macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[Ausdauersportler]

I think the amount of patchers on the first post is starting to get really overwhelming and redundant...
Can I use the iMac micro-patcher on my mid-2012 MBP and will it support OTA updates?

Okay,
- we have two GUI of the micropatcher: Patched Sur (Catalina, only) and MicropatcherAutomator (Sierra and later)
- we have two micropatcher versions just because @Barry K. Nathan stopped for personal reasons his development and promised to come back in January. There is still hope.
- we have the famous work of @jackluke, which is hidden somewhere in any of the solutions listed before
- we have finally the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

My advice would be that owners of 2012-2013 Macs should try OLP because most of these machines do not need any patching at all and so no injection of extensions. They would use OLP primarily to cloak under the hood of a still supported Mac model when asking Apples servers for installation and upgrades.

 

[LavaTech]

Hi guys

I'm reading through this thread...but is it worth it to upgrade a mid-2009 13" MBP to Big Sur? I read it takes 23 seconds just to minimize a window - is that right?

Thanks

No, I tried my mac pro 5,1 with the dual xeon e5620 (8 cores) and it took like 10 seconds to minimize. While it was (sorta) usable, i suggest buying one of these machines with the dual e5690 westmere processors and a rx series card. Those will run Big sur like a charm.

-LavaTech

 

[QueenVengeance]

Okay,
- we have two GUI of the micropatcher: Patched Sur (Catalina, only) and MicropatcherAutomator (Sierra and later)
- we have two micropatcher versions just because @Barry K. Nathan stopped for personal reasons his development and promised to come back in January. There is still hope.
- we have the famous work of @jackluke, which is hidden somewhere in any of the solutions listed before
- we have finally the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

My guess would be that owners of 2012-2012 Macs should try OLP because most of these machines do not need any patching at all and so no injection of extensions. They would use OLP primarily to cloak under the hood of a still supported Mac model when asking Apples servers for installation and upgrades.

What is the famous work of jackluke?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

What is the famous work of jackluke?

Try the search button on top of the page and look up posts of user @jackluke an limit results to this thread! Otherwise you can be flooded.

BTW:
Do you know by any chance something about the famous work of Sergey Brin?

 

[Tockman]

BTW:
Do you know by any chance something about the famous work of Sergey Brin?

🤝

 

[QueenVengeance]

BTW:
Do you know by any chance something about the famous work of Sergey Brin?

👍

 

[QueenVengeance]

Try the search button on top of the page and look up posts of user @jackluke an dlimit results to this thread! Otherwise you can be flooded.

BTW:
Do you know by any chance something about the famous work of Sergey Brin?

ok. I'll take a look. Is he on GitHub?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

ok. I'll take a look. Is he on GitHub?

Take a look at the first post of this thread

 

[air.man]

Take a look at the first post of this thread

Unfortunately @jackluke is out of the game since 11.01. I mean his patches for non-APFS Macs don't work with 11.1.

 

[LavaTech]

Hello again, would anyone know if the gtx 1050 oc from gigabyte is metal supported? Im receiving one for free and Id like to run big sur if I can.

 

[QueenVengeance]

Take a look at the first post of this thread

Oops sorry!@!!!

 

[Krutav]

Just an update on Radeon 6x support. Final drivers are being released tomorrow......

It has been over a month since this message was posted. I am using a MacBook Pro 2011 15 inch 8,2 which has a Radeon HD6490M. I am starting to doubt if this driver exists, and if it does, can it compare to the Intel HD3000 patch for Catalina. I did some digging and it seems like it might as well be possible to make a driver for the AMD HD 5x/6x cards by remaking these AMD drivers similar to how they did with the Intel HD3000 for Mojave and Catalina. While this will probably not work on Big Sur because of how heavily reliant on Metal it is, this would be a usable solution for Mojave and Catalina. I am not skilled in the development of drivers so I don't know how to do this but if anyone here knows, please share it with all!

 

[vinaypundith]

Hello again, would anyone know if the gtx 1050 oc from gigabyte is metal supported? Im receiving one for free and Id like to run big sur if I can.

Ummm, no. The NVidia GTX 10xx series cards aren't properly driver supported in anything newer than High Sierra.

 

[vinaypundith]

No, I tried my mac pro 5,1 with the dual xeon e5620 (8 cores) and it took like 10 seconds to minimize. While it was (sorta) usable, i suggest buying one of these machines with the dual e5690 westmere processors and a rx series card. Those will run Big sur like a charm.

-LavaTech

x5690s are super expensive, compared with the similar speed x5675 or x5670. Even your 8 core total dual e5620 should be plenty fast enough - Big Sur runs well even on a dual core i5. The difference in speed comes almost entirely from the graphics card. Also I ran Big Sur on a Mac Pro 3,1 with dual quad core (8 core total) xeon x5482 3.2ghz processors and a GTX 680, and it runs super fast (although audio and the IDE controller don't work on that machine yet).

 

[vinaypundith]

I don’t mind if it’s patched or if I need to switch to open core. The 760 is upwards of 200$ wich is more then what I have right now. Is there any cheaper ones? I saw someone say that a gt 710 is cheap and worked but I don’t think I can throw it in with my gt 120 and get Big Sur running better. Any idea if my 5670 works along with my gt 120 in Mac OS?

- GT 710 is quite a weak card. Not recommended for a Mac Pro class workstation. Might be supported - I have no idea.
- 5670 ain't gonna help in Big Sur. It's just as unsupported as the gt 120.
- If you're pressed for budget, you can get a Radeon HD 7000 series AMD card for under $100. 7770/7850/7870/7950/7970 (all but the 7970 can probably be had for sub $100). I think NVidia GTX 670 or 680 cards are still a bit better, and are still sub $100 (in the US - where are you?)
- Again not sure which country you're in, but in the US $200 for a 760 is a total ripoff. A 780 should be no more than $120, and a 770 or 760 less than $100.

 

[hvds]

Unfortunately @jackluke is out of the game since 11.01. I mean his patches for non-APFS Macs don't work with 11.1.

jackluke's procedure worked well on my MBP5,2 with the last full installer (11.1 release, 20C69). Posts #7,069 , #7,948 .
Using BigSurBaseSystemFix which works for several 11.x versions by putting the desired SharedSupport.dmg into a USB installer. See post 1 option 3.
But it needs a full installer, to get hold of SharedSupport.dmg. So 11.1. release may be the end of the line unless one wants to use instead OC legacy patcher or similar.
No graphics acceleration of course on machines with such non-Metal GPUs.

 

[air.man]

jackluke's procedure worked well on my MBP5,2 with the last full installer (11.1 release, 20C69). Posts #7,069 , #7,948 .
Using BigSurBaseSystemFix which works for several 11.x versions by putting the desired SharedSupport.dmg into a USB installer. See post 1 option 3.
But it needs a full installer, to get hold of SharedSupport.dmg. So 11.1. release may be the end of the line unless one wants to use instead OC legacy patcher or similar.
No graphics acceleration of course on machines with such non-Metal GPUs.

Well, you're right about the BigSurBaseSystemFix.dmg. But I mentioned the the 2 command files specific for non-APFS machine. These command files failed with 11.1 (boot freeze) and OC legacy patcher fails too with my MB5,1 (different freeze, but same result). I didn't realise if the BigSurBaseSystemFix work for non-APFS machine. I'll try, crossing finger for 11.2 full installer coming. Thanks.

 

[hvds]

Well, you're right about the BigSurBaseSystemFix.dmg. But I mentioned the the 2 command files specific for non-APFS machine. These command files failed with 11.1 (boot freeze) and OC legacy patcher fails too with my MB5,1 (different freeze, but same result). I didn't realise if the BigSurBaseSystemFix work for non-APFS machine. I'll try, crossing finger for 11.2 full installer coming. Thanks.

Yes, let's hope for a next full installer.
And you are right, I remember vaguely that BigSur BaseSystem legacy usb fix/fix2.command stopped working from 11.1. betas on. Probably jackluke thus invented the new scheme.

 

[Alain13]

Okay,
- we have two GUI of the micropatcher: Patched Sur (Catalina, only) and MicropatcherAutomator (Sierra and later)
- we have two micropatcher versions just because @Barry K. Nathan stopped for personal reasons his development and promised to come back in January. There is still hope.
- we have the famous work of @jackluke, which is hidden somewhere in any of the solutions listed before
- we have finally the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

My advice would be that owners of 2012-2013 Macs should try OLP because most of these machines do not need any patching at all and so no injection of extensions. They would use OLP primarily to cloak under the hood of a still supported Mac model when asking Apples servers for installation and upgrades.

Hi,

iMac 13,2 (late 2012) here and the last time I tried OLP (v0.0.6) it bricked my machine and had to bring it to a shop to have it repaired for a lot of money (On the other hand they replaced the Fusion drive for a full SSD rather cheapilly). So you can imagine I'm not very keen to try OLP again, is this bricking now fully addressed?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi,

iMac 13,2 (late 2012) here and the last time I tried OLP (v0.0.6) it bricked my machine and had to bring it to a shop to have it repaired for a lot of money (On the other hand they replaced the Fusion drive for a full SSD rather cheapilly). So you can imagine I'm not very keen to try OLP again, is this bricking now fully addressed?

Secure in our live is only the end!

If you have followed my posts regarding this topic you would know that I always wrote “backup your firmware in advance” and be sure to know the tools to flash it back.

From mid December until now I did about 20such OTA updates on iMac 2009-2011 using OPL setups enhanced by the firmware trick and my own handmade configs (using 0.6.5 and 0.6.6).

From this limited perspective I would say it works and on the other hand I would admit the whole OLP should have been published some days ago with 0.6.6 - not back last year.

Please check the OPL GitHub page and discussion there yourself. Creating a working config including valid serial numbers is not simple - so I would not advice to create it yourself unless you read the full docs of the OpenCore....

Unfortunately my iMacs unlike yours need patches on disk - injection does not fully work.

 

[Alain13]

Secure in our live is only the end!

If you have followed my posts regarding this topic you would know that I always wrote “backup your firmware in advance” and be sure to know the tools to flash it back.

From mid December until now I did about 20such OTA updates on iMac 2009-2011 using OPL setups enhanced by the firmware trick and my own handmade configs (using 0.6.5 and 0.6.6).

From this limited perspective I would say it works and on the other hand I would admit the whole OLP should have been published some days ago with 0.6.6 - not back last year.

Please check the OPL GitHub page and discussion there yourself. Creating a working config including valid serial numbers is not simple - so I would not advice to create it yourself unless you read the full docs of the OpenCore....

Unfortunately my iMacs unlike yours need patches on disk - injection does not fully work.

Well backing up the firmware was of no use for me, because as when turning it on, there was just a black screen. No beep no nothing. So they had to physically open the machine and replace/reprogram the EFI ROM (macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread | MacRumors Forums). So you can imagine I'm holding off a little longer. Waiting for the full installer and continue with Micropatcher is the safer (feeling) option for me.

Thanks for continuing Micropatcher BTW. Is your fork only for older machines or also suited for my iMac?

 

[Bmju]

iMac 13,2 (late 2012) here and the last time I tried OLP (v0.0.6) it bricked my machine and had to bring it to a shop to have it repaired for a lot of money (On the other hand they replaced the Fusion drive for a full SSD rather cheaply). So you can imagine I'm not very keen to try OLP again, is this bricking now fully addressed?

There is a new setting MaxBIOSVersion in OC 0.6.6. If this exists and is set to true in your active /EFI/OC/config.plist file, and if your OC version is 0.6.6 or higher, then this should prevent the black screen issue. (As of this post OC 0.6.6 is not yet at release status, but it is already being used in Legacy Patcher because of this important fix; i.e. in the current version of Legacy Patcher you will get that setting.)

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Well backing up the firmware was of no use for me, because as when turning it on, there was just a black screen. No beep no nothing. So they had to physically open the machine and replace/reprogram the EFI ROM (macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread | MacRumors Forums). So you can imagine I'm holding off a little longer. Waiting for the full installer and continue with Micropatcher is the safer (feeling) option for me.

Thanks for continuing Micropatcher BTW. Is your fork only for older machines or also suited for my iMac?

You are welcome! As of now I have only added features. Since the most 2012/13 Macs do not need patching at all this work is of no use then. The USB patcher itself is only used to make the installer booting your Mac and it gracefully quits unless it detects an older WiFi card. A notable exception might be Night Shift - I have commented before on this.

Of course a backup of the firmware is useful. And of course I would have to open even my iMac and use a CH341A clip programmer to flash the firmware back - this is the tool I was talking about.

 

[Bmju]

Hi I was discussing OLP/OC off-thread with @BenSova , and he was pointing out that apparently there can be iCloud issues with OC - i.e. if you use your own, real, valid machine serial number, but are running inside OC with a faked hardware id then this can eventually cause iCloud account issues.

Anyone got any more info or links about this? (I saw that @naylom11 already posted mentioning it as a problem.)

I'm still using OC to 'cloak' my machine, just to get updates (as @Ausdauersportler suggests) and then booting unpatched (boot-args="-no_compat_check" only required) the rest of the time. So, as expected, I'm not seeing this problem (since I'm not mainly running with that problem configuration) - but it would be good to understand if it really would be problematic to boot via OC with faked hardware info all the time, for the reason I'm asking about.

If it was a problem, but OC could otherwise inject all the fixes a given machine needs, then it sounds like it might be an idea to have TWO OC boot disks: one for fetching updates, with faked hardware info; and one for day-to-day use without faked hardware info. That's not necessary on machines which need no day-to-day patches or injection (i.e. ones where you can boot and run Big Sur fine with no OC for day-to-day use, like I can on my slightly upgraded MBP), but then from the above-mentioned post and another recent post by @Ausdauersportler I'm not sure whether there are any/many machines where such a dual-OC setup would be needed and able to do the job?

 

[Rob1n]

Hi!
I just installed Big Sur on my mac pro 2008 using starplayrx's bigmac patcher.
Everything went smoothly during the installation and everything work well.
Except when I go into settings and then software update, its stuck at "checking for updates" and won't move past that.
Is this just because there are no updates available? (I have 11.1 installed, so its the latest version)
Or is it disabled with the patch maybe? It's not a real problem for me but I do want to be able to download updates in the future, can I still do that and re-patch the system afterwards?