macOS High Sierra (10.13) Unsupported Macs Thread

[dosdude1]

Well, firstly, @dosdude1 announced the APFS ROM Patcher on his twitter account about 18months ago. It's also here on his YT channel:

and also downloadable from his website here http://dosdude1.com/apps/APFS ROM Patcher.zip
and he also announced it in post 3564 in the High Sierra on unsupported macs thread (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2048478/post-26102912)

So no, you haven't seen anything from dosdude on the subject.

I don't have an "issue", thank you very much. I was considering installing an SSD and applying the APFS ROM patch - as has been discussed many times on this thread, but clearly you've never seen such discussions. I just find it strange that @dosdude1 hasn't mentioned the same specific warnings as "the guy", whose video I just happened to run across today. I'm not saying I don't believe the guy, but I'd actually prefer to hear it from @dosdude1 himself.

What Hrutkay says is true, in fact I told him this. I hadn't realized it was causing issues on the MCP79 machines until it was brought to my attention. You can still use it on nVidia MCP79-based machines, but there is about a 30% chance it will brick your machine, so please use with caution. It also takes an extremely long time on these systems for some reason (45+ minutes in some cases), so be patient if you do decide to use it. If a brick does occur, it can be restored only by using an external EEPROM programmer.

 

[mrploppy]

What Hrutkay says is true, in fact I told him this. I hadn't realized it was causing issues on the MCP79 machines until it was brought to my attention. You can still use it on nVidia MCP79-based machines, but there is about a 30% chance it will brick your machine, so please use with caution. It also takes an extremely long time on these systems for some reason (45+ minutes in some cases), so be patient if you do decide to use it. If a brick does occur, it can be restored only by using an external EEPROM programmer.

Thanks for that explanation. I'd hate to brick this machine. Although I do have a newer model also, this machine has been a real workhorse for me, and I'd like to keep it going as long as possible (sentimental old fool!), so I won't take the chance for now. I can always use the post-install apfs patch though if I want to install an SSD though, yes?

I've also been trying to follow the Mojave and Catalina threads. Given that I'm not going to risk patching the ROM, does that preclude me from ever installing Mojave or Catalina?

Thanks for the great work, BTW.

Edit: To answer my own question - I should have looked a little closer. I see from @dosdude1's website and YT, that I'd still be able to install Mojave or Catalina and boot using the apfs post-install patch.

 

[ScreenSavers]

Is there much reason to continue to patch High Sierra? I used to use it on tons of machines because it didn’t have the weird transparency problems Mojave and Catalina had. But now that that’s patched I haven’t used the HS patcher in a long time.

 

[Macschrauber]

- Nvidia GPUs on Mac Pro 3.1
- Laptops like the Air with 2GB Ram run better with HS
- Macs without metal gpus run better with HS

 

[ScreenSavers]

I’ve found non metal GPUs are great on Mojave and Catalina but that’s just me I guess. High Sierra still has a few months of support left I suppose.

 

[Dayo]

I'd still be able to install Mojave or Catalina and boot using the apfs post-install patch.

Yes, this works well. You just have to accept some scrolling text on boot.

I had it for a while on my recent move to Mojave until I stumbled upon the video and decided to run the ROM Patch (Intel Chipset but was still a scary experience pushing the button).

 

[mrploppy]

I'm ready to install a new SSD in my late 2008 MacBook Pro. Pretty sure I know the steps I'm going to take - backup current drive to an external using CCC, create HS patcher on external drive, install SSD and format as apfs, boot from external and clone backup back to SSD, run HS patcher and install apfs post-install patch.

The only thing I'm unsure of is SIP. At what point do I enable it and what drive should I be booted from when I do so? I don't know if there'll be a Recovery partition on my new SSD - that is a mystery to me so far. If there is, I'll boot from that, but if there's not I'm not sure what to do.

Last step is enable TRIM, I suppose.

Anyone confirm these are the correct steps and answer the SIP question?

Update: Confused about SIP. I understand it applies to the whole machine but can't be enabled/disabled when booted from the startup disk. I have no idea where the SIP setting is stored though. I'm not even sure whether replacing the drive requires re-disabling SIP. Regardless, I believe I can disable SIP from Terminal when booted from the HS Patcher - I can at least check the status from there. Correct?

 

[jorgk]

Just would like to thank you all and foremost DosDude1 in particular. Now running a Macbook 5,1 (MB5,1) with High Sierra 10.13.6 - and being pretty happy that this machine is still going (actually, for my wife mostly, so light web browsing and using the MS Office 2011 package).
Without the patcher, it would not have worked out. Many thanks!!!

The real reason to update from El Capitan was that some anti-virus package stopped to work on El Capitan and we have another supported machine for High Sierra (used professionally in a Windows PC IT environment that demands some anti-virus SW to run to be allowed to plug that MBP into the local ethernet), so we like to keep up the same system - anything higher (Mojave or Cataline) being out as they are reported to not support our aging Adobe CS5.5 package.

Although there were quite a number of suggestions in this lengthy thread, I could not get the 2019-06 security update to run through. As to System Report / Installations it's not there, however, the build number changed to the expected '17G9016'. No idea if that means whether most of it actually got installed, just not updated in the Installations list.

Hey, it is unbelievable that Apple leaves out to support those (still reasonable for the given purpose) running machines - it will be much better for our world if one can avoid producing new things/future-waste as long as possible.

MB5,1 (late-2008 unibody aluminium), 8 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, 256 GB SSD.

 

[mrploppy]

So, I finally got round to putting my new SSD in my MacBookPro5,1. It wasn't without incident, but I suspect that was my fault. My intention was not to do a clean install, but just to install the SSD and clone back to that drive. So, I did ...
1. Backed up (cloned) my HDD using CCC, to my external USB drive. This was my normal backup method anyway.
2. Built the installer using the patcher onto the external drive. I only really did this to be able to run the post-install patches - wasn't actually sure if apfs patch was the only one I needed to apply.
3. Put the new SSD in the laptop.
4. Initialised as APFS.
5. Cloned the backup back to the SSD using CCC.
6. Ran the post-installer to apply the apfs patch, as well as all the others recommended.
7. Booted, got the scrolly text thing followed by the prohibited symbol. Crap.

So, I tried a number of steps to try and work out what was wrong, including installing a bare HS to see if the SSD was faulty.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I believe my problem was related to the initialisation of the SSD. What finally worked was to Show All Devices in Disk Utility, and initialise from the topmost level. I daresay this has been covered somewhere in this thread. I'm not really sure what I did first time but it certainly didn't work. I think, after the clone onto the SSD, that I ended up with 2 containers. If I were doing this again, I'd be tempted to initialise the SSD as HFS+, and later convert to apfs.

Observations so far.

I had to re-activate my copy of Office 2011 because my existing key didn't work. What's more, I had to do it over the phone because the server was "temporarily" available. Seemed like a hell of a coincidence? Maybe it's permanently unavailable now.

Booting is as slow as it ever was but once booted it seems snappier.

I've always had the double boot (double chime) issue, and I now was getting a double chime and double scrolly thing going on. So, I followed the advice in a post way back to delete the Firmware.scap file from the /Volumes/EFI/EFI/APPLE/EXTENSIONS directory. What I see now is quite a long empty grey screen of what seems like about a minute (no Apple logo) before the boot process proceeds. I don't know if that's normal. Maybe @dosdude1 could advise.

That's all of note so far.

 

[mrploppy]

Well, the double boot thing is back. I get a chime, empty grey screen for 30secs, followed by scrolling text, followed by another chime, another grey screen, another scrolling text screen, followed by the apple logo. Normal from the on.

Other thing is, despite cloning my installation back from backup, I've lost all but a few iMessage conversations. BTW, I don't use Messages in iCloud because I haven't enabled two-factor authentication.

 

[Dgdoc]

OK - Just tried to transfer my files from a patched Macbook Pro to a new machine using Migration Assistant.
Migration Assistant got about 70% of the way through and then aborted due to transferring some of the patched files.

1. What's the best way to transfer data from a patched machine to a new Macbook Pro?
2. Will Time Machine do a better job transferring files than Migration Assistant?
3. Is there a way to remove the patches while the system is up and running, run Migration Assistant, and then repatch the system (without rebooting)?

Appreciate any ideas on the best way to get my data moved over.
Thanks!

 

[SR_MBP5.1]

Hi all,

I have recently updated my late 2008 MBP 15" to high Sierra but missed the memo about APFS and chose HFS.

I've ready through the beginning and last 15 or so pages of the thread but it wasn't clear to me.

Can I update the file system to APFS without reinstalling OsX?

Thanks to all, especially dosdude for making all this possible.

 

[mrploppy]

Hi all,

I have recently updated my late 2008 MBP 15" to high Sierra but missed the memo about APFS and chose HFS.

I've ready through the beginning and last 15 or so pages of the thread but it wasn't clear to me.

Can I update the file system to APFS without reinstalling OsX?

Thanks to all, especially dosdude for making all this possible.

Same laptop here. I had High Sierra running on a hard drive using HFS+. I've recently installed an SSD and converted to APS.

I'd say it depends what kind of drive you have. If it's an old school spinner, I'd leave it as HFS+. If it's an SSD, I'd say convert to APFS. My understanding is that APFS was designed with SSD in mind.

If you decide to change to APFS, I believe you can do that from within Disk Utility (convert to apfs), but I haven't done that myself. But beware, in order to boot from APFS, you'll need to either patch your ROM using @dosdude1's tool (at the risk of bricking your machine) or install the apfs post-install patch from his High Sierra Patcher (and have the scrolling verbose text when booting - which is no big deal).

Edit: I should have said, convert to apfs doesn't destroy anything (apart from maybe your Recovery HD partition?).

 

[nospamboz]

Took a chance and updated to this week's SecUpd2019-007 (non-Recovery). No problems, statuses and logs normal. Mid-2009 Macbook5,2.

Recently updated my Boot Camp (actually triple boot) from Win7 to Win10. Took opportunity to get rid of hybrid MBR and BIOS boot, now pure GPT with EFI boot for macOS, Win10, and Ubuntu. (Needed GPT to add MSR partition for Win10.) I don't have recovery partitions for now (neither macOS nor Win10), but with GPT I may play with them in the future, as well as with APFS in preparation for Mojave/Catalina next year.

 

[Mark A]

Hello All.

I have just joined and am perusing this thread with interest. But as I simply don't have the time to read all 192 pages, I am wondering if anyone can help with this...

I have an Early 2008 MacPro 3,1. I've used DosDude's marvellous patcher to update it to High Sierra, only to discover that (whatever patches I apply) my ATI Radeon HD 5770 will not function properly.

So purchased an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition which I understand should work with High Sierra, but nothing has changed:

If I try to install the latest drivers from Nvidia I get this:

Any clues much appreciated!!

Mark.

 

[Mark A]

Hello All.

I have just joined and am perusing this thread with interest. But as I simply don't have the time to read all 192 pages, I am wondering if anyone can help with this...

So... I found some posts a while back and ran DosDude's script to remove the AMD patches. No change in graphics performance. But I was now able to install the NVIDIA driver. But this has made no difference, either.

I am now stuck as to what else to try...

Mark.

 

[Rodrigo Alvarez]

Hi, I've been running this patch on a Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008) for a while now very smoothly. Thanks!

Now the HDD is failing and I would like to upgrade my machine to a SSD. I bought a NVMe PCI + M2 drive and I'm trying to install this patch. The new SSD is mountable and installation succeeds but I have not been able to boot from the SSD. I see a lot of threads and history about issues booting from NVMe and having to update EFIs, etc. I'm finding it hard to decode all the context.

Would someone who has been through this be super kind and summarize:
a) State if booting from a NVMe PCIe SSD is supported, and if there are specific modern adapters or SSDs that are required.
b) If supported, describe or point to the latest procedure to get this working.
c) If not supported, recommend a way to upgrade the HDD into an SSD to increase performance (at least a little).

TIA!

 

[Macschrauber]

Hello All.

I have just joined and am perusing this thread with interest. But as I simply don't have the time to read all 192 pages, I am wondering if anyone can help with this...

I have an Early 2008 MacPro 3,1. I've used DosDude's marvellous patcher to update it to High Sierra, only to discover that (whatever patches I apply) my ATI Radeon HD 5770 will not function properly.

So purchased an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition which I understand should work with High Sierra, but nothing has changed:

View attachment 882541

If I try to install the latest drivers from Nvidia I get this:

View attachment 882542

Any clues much appreciated!!

Mark.

Re-install High Sierra thru the latest patcher.

 

[Mark A]

Over the top of the current install? (Thanks!)

 

[Macschrauber]

Yes, with rebuilt cache.

Backup before ;-)

 

[Mark A]

Cool. I will let you know how I get on.

 

[Mark A]

That appears to have worked... fingers crossed. Many thanks.

 

[techinfant]

Amigos, need some help with High Sierra on my late ‘09 MBP 5’5. I recently ran a recommended patch update, and tried to reboot, but ever since I’m unable to get past the light colored loading screen. I tried reinstalling HS over the current install using the latest patcher, but it doesn’t allow me to do so on the premise that my installed version is more current than the version from the patcher tool. I tried the post install cache rebuild, and I get a warning that the installed HS is not a valid copy. Despite the warning, it appears to proceed and rebuild the cache, but still doesn’t get past the light-colored boot screen. What other recourse do I have? Any way to roll back my version of HS, so I can reinstall over it? I’m trying to avoid upgrading to Mojave or Catalina, as I’ve read they are even more finicky with the MBP 5’5. I’m very open to any suggestions, thank you!

 

[1202494]

Hello smart people,
@dosdude1 Thank you for providing a way for people with older MacBooks a route to update. Followed his instructions and installed high Sierra on my 2009 MacBook Pro 17" 15.2. update & patches worked out fine for me but am now having issues with waking computer up from sleep / screen saver. also wondering if anyone knows of a source to be able to adjust the brightness? I read one of @dosdude1 's twitter posts telling a guy to remove the screen patch, but it was recommended to me during install for this model 5.2.
Any suggestions / guides would greatly be appreciated.
Thank you

 

[EugW]

Took a chance and updated to this week's SecUpd2019-007 (non-Recovery). No problems, statuses and logs normal. Mid-2009 Macbook5,2.

Same here. No problems with the regular built-in Software Update method for my 2008 MacBook5,1 and my 2009 MacBookPro5,5. I'm especially pleased for the latter since all the recent Security Updates since 2018-1 had failed on this one.

It's great that these machines are still being used, with modern software, after all this time. They've experienced the 2000s, the 2010s, and now the 2020s, touching on 3 different decades!