My Experience Running Mojave on Unsupported Macs

Slydude

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Attention fellow Admins Mods: Long Post. Edit as you see fit.

My test Mac for this project is a late 2008 MacBook Pro with 8 GB of ram and an SSD in place of the spinner hard drive.
I don't boot the MacBook Pro more often because I find using two different versions of the macOS on two diffent machines annoying. The perfect reason to try a hack I'd seen which allows running Mojave on some unsupported hardware. The process is fairly simpble but it is important to follow the directions carefully. Note that you will be following these steps on the unsupported Mac.

The Adventure Begins

1. Go to the information page for the macOS Mojave Patcher Tool. You may find it handy to print this page. We're going to use information on this page to determine whether or not the patcher stands a chance of working on your hardware. This pge also has a link to the software that you will need. You might find this YouTube video helpful.

2. Go to the Apple menu on the Mac and choose "About This Mac". From there you want to run the System Report and click on the Hardware Section. Make note of the model identifier (MacBook Pro 5.1 for example). Compare the model identifier on your machine to the list of supported hardware on the Mojave Patcher Tool support page. If your Mac isn't on the list its probably not worth going forward. In my case my MacBook Pro has an indetifier number of 5.1 and the 5 series is listed as supported so it's time for the next step.

3. With the System Report still open look at the list of options on the left side of the screen and scroll down to the Network section and choose WiFi and make note of the Card Type and the numbers and letters that follow. Compare your network card number to the half dozen or so cards listed on the support page that do not work. If you have an unsupported card and you apply this patch anyway your card will probably stop working if you apply the patch. You can now close the System report window.

If you have an unsupported card, it seems to me, that you have three options:

a. Don't apply the patch. In opther words you're stuck with an OS less than Mojave.
b. Live without wifi
c. Look for a third-party dongle that will work with the patcher.

While you are on the Patcher support page take a look at the Known Issues section of the support page. It discusses some potential graphics issues that may occur if you proceed. This could be important since the primary reason many older Macs can't support Mojave is that the graphics card (GPU) doesn't support Metal.

Preparing for the Patch - You've chosen to go forward.

4. If you don't have a current backup, I strongly suggest you make one in case something goes wrong. I'm not responsible for the death of the dinosaurs, fall of the Roman Empire, or losss of your data.:)

5. Download and install the Mojave Patcher Tool from the support page.

6. The next step will be to disable System Integrity Protection if you're running El Capitan or later. You cannot do this from your main volume. Reboot your Mac and hold down the Option key to boot to the Recovery partition. the video suggests using Command-r but I find the Option key more reliable. Once you're booted from the recovery partition go to the Utilities menu and launch Tereminal.

7. From Terminal type csrutil status and press Enter.
a. If Terminal reprots System Integrity Protection is Enabled type csrutil status disable and press Enter. When Terminal reports that System Integrity Protection is disabled, it's safe to reboot the Mac normally.
b. If Terminal reports that System Integrity Protection is disabled simply reboot the Mac normally.

Create The Installer
- You need a USB flash drive of at least 16 GB
8. Plug in a 16 GB or larger flash drive and use Disk Utility to format the drive as MacOS Extended, Journaled and GUID Partition mapping.
9. If you don't have the Mojave installer you'll need to download it. If you already have the Mojave instller use the Finder's Get Info command to check the file size. Currently the full installer is almost 6 GB in size. Some users have reported that their Mojave download from the app store is much smaller. If yours is significantly less than that,it's best to re-download the file.

The Mojave patcher tool has a means of downloading the Mojave installer. This method seems to consistently download the full installer so I suggest using that method. Launch the app and choose Tools>Download. Don't put the installer on the same USB drive you are planning to use to finish the installation.

10. Once the download is complete Click the Mojave icon insde the patch tool and the file selction window opens for you to select the Mojave file you just downloaded. On the right side of the app screen select the drive that you want to install Mojave on and select Start Operation.

It will take several minutes for the process to complete. you'll have to be watching the screen carefullly to see the message that tells you the process is complete.

The Installation Process

11. Reboot your Mac and hold down the Option key. When your startup options appear select the USB drive that you built the installer onto. It may appear with a name like Mac OS X Base System. Click there and follow the normal installation procedure. If you'll cehck the video it has some tips for which format to choose for the disk that Mojave will be instlled on if you are doing a complete install. Some older Macs may not support APFS for example. This is covered starting at about the 8:00 mark of the video. The installation may take a few minutes longer than usual.

12. When the installer completes and the Mac reboots you will probably see the "No" or "Prohibited" symbol (cilrcle with diagonal line through it). Power off the Mac, wait a few minutes, and power on again. Hold down the Option key until you see the startup options. Choose the Mojave installer again.

13. When the rebot finishes you should see a small list of options on the left side of the screen. Choose your language and then chose the Post Install Tool. When that tool runs select your Mac model from the list. This is the other reason to know the Mac model identifier number we located earlier. Make sure you choose the right one.

14. Once you select the right model select the drive that you have installed Mojave onto (typically the boot drive). You're not selecting the USB with the installer. Press the Patch button and let this last routine run. When it's finished Reboot the Mac.

When the reboot completes, with any luck, you'll be booted into Mojave. Walk throuugh the screen to make any settings options you may need to change.

Final Thoughts
When updates to Mojave appear you can download and install them from the App Stoore just as you would on a supported machine. You may find that there are some anomalies such as Safari being very slow to load pages and perhaps a few other things. If this happens download the Mojave version of Onyx and run the routiines in the Maintenance tab. You must check the options in the Maintenance and Rebuilding sections of Onyx. The other sections in that tab are optional.
 
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IWT


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Wow, Sly, that's a heck of an article. The typing alone must have driven you mad.

I have no personal interest in pursuing this method - I have enough trouble managing the official upgrades!

But it's a splendid piece of research and the detail is first class.

Ian
 
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Slydude

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Thanks Ian

It took a bit of time to type mainly because I am a horrible typist and had to backtrack a few details first. The video I linked to covers everything pretty well but it's about 15 minutes long. Hope the description wasn't too detailed. I always had problems with that when writing help guides.

I don't think you would have any problems following the process. I wrote but others might need the details.

Just noticed the rep bump. Thanks.
 
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Wow, Sly, that's a heck of an article. The typing alone must have driven you mad.

I have no personal interest in pursuing this method - I have enough trouble managing the official upgrades!

But it's a splendid piece of research and the detail is first class.

@ Sly - completely agree w/ Ian, i.e. quite a laudable effort in adding this researched advice to the forum - I'm sure that there are some 'out there' wanting to give these suggestions a try - good luck to all - thanks again! Dave :)
 
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@Slydude
It took a bit of time to type mainly because I am a horrible typist and had to backtrack a few details first.


OT here, but just a question regarding your typing comment:

Have you tried Apple's built-in Dictation and how did you find how it works with Apple's latest macOS versions. I'm wondering if Apple has improved it much since its Mavericks introduction days???





- Patrick
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Slydude

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@Slydude



OT here, but just a question regarding your typing comment:

Have you tried Apple's built-in Dictation and how did you find how it works with Apple's latest macOS versions. I'm wondering if Apple has improved it much since its Mavericks introduction days???





- Patrick
======
It's been some time since I used that feature. I think the last time might have been under Sierra. I'll give it a try over the next few days and let you kinow what I find out. With a little thout I bet I can devise a few activities that will test bothh accuracy and speed.
 
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I'll give it a try over the next few days and let you kinow what I find out.


Thanks, I hope it works better download Maverick zerochan that I'm using here as you can probably tell call Mama and have actually found Voice In Plus, a plug-in for Google Chrome, Works a bit better.

That seems OnThat list spell check doesn't even come on roll on it and I'm using it.

Anyway,I shall leave itAs it tightSo you can see what it looks like on my end.


:Smirk: ;)


PS: Maybe The admins can move this to a new thread as I didn't mean to sidetrack the current Thread topic.









- Patrick
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MAC OSX 10.14.3 On Unsupported Hardware

hi guys I have installed OSX 10.14.3

on my late 2009 iMac with i7 32GB 500GB SSD

my question is does anyone know how stable it is ?


as I'm on my second day and so far all is great plus I have the new features that comes with OSX


is it now natively supporting X64 ?


just a few questions is all guys

thanks

Jason
 
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Slydude

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I put Mojave on my 2008 MacBook Pro last weekend. There's a thread about it here. I havent done much testing beyond the initial boot but plan to in the next few days, Ill try to keep everyone posted. We's certainly like to here your observations as well. If you don't mind lets put our observations there so they are in one place.
 
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Mojave is veryvstable on supported Macs, but only time will tell with the hacks that are used to get it onto older machines.

For mine Jason I would have stayed with High Sierra. OS X.15 later this year will only support 64bit software. You will see warnings about this on boot and restarts.
 

chscag

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As our moderator Slydude stated.... we need to keep this all in one thread. Your post and replies have been combined with Slydude's thread.

Thanks.
 
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hi guys thanks for combining the posts.


I have a few questions ?


is anyone noticing really slow download speed's on the unsupported iMac's ?


because for some reason mine is really slow at downloading.


or would you recommend going back to High Sierra ??

thanks
 
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Slydude

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Whenn you say download speeds are slow do you mean download speeds for apps or page loads?
 
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hi Slydude


when I say slow I mean that browser pages are loading slowly ?

and apps are all working fine.

same as my mail its having issues also where its showing a warning on my accounts and saying it can't connect ??

and Ive had an EFI dump but not sure how to open it

its as if my internet is bad when Im getting 74mbps over wifi on my windows machine and my iPhone etc

thanks
 
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Slydude

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Thanks for that clariification.

I had a similar issue with my 2015 iMac that supports Mojave without a patch. Try opening Activity Monitor and then launching the web pages that are causing trouble. As the problemm appears look for the name of anny process using an unnusual amout of CPU time/power. If there is something like that present, disabling/removing it might fix the problem.
 
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hi slydude

well I tried what you said but still the issue persists lol.



maybe its best for now that I go back to osx 10.13.6 that way its all stable still updated and still current my MacBook Pro is on 10.14 so its not the end of the world for now.

thanks

Jason
 
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Slydude

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I'll try to do some testing this weekend with Mojave on my MacBook Pro and the browser to see if I get similar results. Are specific sites /pages affected or does it seem to be most sites?
 
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it seems to be all sites for me unless I did something wrong during the install.

but so far I'm still on OSX 10.14 but as its running slow on the internet I'm using my MacBook Pro more than ever.

I have the following in the iMac I7-870 2.93ghz 32GB DDR3 ram 500GB SSD

so I doubt its them things causing it ???

or could it be ?


as under high Sierra it plays very well and the internet is speedy lol
 
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Slydude

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I had just a little bit of time today to test Safari on my 2008 MacBook Pro, with 8 GB ram, and a Crucial SSDrunning Mojave. Although I've only tried about a dozen or so sites so far, I've not noticed any issues loading sites. Maybe the sites load a tad slower than on more modern machines but not enough to be noticeable. Safari did provide a warning that a couple of out-of-date extensions had been disabled.

A few other observations based upon an hour or so of run time:
1. I installed Mojave over an existing El Capitain installation. The SSD was formatted as HFS+ with a GUID partition structure and the Mojave installer left that intact. I'm not sure whether a clean install would format the drive as APFS plus but I suspect it would.

2. Running on the SSD I can get from cold boot to the login screen in about 1 minute give or take about three seconds.

3. After entering my administrator password I can get from the login screen to the desktop in 15 to 20 seconds. The last five seconds are for a few menu bar items I'll probably remove.
 
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I installed Mojave over an existing El Capitain installation. The SSD was formatted as HFS+ with a GUID partition structure and the Mojave installer left that intact.


Was that due to the "hack install" you used as I understood that Mojove insists on an APFS format install.

Or am I misunderstanding something???






- Patrick
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