OS X Mavericks on mid-2015 rMBP

[ashryver16]

Hi everyone, since I like the older ui design more and had some time to spare I started wondering if I could get Mavericks on my mid-2015 rMBP as it has nearly the same specs as the mid-2014 rMBP. I installed Mavericks from my 2011 iMac to an external drive and after tinkering around and removing some Intel kexts and PlatformSupport.plist I managed to get my rMBP to boot OS X Mavericks from the external USB drive successfully to the desktop, but with the following issues:

- Resolution stuck at 2880x1800 and GPU not recognised (obviously since I had to remove the AppleIntelHD* and AppleIntelF* kexts to avoid being stuck at "missing bluetooth controller transport" at startup)

- Keyboard and mouse are recognised only as basic generic input devices (so no trackpad functionality besides click and track and no function keys working)

- No wifi or bluetooth

- No sound

Do you guys think it could be possible to get it all up and running nicely since it's so similar to the 2014 model according to Mactracker?

 

[DeltaMac]

Sounds like a project that will result in frustration...

 

[chrfr]

Hi everyone, since I like the older ui design more and had some time to spare I started wondering if I could get Mavericks on my mid-2015 rMBP as it has nearly the same specs as the mid-2014 rMBP.

The 2014 and 2015 MacBook Pro computers are very different, and you're not going to get Mavericks running on the 2015. 2015 gained the force touch trackpads and they're a completely different chipset than the 2014 computers.

 

[ashryver16]

they seemed to have nearly the same specs according to mactracker. I knew about the trackpad but not the chipset, no worries it was just a spare time fun project anyway I'll consider where I got a success

 

[Avenged110]

That'd be pretty sweet if you (or anyone) could get this working. I am pretty dug-in on Mavericks (also for the beautiful design) so I always love seeing it run on unsupported hardware. As far as I know, the only differences are the trackpad and discrete GPU so I always figured that would be the easiest unsupported machine to get 10.9 running on.

The dream would be to get Mavericks running on Broadwell and install it on a 13" early-2015 rMBP, then hack a non-force touch trackpad into it. If only...

 

[ashryver16]

According to mactracker the only differences are the trackpad, a faster flash storage and the discrete gpu. Mine is a baseline 2.2GHz with the Iris Pro 5200 only so that’s why I tried getting it on, seems really similar to the 2014. But i have no idea how to get kexts working so im stuck there. And seems the chipset is different? Maybe someone more skilled than me could get it to work, would be really cool indeed.
[doublepost=1537250271][/doublepost]I forgot to point out that yes the resolution is stuck at 2880x1800, but only when the os is fully booted. For some reason while booting (white screen with Apple logo and spinning gear) the retina display seems to be recognized, even with the kexts deleted, and displays everything correctly making it look like 1440x900 (stock retina settings for the 15 inch models). I think this is really interesting.

 

[R2FX]

not really unfortunately - while CPU's might be same generations, there is different chipset on the motherboard...due to my tinkering with eGPU I know that Thunderbolt 2 has very different implementation on your machine than it has on my mid 2014 MBP 15" despite being the same connector

it's quite an achievement to get this far I'd say

 

[ashryver16]

Yea i just thought maybe since you can get it to work on older non supported hardware maybe it could be done with this model too. I’m considering a success where i got

 

[AnonMac50]

Still interested in this? I'm thinking you'd need to mix and match with the kexts. Or maybe add the device IDs to the kexts?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

after tinkering around and removing some Intel kexts and PlatformSupport.plist I managed to get my rMBP to boot OS X Mavericks from the external USB drive successfully to the desktop, but with the following issues:

Could you please provide some more details on what you did? I'd love to do something similar on my 2015 MBA, but I've never managed to get the desktop to boot at all.

I would recommend looking at some Hackintosh drivers—for sound, voodoohda is a pretty safe bet.

 

[AnonMac50]

Could you please provide some more details on what you did? I'd love to do something similar on my 2015 MBA, but I've never managed to get the desktop to boot at all.

I would recommend looking at some Hackintosh drivers—for sound, voodoohda is a pretty safe bet.

You might be able to, but I don’t think it would do much. The 2015 MBA has 5th generation Intel CPUs I believe (similar to the 13” MBP), whereas OP’s 2015 MBP is a 15” model, and that has the Intel’s 4th generation CPUs, which is what the late 2013 and the 2014 MBP models shipped with, and they were both able to run Mavericks. For that reason, running it should be easier.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

You might be able to, but I don’t think it would do much. The 2015 MBA has 5th generation Intel CPUs I believe (similar to the 13” MBP), whereas OP’s 2015 MBP is a 15” model, and that has the Intel’s 4th generation CPUs, which is what the late 2013 and the 2014 MBP models shipped with, and they were both able to run Mavericks. For that reason, running it should be easier.

At least one person over at InsanelyMac was able to boot Mavericks on a Broadwell system, which is why I think it should be possible, in theory.

I just can't get the OS to even start booting—it flashes a ? sign immediately after I select the Mavericks installer USB, with not even a fraction of a second in between. If I could see a kernel panic, I'd be happy, but it seems some check stops it from trying.

I've gotten Snow Leopard to boot on a 2012 MBA (without graphics acceleration, mind you), it feels like this should be easier.

 

[AnonMac50]

At least one person over at InsanelyMac was able to boot Mavericks on a Broadwell system, which is why I think it should be possible, in theory.

I just can't get the OS to even start booting—it flashes ? sign immediately after I select the Mavericks installer USB, with not even a fraction of a second in between. If I could see a kernel panic, I'd be happy, but it seems some check stops it from trying.

I've gotten Snow Leopard to boot on a 2012 MBA (without graphics acceleration, mind you), it feels like this should be easier.

Hmm, have you tried booting into verbose mode to see what the error is? Have you modified the plist files to add support for your Mac's board ID and model identifier? If you get past that stage you might need a modified kernel.

I too have installed unsupported systems on newer Macs, and usually they would work. The latest one I tried though was my late 2013 MBP with Mountain Lion. I actually got it to boot up but only until the moment it should load the interface where it then freezes. I'd need to look into it more, but before I set up the plist files I would immediately get stuck at the ? sign.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Hmm, have you tried booting into verbose mode to see what the error is?

Actually, I can't get it to verbose boot from the USB at all. I need to hold down alt in order to get the prompt to select a disk, so I can choose my USB key with the Mavericks installer. Holding down v as well (either initially or at the disk select screen) doesn't seem to have any effect. Is there some trick to it?

Have you modified the plist files to add support for your Mac's board ID and model identifier?

Nope, this was the kind of info I needed! Is it platformSupport.plist?

I've actually tried a couple custom kernels, they haven't had an impact.

I have much more experience using Hackintosh for this kind of stuff, where you have a special bootloader to handle these sorts of things. Clover lets you fake your CPU model or board id, add boot flags, and inject custom kernel extensions, and I feel a little handicapped without it.

 

[AnonMac50]

Actually, I can't get it to verbose boot from the USB at all. I need to hold down alt in order to get the prompt to select a disk, so I can choose my USB key with the Mavericks installer. Holding down v as well (either initially or at the disk select screen) doesn't seem to have any effect. Is there some trick to it?


Nope, this was the kind of info I needed! Is it platformSupport.plist?

I've actually tried a couple custom kernels, they haven't had an impact.

I have much more experience using Hackintosh for this kind of stuff, where you have a special bootloader to handle these sorts of things. Clover lets you fake your CPU model or board id, add boot flags, and inject custom kernel extensions, and I feel a little handicapped without it.

Yeah, I used to work on Hackintoshes before (still do occasionally).

If you’re trying to boot the installer then you would need to modify three different platformSupport.plist files. Can’t remember off of the top of my head but I think there was another file as well that you would need to modify, usually located next to platform support.

For verbose boot, are you pressing and holding the CMD-V keys while selecting the disk? Either way, another option is to modify the com.apple.boot.plist file.

 

[azerty78]

hello what are the files to modify and their directory please because I have been trying to install it for months.
FYI I have a mid-2015 15-inch macbook pro retina with an i7 processor with a graphics card
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB.



Thank you for your reply

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Okay, so I actually got pretty darn far with my 2015 Macbook Air. Had to use a custom kernel with broadwell support.

How can I attempt to boot an older version of macOS than my hardware supports?

I have a 2015 Macbook Air. The earliest version of macOS this model ever shipped with was OS X 10.10 Yosemite. However, I want to try installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks, because Yosemite makes my eyes ...

apple.stackexchange.com

I’m confident I could get the keyboard and trackpad working if I put in enough time—I have no idea how, but they’re the same damn hardware as the 2014 MBA, it’s got to be doable.

But the dealbreaker I think is graphics acceleration—I don’t see how I could ever fix that. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, let me know!

 

[Eco Blanker]

I’m confident I could get the keyboard and trackpad working if I put in enough time—I have no idea how, but they’re the same damn hardware as the 2014 MBA, it’s got to be doable.

The recent MacBooks use the SPI and USB interface for the keyboard and trackpad. Maybe Mavericks doesn't support the newer SPI interface on the 2015 MBA? Try forcing Mavericks to use USB instead of SPI, or get the EFI firmware to not initialize SPI.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

The recent MacBooks use the SPI and USB interface for the keyboard and trackpad. Maybe Mavericks doesn't support the newer SPI interface on the 2015 MBA? Try forcing Mavericks to use USB instead of SPI, or get the EFI firmware to not initialize SPI.

Super interesting—that's probably it, the theory fits!

I don't think I want to work further on the keyboard and trackpad unless I can actually get graphics acceleration working, though. Because I have a feeling graphics acceleration is going to be impossible, and without that, everything else is somewhat pointless.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Just because I would have felt remiss to not exhaust every possible option, I tried copying the the following Broadwell Graphics kexts from Yosemite into /System/Library/Extensions on Mavericks:

• AppleIntelBDWGraphics.kext
• AppleIntelBDWGraphicsFramebuffer.kext
• AppleIntelBDWGraphicsGLDriver.bundle
• AppleIntelBDWGraphicsVADriver.bundle
• AppleIntelBDWGraphicsVAME.bundle

This actually... might have almost worked? My GPU now correctly shows up as an "Intel HD Graphics 6000" in System Information, and everything does seem to feel just a little bit smoother... but I still clearly don't have full graphics acceleration.

Digging deeper, it looks like what happened is AppleIntelBDWGraphicsFramebuffer managed to load, but AppleIntelBDWGraphics did not. And the reason it didn't load is:

kxld[com.apple.driver.AppleIntelBDWGraphics]: The __ZTV19IGAccelEventMachine was not patched because its parent, the __ZTV24IOAccelEventMachineFast2, was not found.

Aka, the driver needs a kernel symbol which doesn't exist in Mavericks, aka this isn't going to work and I really need to stop now...

 

[azerty78]

hello in my bootable USB only install osx mavervicks.app or its the kext to modify


thank you

 

[Wowfunhappy]

hello in my bootable USB only install osx mavervicks.app or its the kext to modify


thank you

That means you have a bad installer USB. It likely won't work on any computer.

Did you make it yourself with createinstallmedia? Any errors?

 

[MBAir2010]

good for you getting mavericks on a 2015 MacBook, i detest that OSX but would like to get a new intel MacBook air and run Mojave on that.

 

[wagui]

Has anyone found a solution for the trackpad and keyboard not working in the mba 2017?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Uh, a 2017 MBA is not going to boot Mavericks at all.