Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher, i have upgraded my MBP 4,1 from Catalina to Big Sur. Performance is much greater compared to Catalina. But at the same time, this upgrade bringed a confusing question to my mind. To my knowledge, my machine is using an Intel ICH8-M AHCI SATA Controller which is capable of SATA II theoretically. And next generation of my machines actually used the same controller and were upgraded to SATA II capabilities with an EFI Firmware Update released by Apple. So my question is, can we upgrade to SATA II in MBP 4,1 using the kext of SATA II Controller for MBP 5,1? I remember specially creating the EFI for the OpenCore when I was Hackintoshing, so I think this could be possible and would be an major upgrade.
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SATA II Upgrade for Macbook Pro 4,1 ?
- Thread starter mbp41guy
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A couple of things:
I’ve put in a request to the mods to have this thread moved over to the Early Intel Macs forum, where it will receive a much more involved audience for the MBP4,1 (of which I have one running right in front of me).
The other is a question on which kext — whichever OS X/macOS iteration you’re running on it, OCLP or no — you’re referring to here. My understanding, from having worked extensively on OS X versions for which the MBP4,1 was designed, is the OS will load only those kexts for which applicable hardware is found and how the firmware reports that hardware. The problem here, however, is this is an EFI-level issue Apple didn’t bother to redress with a firmware update for the 4,1. Perhaps there might be a way to reverse-engineer the EFI bundled with the 4,1 to recognize that the SATA controller is SATA-II-capable, but I’m unaware of anyone having done that (so far).
