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macOS 10.12 Sierra Unsupported Macs Thread
- Thread starter redheeler
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Unfortunately, it's against forum rules here to post links to OS downloads. Send me an email and I'll send you a link.
I followed your instructions to the letter on my 2008 MacPro. Everything when fine except The computer will not boot off the HD that Sierra was installed. I just get a circle with a line through it. All the files seem to be there. I have uploaded the console file.
Once the install of Sierra completed did you then boot back to your Installer USB to apply the Post Install Patches
select MacPro 3.1 in the drop down look at the list of patches and choose the ones that are appropriate for you then click on re boot, your Mac should now start on the Sierra disk/ partition.
Hi guys- Anyone have an easy fix for the AMD Radeon 280X R9 3 GB black screen when waking from sleep issue? I applied the 7xxx patch, without it I could only startup in safe mode. Everything now seems to work well until I put my Mac Pro 3,1 to sleep. When I try to wake it I hear the drive spin up but the screen stays black. Everything, including sleep/wake, worked fine with 10.12.6.
Just applied the 10.13.4 update and now my Mac Pro 3,1 sleeps and wakes as it should but the video is choppy. I did re-apply the 7xxx patch but the video was not improved. Suggestions? Should I try some of the Sierra AMD kexts in play of the current High Sierra ones?
Hi everybody,
I have a 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 and 2 years ago I tried to install Sierra without success and I deleted the ISO out of spite. When I see the number of people who could install it, it bothers me a little to stay stuck on El Capitan.Would it be possible to have a link to retry the installation?
Best regards.
I have a 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 and 2 years ago I tried to install Sierra without success and I deleted the ISO out of spite. When I see the number of people who could install it, it bothers me a little to stay stuck on El Capitan.Would it be possible to have a link to retry the installation?
Best regards.
I am still running mac OS 10.13, no update for High Sierra showed up in the App Store ever (App updates do show up and can get installed, tho). After clicking the update button in the App Store, only App updates show up and then an Error Message pops up saying "The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1100.)".
I downloaded and ran the swupatch.sh script again and the patch also gave the following Error Message: "The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1100.)"
Also, the patcher app itself doesn't show any updates either.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Dan
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Problem solved- I replaced several AMD kexts with the older versions (1.51.8) from Sierra:
AMD7000Controller, AMDFramebuffer, AMDRadeonX4000, AMDSupport.
Everything now seems to work as it should.
It can be downloaded from this link, you'll need a supported computer for the download, maybe ask a friend.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208202
Once you have the file follow the instructions found at this link...
http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html
If none of the above helps, send me a PM.
Yes the patcher app will not show any updates, because it is looking fo updates from Dosdude1 for the patcher app, and not Apple updates.
So lets try again open the Patch Updater app from your Utilities folder, so from the Up to Date dialogue click on View Installed Updates, hold the Control key down and click on Software Update Patch now click on Re-install enter your Password, and then click on Restart Now. When the Mac restarts relaunch the App Store and see if you are able to see and download updates.
Thanks for the reply L Caputo!
I reinstalled the patch updater via right click already and restarted my Mac Pro. (i did so after reading your previous post, earlier today)
The App Store still doesn't show any system/mac OS updates.
Any other advise?
Thanks again,
Dan
Ok I would try it a couple of times more just in case there is an improvement, I had to do this a few times when the App Store wasn't showing updates I knew were available. Next you could open Terminal and type in softwareupdate -l and press return, see what it says. Are you on Sierra or High Sierra, this is the Sierra forum for unsupported Macs.
Anyway you can also visit the Apple Support Downloads site and manually download the applicable updates,
https://support.apple.com/downloads you should be able to download and install the iTunes update quite easily. However if you download the High Sierra 10.13.4 Combo update or the Security update for Sierra whichever OS you are on then you will need to modify the Distribution file before they will be allowed to install. Here are the instructions to do that.
Modifying the Security Updates or macOS Updates for Sierra or High Sierra.
Download latest update.
Open latest update.
Move latest update.pkg to Desktop.
Open Terminal.
Enter pkgutil --expand ~/Desktop/now drag and drop the .pkg from the Desktop into the Terminal window and type after a space ~/Desktop/Expanded press Return and wait
Open Expanded folder and then open Distribution file in Text Wrangler or BBEdit
Change Distribution file, change Board iD select one and change it to <your Macs boardID> go to nonSupportedModels remove <your Mac model>
Save As .xml file to the Desktop
In Terminal chmod +x ~/Desktop/distribution.xml
Remove the extension .xml
Move new Distribution file to expanded package replacing the original
In Terminal pkgutil --flatten ~/Desktop/Expanded ~/Desktop/Modified.pkg
Using the .pkg extension is crucial.
The Modified package on your desktop should now allow you to install the latest update
Is there still a way to get Sierra on a Mac which is not supported by Sierra? ATM I only have one Mac, I want to install Sierra on it but I can't download it from the Mac App Store. The patcher application also can't download it, the High Sierra one can.
I'm not a great fan of unsupported systems an a mac. I tried it once on a powerbook g4 titanium forcing leopard onto it via an open firmware hack. But it was crawling on that and so finally changed my mind and downgraded back to tiger.
You can actually still download sierra.
Apple even have a page on this at https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208202
The download link is https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-sierra/id1127487414?ls=1&mt=12
There may be a problem preventing it from downloading directly on an unsupported mac. A workaround is to download it inside a virtual machine running a supported system. So you could for example make a virtual machine of El Capitan on a mac which does not support Sierra but does support El Capitan and download Sierra within that virtual machine. Systems are not clever enough to detect that this virtual machine happens to running on a mac that does not support Sierra and so therefore will allow the download to go ahead.
That's a legal way of downloading it on an unsupported mac. There are of course illegal ways too that do not require a virtual machine. But they are dangerous because they may be comproimised in some way. So I would suggest to stay away from those and just get it legally.
Having said all that dosdude1 has a page on this stuff at http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html which might be of some use.
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Thanks for your reply. The problem is, I need the Install macOS Sierra app and I can't download it from the App Store because the Mac I am using is incompatible.
You can’t use your experience with a G4 Mac with an OS from a decade ago as any indication. This is esp. true with the TiBooks and Snow Leopard, because the TiBooks max out at 1 GB, and Snow Leopard doesn't work well with 1 GB RAM. In my experience, Snow Leopard really likes to have 2 GB. Furthermore, the speed boost going from a sub GHz G4 to a G5 was enormous. The sub GHz G4s were simply too slow. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but there may have been some weird glitches because of the unsupported setup.
In contrast, Sierra once installed with the patched installer with the right Mac with sufficient RAM and SSD, they will run just like a fully supported Mac. Not all Macs would be ideal for this but for example my MacBookPro5,5 (unsupported) will run High Sierra just like a MacBook6,1 (supported). This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise though since the hardware is almost identical. (Basically Apple took the MBP5,5, removed FireWire, and changed the shell to plastic, and then called it MacBook6,1.)
In fact, based on my MBP5,5’s excellent results, I went out and bought a MacBook5,1 off Kijiji for about US$150 for a kitchen computer. It works just as well. However, I chose MB5,1 specifically because again, its hardware is very close to a supported machine, MB6,1.
BTW, regarding memory, 2 GB is unacceptable for Sierra or High Sierra. 2 GB is listed as minimum recommended in the specs, but it's just not good enough. They do run well enough for light usage for 4 GB though with SSD (or in the very least, a desktop 7200 rpm hard drive bare minimum). However, both my MBP5,5 and my MB5,1 have 8 GB RAM and SSD. The MB5,1 I bought off Kijiji came with 2 GB RAM and laptop hard drive, and IMO it was completely unusable even with its install of 10.9 Mavericks. Luckily I had an ancient slow SSD and 4 GB RAM that I wasn't using so I put those in with High Sierra and it was very decent. Even an ancient slow SSD is lightning fast compared to a laptop hard drive. And then there was a flash sale on Amazon for 8 GB name brand RAM for about US$35 so I jumped on that deal. The memory sold out in minutes so I definitely lucked out on that one.
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I installed leopard on it not snow leopard. Then downgraded back to tiger because leopard was too slow. I'm sure that's what I said before.
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Have you tried downloading Sierra within a virtual machine of El Capitan? As I said before that will allow the download to occur despite it being an unsupported machine.
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Ah OK, my mistake.
Even Leopard needs 1 GB but depending on the G4 you had, it could have still been slow just based on the CPU alone.
Mine is the 800MHz DVI version. Hence technically not supporting leopard (which requires 867MHz or faster). But there is an open firmware hack which will allow installation of leopard on it.
I prefer the titanium to aluminium because the titanium will boot up mac os 9 too but aluminium ones don't.
Originally I dual booted leopard and mac os 9. Now I dual boot tiger and mac os 9. I also put an SSD in and despite leopard being slow, tiger and mac os 9 run pretty fast with the SSD.
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I used to run Leopard on my 667 MHz TiBook many years ago as my main machine, and it actually ran quite well IMO, I had no issues with it back in 2010. Just recently, I installed Leopard onto my G4-upgraded iMac G3, and even that seems to run surprisingly well. But regardless, the difference in power between a modern Core i-based Mac and a Core 2 Duo based one is much less than the difference between a PowerPC G4-based Mac and even a Core Solo/Duo-based Mac. Sierra, and High Sierra, with a RAM and maybe SSD upgrade, will run just as well on a Core 2 Duo-based Mac as they do on a Core i-based one. (In fact, Apple SUPPORTS Sierra and High Sierra on machines that have the SAME CPU AND Chipset as some unsupported machines... Makes no sense.)
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I was very, very irritated by Apple's 1 GHz TiBook release.
I was coming from a 12" G3 iBook 600 but found it too slow, so I wanted a 12" G4 iBook or 12" G4 PowerBook. They didn't exist so I waited for the next PowerBook release. They released the 15" TiBook 1 GHz and no other size, so I bought it. Two months later they launched the 12" G4 PowerBook. Argghhh!
The only reason I ever used OS 9 was to spoof MAC addresses for WiFi. My local coffee shop had paid WiFi requiring WiFi dongles from the shop, but said to me if could get onto their network somehow with my own equipment, the WiFi would be free. So, I just rented a dongle one day, recorded the MAC address, and then after that whenever I went to the coffee shop I'd just boot into OS 9 and spoof that dongle's MAC address to surf for free.
Those were the days...
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I've a few ideas I think might help you but for some reason you cannot receive personal messages.