What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[MBAir2010]

Well the 2gb logic board is kaput and wont power on.
Im glad i check before messing with the 4gb ram removal board and upper case, display whew!

anyways, the macbook air 2010 is getting a fresh reinstall of snow leopard onto a 256 ssd drive!
firefox vintage will be the main internet source but there is another browser named artic something that is better.

I dont expect much from this macbook but progress in projects rather than internet surfing wasting.
which should be fun.

 

[MBAir2010]

OK, good to know. But, why not solder leads from a switch to those pins?

Designed that for emergencies only

i set a schedule to turn off then on every day which is good.
the macbook air will run snow leopard in 2023 once in a while.
i just hope my MBA still connects with an excellent canon scanner without 3rd party software.
and Adobe CS4 still boots!

oh and thanks for these replies, they are nice!

 

[wicknix]

That's weird. I thought they had a fix for that which gets applied after installing the root patches. At least that's how it also works for my 2009 mini

.....but you can't apply the patches without a working keyboard or mouse. See the issue here?

 

[Heindijs]

.....but you can't apply the patches without a working keyboard or mouse. See the issue here?

They recommend using a hub for it. That's the way I've done it too on these older Macs. Using a USB2.0 hub apparently tricks the controller and the keyboard and mouse will work. It's worth checking out.

 

[TheShortTimer]

They recommend using a hub for it. That's the way I've done it too on these older Macs. Using a USB2.0 hub apparently tricks the controller and the keyboard and mouse will work. It's worth checking out.

Correct - this is the method used by Greg Hrutkay to install Sonoma on a 2009 Mac Mini for that very reason:

 

[wicknix]

Well... I don't have a hub and Monterey is humming along just fine. Eventually it'll just be a linux box with 10.13 as a Dev environment. I'm happy with it for now. As it is the cMP is running 10.6 / 10.11 / 10.13 / 10.15 / 12.7 and MX Linux.

 

[MBAir2010]

wow
im typing this message on the MBA 2010 running Snow leopard opera browser
everything looks like safari 17 as far as graphics and appearance!
i had to perform some tricks like attach a usbC chord to the start up original  usb drive
by using 2 adaptor so the mba could read the thumb drive which was weird.
the battery os good for anther 4.55 hours and everything is fast.

Snow Leopard is a great OSX!

Oh, just a reminder that iCloud wont work with this OSX. and our me. are no more.

 

[TheShortTimer]

wow
im typing this message on the MBA 2010 running Snow leopard opera browser
everything looks like safari 17 as far as graphics and appearance!
i had to perform some tricks like attach a usbC chord to the start up original  usb drive
by using 2 adaptor so the mba could read the thumb drive which was weird.
the battery os good for anther 4.55 hours and everything is fast.

Congrats!

Snow Leopard is a great OSX!

Agreed. One of Apple's finest moments.

 

[rampancy]

It works fine for me with 2GB RAM so 8GB would be luxurious.

From my time and experience working with A1181s I still think of anything more than 2 GB of RAM as "massive".

One of Apple's finest moments.

I'll never forget the moment Bertrand Serlet announced 10.6 would have "0 new features" and the crowd just exploded. Man, good times. Good times.

As much as I love Lion for the compatibility, I still find myself installing 10.6 even on my "newer" Core 2 Duo-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

 

[wicknix]

I still find myself installing 10.6 even on my "newer" Core 2 Duo-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros

Same here. I recently bought a larger SSD, split it in half, and tossed 10.6 and 12.7 on this old '09 MBP.

 

[swamprock]

Nuked the Sonoma install on my 2.13ghz WhiteBook 5,2 and installed Big Sur via OCLP, rather than Catalina as I had originally intended. Runs much better than Sonoma, with much lower resource usage. I never messed with Big Sur much, but I'm digging it.

I'll save Sonoma for my main workhorse 2012 Mini (currently running Catalina), when it matures a bit and I get up the nerve...

 

[swamprock]

From my time and experience working with A1181s I still think of anything more than 2 GB of RAM as "massive".


I'll never forget the moment Bertrand Serlet announced 10.6 would have "0 new features" and the crowd just exploded. Man, good times. Good times.

As much as I love Lion for the compatibility, I still find myself installing 10.6 even on my "newer" Core 2 Duo-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

I love how blazingly- fast SL is, even on a MB 4,1. I've got it installed on my slowest 4,1 and everything just pops. There aren't any browsers that can pick up any one of three particular sites that I frequent, but I've got other machines for those. It's "almost there" as a daily driver for me, otherwise. I fire it up every day or two just to enjoy its speed, simplicity, and some PowerPC apps and games.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

Guys, you make me curious . Which most recent OS can I try to install onto MacBook7,1 / A1342? Currently it runs Mojave, your posts make me think it could handle Sonoma..?

 

[Chuckeee]

Guys, you make me curious . Which most recent OS can I try to install onto MacBook7,1 / A1342? Currently it runs Mojave, your posts make me think it could handle Sonoma..?

Anything more modern than Mojave means giving up support for all 32-bit apps. Just make sure that is what you really want.

 

[headlessmike]

Guys, you make me curious . Which most recent OS can I try to install onto MacBook7,1 / A1342? Currently it runs Mojave, your posts make me think it could handle Sonoma..?

I have Big Sur on mine at the moment and it’s running pretty well. Not the fastest experience but definitely useable for everyday tasks. I still want to play around with newer versions, but this is my fallback option at the moment.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

There are 2 SSD's installed, so no problem to install 3-rd Mac OS somewhere . (Installed SnowLeo & Mojave).

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

And I need to use OCLP for Big Sur and later? How difficult is it?

 

[headlessmike]

And I need to use OCLP for Big Sur and later? How difficult is it?

Yes. Luckily it's very easy. Here's their website that's a good place to start. Read through it and give it a go when you're ready. There are threads here on MacRumors devoted to getting newer macOS versions running on older hardware. You can ask questions there if you run into any trouble. You'll need a 16 GB USB (or larger) drive to get started.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

I'll read it, thanks.

 

[ToniCH]

And I need to use OCLP for Big Sur and later? How difficult is it?

I recommend MrMacintosh's youtube -videos on the subject. Very easy to follow. There are others too who make pretty good how-to-videos.

 

[MBAir2010]

Guys, you make me curious . Which most recent OS can I try to install onto MacBook7,1 / A1342? Currently it runs Mojave, your posts make me think it could handle Sonoma..?

you can try an external ssd drive to test the OCLP Sonoma to see if that works.

Sonoma is buggy on my M1 MBA were Monterey is perfect on my MBP'12 "13.
hopefully Monterey will be supported for several more years and that runs safari 17!

 

[MBAir2010]

And I need to use OCLP for Big Sur and later? How difficult is it?

the darting GitHub website is busy, there is no "download this first" link which is on th bottom of th page.
mrmachintosh made a great Utube video of how to download and run PCLP and he explains this thoroughly.
his Bh Sur one is perfect and I will use that when OCLP on the MBP this evening.

 

[DCBassman]

Macbook Pro 8,2 returned to High Sierra. Although I have left Ventura on the iMac 12,1, I do not like the later versions of macOS. Once I find a Linux distro that that I like that also plays well with Apple BT peripherals, I will change my three remaining Macs over to it.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Yes. Luckily it's very easy. Here's their website that's a good place to start. Read through it and give it a go when you're ready. There are threads here on MacRumors devoted to getting newer macOS versions running on older hardware. You can ask questions there if you run into any trouble. You'll need a 16 GB USB (or larger) drive to get started.

Thank you! This looks similar enough to the DosDude patcher that I'm confident enough to try it out with Sonoma. The supported models section is a tad confusing though - it's supposed to show you "which OS would work best on your machine" but it's not very clear on that front.

 

[headlessmike]

Thank you! This looks similar enough to the DosDude patcher that I'm confident enough to try it out with Sonoma. The supported models section is a tad confusing though - it's supposed to show you "which OS would work best on your machine" but it's not very clear on that front.

It's pretty similar. The main difference is setting up the Open Core EFI. OCLP makes that easy to do, but for a first time user it can be easy to get things mixed up and think that things aren't working.

What I did was set up the modified EFI partition on the USB installer at first. Then I could install the OS without touching anything on the computer except for the specific partition where the system was installed. That system won't boot properly though without the USB drive inserted. Once I felt happy with everything, I would then install Open Core to the internal boot drive.

Now that I'm more accustomed to how OCLP works, I'll often install it directly to the internal SSD from the start. That makes the computer act more or less like a supported Mac with newer OS's right away. Even with the Open Core EFI installed on the internal drive, one can always bypass it by holding the option key at boot if you want to boot into a supported OS on another partition or drive.

As for the supported models. All listed models work to some degree with Sonoma. Depending on the model there may be some issues that are either unresolved or require a workaround. Which Mac are you considering to try Sonoma on? The 2012 MBP in your signature would probably handle Sonoma the best since it has a Metal GPU, though others would work too.