases Windows ARM to general licensing/support.

For Monterey versus Catalina on my MPB 2011 (8,2), other than the display glitches, I have to honestly say I don't see much difference so far in performance. In my case, my MBP is vertical in a Dock, and is essentially a "headless" mac, that I interface with via VNC (Apple Remote Desktop). It is GigE on my network, and I don't see any type of performance issues so far with this configuration....either with Catalina or Monterey. Monterey is the latest, so I wanted to see how it performs on a 10 year old Core i7 MBP. Honestly, if there was a way to get Metal GPU support somehow on this laptop, I don't see ANY reason not to run Monterey over prior macOS. To me the differentiating factor is exactly that, and if I decide to go back to Catalina or Mojave, it will be due to GPU/Metal considerations/performance. That being said, so far I can live with what I'm seeing with Monterey....but I still need to run the MPB through more usage to be sure. As I mentioned, my main Macbook Pro is now a 16in Intel version w/32GB RAM and 2TB SSD....so the MBP 8,2 is just used for testing....until I think of another use case for it. (Interestingly, I've turned my old 2012 Mac Mini into a VMWare ESXI box running pfSense as a VM (and also a Mojave VM). I use it for my main production network Router now. If I think of something similar for the MBP 2011 (8,2), I may do similar....come to think of it, it might be interesting to see how ESXI runs on it....)

 

[honeycombz]

I use an OpenCore booter to get security updates for dosdude1 Catalina on my MacPro3,1. Hold option key to get into Apple's Startup Manager, hold the Control key and press Return in Startup Manager to bless and start the OpenCore booter, in OpenCore select Catalina, hold the Control key and press Return to bless the Catalina booter and boot it (I think OpenCore is still the main booter - it's smart enough to not un-bless itself), do the update, when Catalina boots again, and everything is done updating (check the macOS version), you can restart into the Startup Manager, and bless Catalina as the default booter.
I'm using an OpenCore 0.6.5 version for this purpose. I need to figure out why the OCLP OpenCore installation I use for Big Sur and Monterey doesn't work with my dosdude1 Catalina.

This is the simplest method? I can’t download the security updates manually, install, and then run the post install stuff?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

This is the simplest method? I can’t download the security updates manually, install, and then run the post install stuff?

No you cannot. Check the first post of this thread, the first few lines. Catalina update is broken and needs additional tools.

 

[honeycombz]

No you cannot. Check the first post of this thread, the first few lines. Catalina update is broken and needs additional tools.

I see, hoping that procedure not as big a deal as it seems at first glance. Seems like you download a few things run a few things install a thing then run the post install tool and restart a few times and make sure auto update is off is the general gist.

 

[makra]

I see, hoping that procedure not as big a deal as it seems at first glance. Seems like you download a few things run a few things install a thing then run the post install tool and restart a few times and make sure auto update is off is the general gist.

It would help to be able to read your hardware in your signature. It's a bit more difficult with machines that don't natively support AFPS. But even then it is not a big deal. And actually: Try to sound a bit more enthusiastic or even thankful about that there are folks who enable us to use unsupported Macs with a supported OS!

 

[K two]

?️Mini3,1 w/ 4ea. booting partitions each with latest versions of Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey installed and all running as expected. Two partitions are dosdude1 patcher installs the others via OCLP.????

• There is no conflict between installs using blessed OCLP as the booter for any macOS. Catalina updates requiring CatalinaOTAswufix.app run as intended. Also, unpatched BOOTROM machines no longer need USBOpenCoreAPFSloader3/4 to see the macOS installer as the OCLP boot-picker will serve that purpose but does it without intervention. Nice.

• If a Mac supports Metal or is cobbled to support Metal an all-OCLP approach is interesting but not recommended by Dortania, as yet.

 

[FergusFlint]

I had boot-up problems on the Mini3,1 with certain connections and resolutions. The only bootable DVI connection that would boot everytime was mDP to HDMI/DVI. Juggling the variables fixed the problem. YMMV

Additional - We also have a 2GHz Mini, sometimes it appears stalled when it's just being pedestrian. So far, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey have installed perfectly and run as intended.

Hi K Two,

I tested your theory by buying a mDP to DVI adapter, a cheap Apple one.
There was an immediate change in behaviour - after booting into OpenCoreAPFSloader3 and selecting macOSinstaller the white on black progress bar got to about 60% then the computer shut down, instead of 100% and hanging.

Tried a few times with the same outcome so I went back to the mDVI to DVI adapter, and lo and behold the same shut down problem continued on 2021-007 and -008 when it became the general update.
Tried SMC and NVRAM resets to no avail.

Then on try number 24, doing nothing different from previously, the white on black screen suddenly changed to the Catalina install screen and about 30 minutes later I was up to 19H1615!

Who knows why but perseverance seems to be the answer.
Thanks for the suggestions and to @jackluke and @dosdude1 for their hard work.

 

[K two]

Hi K Two,

I tested your theory by buying a mDP to DVI adapter, a cheap Apple one.
There was an immediate change in behaviour - after booting into OpenCoreAPFSloader3 and selecting macOSinstaller the white on black progress bar got to about 60% then the computer shut down, instead of 100% and hanging.

Tried a few times with the same outcome so I went back to the mDVI to DVI adapter, and lo and behold the same shut down problem continued on 2021-007 and -008 when it became the general update.
Tried SMC and NVRAM resets to no avail.

Then on try number 24, doing nothing different from previously, the white on black screen suddenly changed to the Catalina install screen and about 30 minutes later I was up to 19H1615!

Who knows why but perseverance seems to be the answer.
Thanks for the suggestions and to @jackluke and @dosdude1 for their hard work.

Congratulations.? • So far, the 2GHz Mini3,1 can run anything and still is very useful. Persistence and not interveneing is essential at 2GHz.

 

[dosdude1]

Congratulations.? • So far, the 2GHz Mini3,1 can run anything and still is very useful. Persistence and not interveneing is essential at 2GHz.

There's also the good old socket modification, allowing use of up to a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo T9900 CPU:

 

[FergusFlint]

There's also the good old socket modification, allowing use of up to a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo T9900 CPU:

Hmmm, not exactly for the faint hearted!

 

[jowaju]

There's also the good old socket modification, allowing use of up to a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo T9900 CPU:

Kudos to you for the awesome work, seriously! But man, that seems like a LOT of work to turn a $50 Mac Mini into a $60 Mac Mini.

 

[rmb3218]

Hi All,

I am running Catalina on my 2011(early) 13" MacBook Pro. I have been running Parallels V14 without any problems. I have been trying to upgrade to v17 but have problems. I download the small install package, which then downloads the the larger file. I run the install program but all I get is a spinning ball for a few minutes & no error messages, but it does not install. I have tried deleteing v14, running in safe mode, still the same

 

[joevt]

I am running Catalina on my 2011(early) 13" MacBook Pro. I have been running Parallels V14 without any problems. I have been trying to upgrade to v17 but have problems. I download the small install package, which then downloads the the larger file. I run the install program but all I get is a spinning ball for a few minutes & no error messages, but it does not install. I have tried deleteing v14, running in safe mode, still the same

Is it possible to get v15 or v16 and install those as an intermediate step?

 

[rmb3218]

Is it possible to get v15 or v16 and install those as an intermediate step?

No, the update was only to v17

 

[zfrogman]

For Windows 10/11 Virtual Machines, it is my understanding that in order to have reasonable performance on M1, there needs to be an ARM based Windows release. Currently, my understanding is that Microsoft has not released such a build for general license (to be used on ARM CPU like M1), and currently has an exclusive agreement with Qualcomm around this. But, the good news is that apparently did release info to the press recently that this exclusive agreement with Qualcomm was about to run out. So, that is the path I see in the future for M1 (or M2, etc.) running Windows 10/11 in a VM. But we won't see any "official" support for this unless/until Microsoft releases Windows ARM to general licensing/support.

For Monterey versus Catalina on my MPB 2011 (8,2), other than the display glitches, I have to honestly say I don't see much difference so far in performance. In my case, my MBP is vertical in a Dock, and is essentially a "headless" mac, that I interface with via VNC (Apple Remote Desktop). It is GigE on my network, and I don't see any type of performance issues so far with this configuration....either with Catalina or Monterey. Monterey is the latest, so I wanted to see how it performs on a 10 year old Core i7 MBP. Honestly, if there was a way to get Metal GPU support somehow on this laptop, I don't see ANY reason not to run Monterey over prior macOS. To me the differentiating factor is exactly that, and if I decide to go back to Catalina or Mojave, it will be due to GPU/Metal considerations/performance. That being said, so far I can live with what I'm seeing with Monterey....but I still need to run the MPB through more usage to be sure. As I mentioned, my main Macbook Pro is now a 16in Intel version w/32GB RAM and 2TB SSD....so the MBP 8,2 is just used for testing....until I think of another use case for it. (Interestingly, I've turned my old 2012 Mac Mini into a VMWare ESXI box running pfSense as a VM (and also a Mojave VM). I use it for my main production network Router now. If I think of something similar for the MBP 2011 (8,2), I may do similar....come to think of it, it might be interesting to see how ESXI runs on it....)

Hello Finny,
First, Happy holidays!. Quickly, you mention the M1 Chip issue with Windows. Not having a M1 chip-type machine I can't say but Parallels Desktop 17 enables Windows 8-11 to launch in VM.

 

[K two]

Kudos to you for the awesome work, seriously! But man, that seems like a LOT of work to turn a $50 Mac Mini into a $60 Mac Mini.

A $50 MacMini that can complete many of the tasks as well as newer Minis which cost $$10X or more.

 

[trifero]

A $50 MacMini that can complete many of the tasks as well as newer Minis which cost $$10X or more.

A very high percentage of users would have more than enough with that Mac Mini. it´s funny to see people with macs never getting more of 10% of their power.

 

[TAPKAE]

A reminder _
Within the scriptures according to dortania - Note 2: Currently OpenCore Legacy Patcher officially supports patching to run macOS 11, Big Sur installs. For older OSes, OpenCore may function however support is currently not provided from Dortania.

• For macOS Mojave and Catalina support, we recommend the use of dosdude1's patchers.
• macOS Monterey usage is provided however support is limited, currently recommended for users to run Big Sur for best compatibility.

This is interesting. I learned of Dosdude's patchers before ever hearing about OC or OCLP. I have an iMac with a replaced GPU and beside High Sierra, I had Catalina installed using the 'dude patcher and going well enough for many months (but with some of the compromises--no boot screen/brightness control, etc.) before OCLP came to my attention in September.

Getting into Big Sur was a delight, and OCLP addressed the things lacking from the Dosdude/Catalina install. The whole machine is kind of a sandbox for me to mess with such stuff, so having three OSes on it was just out of curiosity. Even in the Catalina side of things during the OCLP era, I think the brightness and boot screen issues were solved. But I wondered what, if anything, was in any way a mismatch or if there was any conflicting settings between the two patchers on that one OS volume.

(For more fun, I added a volume and installed Mojave, but it was a CCC of an existing volume on another computer. It's done pretty well for the time I've had it on the iMac--better than when I tried Dosdude's Mojave early in bringing the computer back from the grave with the GPU fix.)

All four of those resided on different APFS volumes on the same SSD.

Yesterday, I tried making a Catalina bootable installer with Dosdude's method. I created another (fifth) volume called Cat2 and it installed fine (though I had to wait out the period after installing because it gave me an expressionless black screen), but somehow it seems to have messed with the OCLP settings, and when I logged into Cat2, the other four OS volumes all seem to have vanished. 'Okay, this is my sandbox where I try stuff, so maybe I'll just be in for some rebuilding work...' But no, the Cat2 thing did NOT delete the others. I booted into the others just fine and rebuilt OCLP, and decided maybe I'd just blast both Catalina volumes. Last reboot though had some ghost of Cat2 in the OC boot menu. Sandwiched between the newer Big Sur that works without question and the stable High Sierra, Catalina is the most redundant. Not worth the fuss. I just deleted two Catalina volumes.

So... is there a way to install Catalina into an existing OCLP environment? (Remember, my working Catalina was there before OCLP got to the scene.) No big loss if it can't be done. (Same question for Mojave.) Does it take using a completely separate drive or partition to delineate those two particular OSes if it works at all?

In each of my volumes, Disk Utility does not see this Cat2 thing anymore. Terminal also doesn't name it but maybe I don't know what it's presenting well enough in the list. The two boot screens were captured within minutes. There really is no Cat2 around anywhere. How can I get rid of it, presumably in the OC patcher controls? At boot time, of course I get the prohibited symbol if I select it.

 

[K two]

This is interesting. I learned of Dosdude's patchers before ever hearing about OC or OCLP. I have an iMac with a replaced GPU and beside High Sierra, I had Catalina installed using the 'dude patcher and going well enough for many months (but with some of the compromises--no boot screen/brightness control, etc.) before OCLP came to my attention in September.

Getting into Big Sur was a delight, and OCLP addressed the things lacking from the Dosdude/Catalina install. The whole machine is kind of a sandbox for me to mess with such stuff, so having three OSes on it was just out of curiosity. Even in the Catalina side of things during the OCLP era, I think the brightness and boot screen issues were solved. But I wondered what, if anything, was in any way a mismatch or if there was any conflicting settings between the two patchers on that one OS volume.

(For more fun, I added a volume and installed Mojave, but it was a CCC of an existing volume on another computer. It's done pretty well for the time I've had it on the iMac--better than when I tried Dosdude's Mojave early in bringing the computer back from the grave with the GPU fix.)

All four of those resided on different APFS volumes on the same SSD.

Yesterday, I tried making a Catalina bootable installer with Dosdude's method. I created another (fifth) volume called Cat2 and it installed fine (though I had to wait out the period after installing because it gave me an expressionless black screen), but somehow it seems to have messed with the OCLP settings, and when I logged into Cat2, the other four OS volumes all seem to have vanished. 'Okay, this is my sandbox where I try stuff, so maybe I'll just be in for some rebuilding work...' But no, the Cat2 thing did NOT delete the others. I booted into the others just fine and rebuilt OCLP, and decided maybe I'd just blast both Catalina volumes. Last reboot though had some ghost of Cat2 in the OC boot menu. Sandwiched between the newer Big Sur that works without question and the stable High Sierra, Catalina is the most redundant. Not worth the fuss. I just deleted two Catalina volumes.

So... is there a way to install Catalina into an existing OCLP environment? (Remember, my working Catalina was there before OCLP got to the scene.) No big loss if it can't be done. (Same question for Mojave.) Does it take using a completely separate drive or partition to delineate those two particular OSes if it works at all?

In each of my volumes, Disk Utility does not see this Cat2 thing anymore. Terminal also doesn't name it but maybe I don't know what it's presenting well enough in the list. The two boot screens were captured within minutes. There really is no Cat2 around anywhere. How can I get rid of it, presumably in the OC patcher controls? At boot time, of course I get the prohibited symbol if I select it.

Is the replacement GPU Metal-worthy? ?

 

[TAPKAE]

Is the replacement GPU Metal-worthy? ?

Of course. I've been running Catalina and Mojave and Big Sur in various combinations and on the same drive for over a year now.

What I don't understand is how the attempt to install Catalina into an OCLP environment isn't working. It seems to be some kind of conflict between the two types of patchers. Can it be done so that a non-Dosdude (unpatched) Catalina can be installed into an existing OCLP environment in the same way as Big Sur was, where it seems that OCLP tailors an incoming "normal/default" installation (every supported machine would receive) to the needs of the unsupported machine?

 

[Fish1313]

Hi dear holy community, #1 of all i am very grateful for all the golden info spreaded troughout this thread!
I have had pushed a brocken MBP8,1 back to live and OCLP'ed it into the latest Catalina. All works fine but the

Brightness
Sleep (close lid / manually sleep / hibernatemode 25 / 3 ... etc)

Can someone please push me in the right direction?!
Thanx in advanced

Fish

 

[joevt]

So... is there a way to install Catalina into an existing OCLP environment? (Remember, my working Catalina was there before OCLP got to the scene.) No big loss if it can't be done. (Same question for Mojave.) Does it take using a completely separate drive or partition to delineate those two particular OSes if it works at all?

To install Catalina without OCLP, just don't boot with OpenCore (hold option key at boot before OpenCore appears). The dosdude patcher will do stuff to the EFI folder only if you have the APFS patch enabled (if you don't have APFS in firmware). I think your Mac has APFS in firmware otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the Big Sur and Catalina in the Apple Startup Manager.

You should know what's in your EFI partitions before doing an install so you can tell what was changed after the install.

To switch back from dosdude Catalina to OCLP, hold option key at boot, in the Apple Startup Manager: select the EFI Boot that contains OpenCore, hold the control key and press enter to bless it and start it. Then in Open Core, select Bit Sur or Monterey, hold the control key to bless it and start it.
You only have to do the blessing once. Or when you want to change the default.
To go back to Catalina from OpenCore, hold option key at boot, in the Apple Startup Manager, select Catalina and press enter to start it - don't hold the control key if you want to keep OpenCore as the default.

 

[TAPKAE]

You should know what's in your EFI partitions before doing an install so you can tell what was changed after the install.

Is there a terminal method or something to dig deeper into why the otherwise dead-and-gone Cat2 still appears at the boot screen(s)? As you see, nothing gives it away in the diskutil list results.