Guys why is graphics acceleration not possible in Big Sur for old Macs? I am very experienced developer so I can code the necessary patches if that's all it takes
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macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread
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I'm far from an expert on the topic of graphics but here's what I understand at this point... It has to do with the deprecation of OpenGL under Big Sur. So only Metal capable graphics cards have been able to achieve full acceleration. If I'm not mistaken, these cards require "OpenGL 4.x" compatibility, and under previous patchers (ie. Dosdude Catalina and Mojave), "OpenGL 3.0" could be patched to achieve acceleration on certain legacy cards... I could be mistaken but I believe this is the core of the issue
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https://discord.gg/qyvZfvE3Pz
Merry Xmas !
I spend some time today in updating our iMac Mid 2011, few days ago I installed a new GPU: K1100M With Nick's firmware, all was running well in stock High-Sierra.
I used @Ausdauersportler big-sur-micropatcher using 11.1 installation media and followed the described procedure.
When installation of big-sur starts it went for about 75% and the I had a black screen, unsure if the iMac was till doing something. So after 15 minutes i did hard power-off and started using option key.
This booted the installer just fine, but no network as expected. So I did a proper shutdown, booted from USB and ran patch-kexts.sh.
Reboot again and now installer had network access, so I selected to restore a time-machine backup, this started and after a few minutes, again black screen... Lights on my network switch are still blinking, so I think restore is still busy (it mentioned 3 hours).
But due to the black-screen, I have no control...
What should I do ? I'm unsure if the initial installation was OK, as I had to do a force power-off, and now I will have to do this again...
I spend some time today in updating our iMac Mid 2011, few days ago I installed a new GPU: K1100M With Nick's firmware, all was running well in stock High-Sierra.
I used @Ausdauersportler big-sur-micropatcher using 11.1 installation media and followed the described procedure.
When installation of big-sur starts it went for about 75% and the I had a black screen, unsure if the iMac was till doing something. So after 15 minutes i did hard power-off and started using option key.
This booted the installer just fine, but no network as expected. So I did a proper shutdown, booted from USB and ran patch-kexts.sh.
Reboot again and now installer had network access, so I selected to restore a time-machine backup, this started and after a few minutes, again black screen... Lights on my network switch are still blinking, so I think restore is still busy (it mentioned 3 hours).
But due to the black-screen, I have no control...
What should I do ? I'm unsure if the initial installation was OK, as I had to do a force power-off, and now I will have to do this again...
First please add a full signature to your account including your hardware and software setting.
Do you have an OpenCore setup installed on SD Card (Catalina Loader) in use? If not get it ready. You should not get a black screen on boot if using this. Read the docs on the Catalina Loader post on the GPU thread (first link in my signature).
Make the Catalina Loader your primary start object (by holding control while selecting the SD card on the boot screen) and after booting into OC aka Catalina Loader select the Big Sur Installer USB and wait patiently for all the reboots.
The time the installation takes depends entirely on the disc you chose to install: SSD or HDD or even slower external USB2 disk.
BTW:
Doing a hard reset in the middle of something is not a really fitting way to get a complete installation.
There is a Oc special config made only for installations.
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I followed the instructions for creating the boot media a couple of times (once with the -d switch for install-setvars.sh and once with no switch). I restarted and booted into EFI Boot, and as expected, my MB Pro shut down in about a second. I restarted and booted the install media. It fails with the "your system restarted because of a problem" message. I hit a key to continue, and it boots into my regular Catalina installation. Should I ever get through the installation, I plan on doing a clean install of Big Sur on another partition for eval purposes, not for daily use. This is particularly frustrating because, as you can see from my signature, I have a mid 2012 MB Pro that will run Big Sur, and that Apple could have easily supported with Big Sur but chose not to.
Any ideas on what the problem is?
Steve
Any ideas on what the problem is?
Steve
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Has anybody had problems with playing movies in the tv app? I’ve had big sur on my Mac Pro 5,1 off and on,on a seperste ssd but daren’t make the jump to big sur as my primary OS because I have a million movies and they won’t play in big sur. not a problem in mojave or Catalina.
my set up is cMP 5,1. 96gb ram. 1tb nvme 4tb high point raid. Radeon rx480 8gb (for boot screen) and radeon VII
any suggestions on how to get my movies to play in big sur?
my set up is cMP 5,1. 96gb ram. 1tb nvme 4tb high point raid. Radeon rx480 8gb (for boot screen) and radeon VII
any suggestions on how to get my movies to play in big sur?
I cannot stress this enough, the Patched Sur app should never leave the DMG unless Patched Sur is the one doing it. You run it off the DMG like a .pkg file.
Many thanks for your reply and all the great work, I wasn't aware I would also need the OpenCore SD-card when using the patcher.
I used the config.plist for the Big Sur Installer and the installation itself went perfect without any black screens
.But it blackscreened now during the restore of the Backup (Time machine).
Anything else to do ? Should I have allready swapper to the config.plist for Nvidia Big Sur (now it is the installer version) ?
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Possibly switching back to the normal Nvidia Big Sur config? Installation is over. I have no more K610M/K1100M/K2100M to test. You are on your own. I never ran time machine restore on Big Sur.Many thanks for your reply and all the great work, I wasn't aware I would also need the OpenCore SD-card when using the patcher.
I used the config.plist for the Big Sur Installer and the installation itself went perfect without any black screens
But it blackscreened now during the restore of the Backup (Time machine).
Anything else to do ?
Restoring data from time machine may bring back a lot of nasty 32bit things...never bring back programs installed on High Sierra or before.
I have been using Big Sur on my 2013 iMac for a few weeks, but I have to roll back to Catalina for a few reasons. I'm sure there are instructions here, but what is the easiest way to roll back without having to reload all my apps and files? Also, I don't know if the Micropatcher that I used disabled any system protections as I don't fully understand how it works/what it does, but will rolling back to Catalina re-enable everything that the Micropatcher disabled? Thank you for your help.
Obrigado pela sua informação. Também tenho um iMac de 27 polegadas do final de 2013 com Big Sur 11.0.1 que funciona muito bem, parecendo um novo Mac com CPU M1 ...
I have a final 2013!!!! performance ?? do you like?
To disable all micro patcher mods reset the PRAM on the reboot when starting the Catalina installation.
There is no downgrade with Apple macOS versions unless you dig really deep into it. Make a second backup from Big Sur but keep you old Catalina made time machine backup.
Start internet recovery or get a Catalina installer and run it, delete the existing Big Sur APFS container, if it takes the whole disk re create the disk using APFS and install Catalina from the scratch....
DRM streaming isn't supported in Big Sur for cMP 5,1 yet.
If you want to play movies in TV apps, you can fully download the movie, then play it. As long as not "streaming", it will work.
Anyway, why keep the RX480 for boot screen? Radeon VII can show boot screen via OpenCore
OBJECTIVES:
Assess the risk of upgrading my 2012 cheesegrater from Catalina to Big Sur.
Restore ability to boot to the startup disk manager
Restore ability to boot to recovery partition.
SITUATION
I am incredibly grateful for the fantastic support I got over a period of many months as I patched my 2012 cheesegrater to run Catalina. I used dosdude's patcher.
REASON UPGRADE TO BIG SUR IS DESIRABLE
Every now and then, I need xCode for something. My perception is xCode will not upgrade to most recent version unless the system is running the latest update of macOS.
REASON FOR HESITATION ON UPGRADE TO BIG SUR
I have held off pulling the trigger on updating to Big Sur, because I read somewhere that a possible result is irreversible damage to the UEFI, bricking the box. Bricking this box is not life and death for me, but close enough.
KNOWN ISSUES ON MY CHEESEGRATER
I cannot boot to the startup disk selector or the recovery partition. I can pick a startup disk from system preferences -> startup disk. I had huge scare where I picked a startup disk that booted into high sierra, but I could not remember the login password. I was saved by a hard drive with a partition I could boot into, by removing all the other hard drives.
Any recommendations or comments you might have would be appreciated immensely.
Thank you.
Assess the risk of upgrading my 2012 cheesegrater from Catalina to Big Sur.
Restore ability to boot to the startup disk manager
Restore ability to boot to recovery partition.
SITUATION
I am incredibly grateful for the fantastic support I got over a period of many months as I patched my 2012 cheesegrater to run Catalina. I used dosdude's patcher.
REASON UPGRADE TO BIG SUR IS DESIRABLE
Every now and then, I need xCode for something. My perception is xCode will not upgrade to most recent version unless the system is running the latest update of macOS.
REASON FOR HESITATION ON UPGRADE TO BIG SUR
I have held off pulling the trigger on updating to Big Sur, because I read somewhere that a possible result is irreversible damage to the UEFI, bricking the box. Bricking this box is not life and death for me, but close enough.
KNOWN ISSUES ON MY CHEESEGRATER
I cannot boot to the startup disk selector or the recovery partition. I can pick a startup disk from system preferences -> startup disk. I had huge scare where I picked a startup disk that booted into high sierra, but I could not remember the login password. I was saved by a hard drive with a partition I could boot into, by removing all the other hard drives.
Any recommendations or comments you might have would be appreciated immensely.
Thank you.
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You should flash your graphic card, otherwise, it won't give you the boot screen, and the boot manager won't work (not even in blind).
You cannot boot to recovery partition for Dosdude Catalina. The recovery partition isn't patched, therefore, your cMP is not supported, and can't boot to it. This is the expected behaviour.
If you need to run multiple macOS (including Catalina or Big Sur), I highly suggest you flash your graphic card. Then install OpenCore to gain Catalina / Big Sur support. So that you can boot to their associated recovery partition.
Ok, thank you for the tip. True that I have not been seeing the gray apple boot screen when starting up Catalina. I did not know that is significant. By flashing the graphics card, and enabling the boot screen, will I get access to the startup disk as part of that?
Thank you for explaining.
This I do not understand. I do not especially need to run multiple macOS. However, I have been doing upgrades of major releases, such as High Sierra to Mohave, as new installations on new partitions. I did that as protection, so I could boot to my known working version if something went wrong with the upgrade. That seemed the most sure-fire way to me. I changed that when installing Catalina, which went in as an upgrade to the mohave partition I had been running every day.
I had been depending on the ability boot into the startup manager, now I understand I lost that when I installed Catalina with the patch.
Once I flash the graphics card, I think I will be ready to install Big Sur. Do you know anything about the risk of bricking the machine in that process? Unless I learn it is a bad idea, my plan is to install Big Sur as a new installation on a new partition. I would be really really bummed if doing that bricked my box, now allowing a boot into the Catalna I have been running for that last 18 months (going back into Catalina beta.)
Yes, that's one of the main usage for flashing the graphic card.
If you do that via my OpenCore 0.6.4 package for cMP 5,1, should be very safe. Many users use that to install Big Sur already.
Activate AMD hardware acceleration
I created a new "easy to install package" as per many requested (based on the official OpenCore). [The attached package updated to 1.0.0] For those who only need HWAccel, post #594 has everything you need. This new package mainly offer HWAccel + boot screen. Also, this package should work in...
forums.macrumors.com
N.B. For your graphic card, you should flash it to gain the boot screen. My OC package aim at providing boot picker for newer AMD graphic cards on cMP.
I wish hardware acceleration would be this easy for pre-2012 MacsYes, that's one of the main usage for flashing the graphic card.
If you do that via my OpenCore 0.6.4 package for cMP 5,1, should be very safe. Many users use that to install Big Sur already.
Activate AMD hardware acceleration
I created a new "easy to install package" as per many requested (based on the official OpenCore). [The attached package updated to 1.0.0] For those who only need HWAccel, post #594 has everything you need. This new package mainly offer HWAccel + boot screen. Also, this package should work in...
N.B. For your graphic card, you should flash it to gain the boot screen. My OC package aim at providing boot picker for newer AMD graphic cards on cMP.
It is for the iMac Late 2009, Mid 2010 and Mid 2011 - you can install the very same AMD RX460/560/480/580 mobile GPUs...using a pretty identical OpenCore setup.I wish hardware acceleration would be this easy for pre-2012 Macs