Hello RogueB,
thank you for the report. Useful for me as our machines are very similar (maybe not completely, since I have installed an APFS-related firmware change once provided by dosdude1).
I have four remarks:
I need the hub-connected external keyboard and mouse since longer (since Ventura actually) when booting a USB installer. When doing an OTA update of MacOS, I need it only later when the login screen first appears, probably because no input is required before that.
I remember your report from Monterey OTA upgrade. I think I had something similar with Sonoma. It seems installation from USB can do less harm than OTA.
However recovery was easier in my case. If it is mainly the EFI which is bad, could you generate a new one (maybe on a separate USB medium) on a different machine selecting the proper target machine in OCLP settings? Worth a try, though in my case more things were corrupted. But it happened only once, the other OTA updates went well.
Indeed as davidlv says, 14.1b3 is available in OCLP, and also via gibMacOS. I'll make a USB installer from it as an up-to-date fallback point.
Hello hvds,
Thank you for feedback, I appreciate the background information for the MacBook Pro 5,2.
You are correct that I do not have the dosdude1's APFS firmware patch applied to my current logic board.
I did apply the firmware patch when Catalina came out, having looked at appropriate chip for the data necessary to choose correct firmware variant. It worked perfectly, but some time thereafter the Nvidia GPU failed due to solder
weakness (a common problem with that GPU chip). I replaced logic board (relatively cheaply via eBay purchase), and "resurrected" the MBP 5,2. However, given the amount of labor I had to go through to replace logic board twice, due to refurbishing problems, I did not want to risk bricking the machine should wrong firmware patch be applied.
It may have been much easier if the patch was applied and APFS formatted drives were accessible via Catalina's finder.
I do apply most of the updates OTA, and that may have been the reason I only needed the external USB hub for login procedure(?) When I did try to boot through the USB thumb drive, the external hub solution was required to reach recovery partition.
Suggestion to create an EFI on another machine while targeting MBP 5,2 is a really good one, and I actually did that using Samsung Shield T7 USB drive, but I couldn't boot via said drive. There was also no bootable drive visible within the internal SSD listings. The last option was to reinstall Catalina via existing USB Thumb Drive, and then use that OS to replace OCLP EFI, and follow with patching. That procedure worked rather well for second time (similar experience in Monterey) and I recovered all drives and data.
For Sonoma beta3 update I used OCLP to download the beta3 and then create USB installer (thanks for the tip). When I booted into the USB installer drive, and then recovery partition, I could not find the newly created Sonoma volume on the internal SSD listing; Ventura, Monterey and Catalina volumes were made available as targets. To rectify the problem I booted into Ventura volume, where OCLP extracted the Sonoma Beta3 installer, and "double clicked" on the icon. Installer launched and everything proceeded as if the OS was on Sonoma compatible machine. Post install I applied patches, and had full functionality available (within known hardware constrictions). Photos app. does crash.
Finally, I installed Sonoma RC1 OTA on the MBP 5,2; there were no apparent problems, and patching process went well. Photos app. still crashes. I did note that VTDecoderXPCService was active, significantly loading the CPU, and triggering fans. Based on Activity Monitor record and logs it appeared to be related to the Sonoma's wallpaper motion. I changed wallpaper to Big Sur (dynamic) and both, VTDecoderXPCService and high CPU loads stopped.
The machine is mainly a Test Bed, but it is regularly, if occasionally, used for productive endeavors.
An OTA update to Sonoma RC1 on the iMac 13,2 went without incidents.
Hope this may be of help.
