MBP 1,1-10,2 Can't upgrade an early 2008 Mac Pro using El Capitan to Catalina

[Herby Sherby]

It was suggested I posted my question into this forum - here goes:

I have two Macs. One is a year old and up to date with OS etc. The other is still running El Capitan, as I have been using Photoshop and the CS4 Suite, which requires 32 bit processing. As soon as I upgrade, it will switch to 64 and I will lose it. I can't afford the ridiculous subscription as an occasional user and as I am now proficient with Affinity ( the Mac alternative to Photoshop) the time has come to upgrade my OS. I am now having a lot of problems with my old search engine versions of Safari and Firefox and so I wanted to upgrade to Catalina.

My Mac is Mac Pro ( early 2008).
Processor 2x3.2 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
Memory os 16GB
Fusion Drive
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5870
Free storage on Fusion is 628GB
Free storage on H Disc is 117 GB

When I go to the App store and try and download Catalina, I get a message stating "This version of macOS 10.15.7 cannot be installed on this computer.” When I press the “ Learn More” icon nothing happens. I am running Safari Version 11.1.2 (11605.3.8.1)

I am a musician and not that knowledgeable on the serious computing technical side, but I was under the impression I can’t simply upgrade Safari on its own? I think it needs to be supported with the new OS software? Anyway, I want to upgrade and wondered if anyone on the forum could help me please? Do I require some revised hardware?

Thanks Herby

 

[reppresident]

i believe you need to upgrade some hardware first to improve your machine with those os's. gpu need to be metal compatible and your wi fi / Bluetooth chip need to be exchanged too ( bt 4.0 or 4.2 )to work with those os's. sata ssd its adviseable too, but with the right adapter, you could use nvme ssd instead, witch is way more faster than sata ssd. then, you should look for OCLP and read about. its really easy to make this work with your machine and use the os's you do like in your machine. hope this help you. An usb hub 2.0 or higher is adviseable too since hot swap known trouble from big sur upward.

 

[Herby Sherby]

i believe you need to upgrade some hardware first to improve your machine with those os's. gpu need to be metal compatible and your wi fi / Bluetooth chip need to be exchanged too ( bt 4.0 or 4.2 )to work with those os's. sata ssd its adviseable too, but with the right adapter, you could use nvme ssd instead, witch is way more fast than sata ssd. then, you should look for OCLP and read about. its really easy to make this work with your machine and use the os's you do like in your machine. hope this help you.

Thanks very much - that all makes a lot off sense and is very helpful. I had looked at downloading a patch to enable Catalina but wasn't sure about the hardware aspects. I think it may be getting too complex for me, so I may have to hand it over to an expert to do, but at least I can save - and continue to use - the machine. Thanks again.

 

[reppresident]

its not that hard tho, believe me. you definitely could do it yourself. just backup everything and calmly read the oclp docs
Use another apfs volume or do it in another drive to save your main system intact.

 

[Herby Sherby]

its not that hard tho, believe me. you definitely could do it yourself. just backup everything and calmly read the oclp docs

Thanks - I will certainly give the docs a thorough read before deciding. Everything is now fully backed up well, so I am ready to go as they say!

 

[joevt]

My Mac Pro 2008 had all the macOS versions from 10.4 to 13.

OCLP is not needed unless you're going to macOS 11 Big Sur and later.
For 10.12 Sierra to 10.15 Catalina, use the dosdude1 patcher that is made for each macOS.
Each of them has instructions for downloading and installing macOS.

You don't need to do anything with bluetooth if you use USB keyboard/mouse.

I would get rid of the fusion drive. The Mac Pro 2008 can connect up to 6 SATA SSDs. They will work at SATA II (3g) speeds (≈250 MB/s). You don't need NVMe unless you need > 1500 MB/s. NVMe doesn't work before High Sierra.

You can add USB 3.1 gen 2 for 1060 MB/s. This also has macOS limits.

The Mac Pro 2008 can support up to 64 GB of RAM but you need to set an nvram boot argument to limit that to 62 GB.

An Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 might be the best GPU that supports the most number of macOS versions (can work with 10.4 and later and has acceleration from 10.8 to 14?)

Newer GPUs may work except the latest require AVX? They might work with older macOS versions without acceleration. Check compatibility in dosdude1 or OCLP documentation.

 

[Herby Sherby]

Thanks - this is very helpful - especially Nnidia suggestion. Much appreciated.

 

[joevt]

Thanks - this is very helpful - especially Nnidia suggestion. Much appreciated.

My Nvidia was a Mac Edition card. I'm not sure a non-Mac Edition would work as well. A non-Mac Edition might just require a firmware flash. This requires some research.

A GPU might have a UEFI GOP driver. The Mac Pro 2008 requires a UEFI UGA driver. OCLP can load such a driver so you might not need to do a firmware flash. Or the firmware of the Mac Pro 2008 can be modified. There's other threads with information about that.

An RX 580 would perform better.

 

[wicknix]

I am now having a lot of problems with my old search engine versions of Safari and Firefox and so I wanted to upgrade to Catalina.

If thats the only real issue, install 1 or all of these browsers as they still support as far back as 10.7 and are updated frequently.

GitHub - blueboxd/chromium-legacy: Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+

Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+ - blueboxd/chromium-legacy

github.com

GitHub - wicknix/SeaLion: Web browser for MacOS 10.7 - 14.1 and Linux.

Web browser for MacOS 10.7 - 14.1 and Linux. Contribute to wicknix/SeaLion development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Pale Moon downloads

Also if 32bit app support is required, do not upgrade to Catalina. It killed off 32bit support. Stay with 10.14 or lower. Honestly there is nothing wrong with El Capitan, and plenty of software still supports it.

Cheers

 

[Dayo]

When it comes to GPUs, there are two champions to consider so to speak.

1. Nvidia GTX 680: Fully supported on MP31 from 10.8 MountainLion to 11.x BigSur
   1. Usable OOB from 10.7 Lion back to 10.4 Tiger (Unaccelerated but works OK for many uses)
   2. Usable via OCLP from 12.x Monterey to 14.x Sonoma as things stand
2. AMD RX580: Fully supported on MP31 from 10.12 Sierra to 12.x Monterey
   1. Barely usable on 10.9 Mavericks to 10.11 ElCapitan (Unaccelerated and painful to use)
   2. Usable OOB from 10.8 MountainLion back to 10.4 Tiger (Unaccelerated but works OK for many uses)
   3. Usable via OCLP from 13.x Ventura to 14.x Sonoma as things stand

The Nvidia is actually most versatile. Non Mac Edition is easy to flash. Only needs OCLP System patches for Monterey and newer. Vanilla OpenCore will work for BigSur back to Sierra without needing system patches.

RX580 only needs OCLP System patches for Ventura and newer. Vanilla OpenCore will work for Monterey back to Sierra without needing system patches. I have this unit and I assume it will probably be "supported" for as long as Intel Macs go on but with all the AVX stuff coming in, Monterey/Sonoma might be the last an MP31 can run and the "support" will likely be of little use. I am considering freezing mine at BigSur and swapping my RX580 for a GTX680.

DosDude patched Catalina works very well and switching 32-bit support on in Catalina just reqiuires adding a "no32exec=0" boot argument btw. You can add the boot argument to the boot.plist file so that it is always present even after NVRAM resets.

RefindPlus will load with both GPUs without them needing modifications but GTX680 is very easy to flash to get the native picker. The firmware mods for boot pickers are not available for MP31 at this time.

 

[TheShortTimer]

....switching 32-bit support on in Catalina just reqiuires adding a "no32exec=0" boot argument btw. You can add the boot argument to the boot.plist file so that it is always present even after NVRAM resets.

Really - that's all you require to run 32 bit software with Catalina?

 

[Dayo]

Really - that's all you require to run 32 bit software with Catalina?

Yes, in many cases ... especially on the commandline.

What Apple did was to disable 32-bit support in the kernel first without deleting the capability. They then started removing kernel support and deleting libraries later. That flag switches support back on but I suppose you may need, in some cases, to copy a library file back in from Mojave.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Yes, in many cases ... especially on the commandline.

What Apple did was to disable 32-bit support in the kernel first without deleting the capability. They then started removing the libraries later and also the kernel code. That flag switches support back on but I suppose you may need, in some cases, to copy a library file back in from Mojave.

I'm going to try this!

I have a computer with Mojave installed alongside Catalina so it would be easy to copy over the relevant libraries. Thanks for the info.

 

[rin67630]

DosDude patched Catalina works very well and switching 32-bit support on in Catalina just reqiuires adding a "no32exec=0" boot argument btw. You can add the boot argument to the boot.plist file so that it is always present even after NVRAM resets.

Interesting. Have you got another patch to run the offline dictation on Catalina as well?

 

[B S Magnet]

Yes, in many cases ... especially on the commandline.

What Apple did was to disable 32-bit support in the kernel first without deleting the capability. They then started removing kernel support and deleting libraries later. That flag switches support back on but I suppose you may need, in some cases, to copy a library file back in from Mojave.

In the spirit of necromancing a really handy tip, do we (or anyone elsewhere) have an overall or general sense of which libraries/dylibs one should consider bringing over from Mojave to re-enable 32-bit/i386 application functionality in Catalina — particularly so for those binaries wrapped in a typical GUI (e.g., iTunes)?

I’m thinking, given the aforementioned flag to add to boot-args, there can be a way to aggregate the necessary dylibs and frameworks, if any, to a list for easy reference for posterity’s sake.

Cheers.

 

[TheShortTimer]

In the spirit of necromancing a really handy tip, do we (or anyone elsewhere) have an overall or general sense of which libraries/dylibs one should consider bringing over from Mojave to re-enable 32-bit/i386 application functionality in Catalina — particularly so for those binaries wrapped in a typical GUI (e.g., iTunes)?

I've found this piece on the Medium site that might be of help. In particular:

To get the 32-bit libraries back, you will need to copy them over from Mojave (preferably 10.14.6) or add the following prefix when executing the app through the Terminal:

DYLD_ROOT_PATH="\Volumes\<MacOS_Mojave_Root>" ./<YourApp>

Where <MacOS_Mojave_Root> is the path to your Mojave install’s root directory and <YourApp> is the path to your app.

 

[B S Magnet]

I've found this piece on the Medium site that might be of help. In particular:

It is helpful in a similar, general sense of the mechanism behind what needs to happen to make things happy, even if one is launching a 32-bit application via Finder/Dock.

Shy of manually sorting through all system dylibs manually with something like otool, however, this is where itemizing a specific, categorical list of the files in need of copying from Mojave, into Catalina, would take a lot of the guesswork out of it.

 

[TheShortTimer]

It is helpful in a similar, general sense of the mechanism behind what needs to happen to make things happy, even if one is launching a 32-bit application via Finder/Dock.

Shy of manually sorting through all system dylibs manually with something like otool, however, this is where itemizing a specific, categorical list of the files in need of copying from Mojave, into Catalina, would take a lot of the guesswork out of it.

That's the best info that I could find. Everything else that I've come across focuses on using Parallels or a VM session.

 

[Dayo]

do we have a general sense of which libraries/dylibs one should consider bringing over from Mojave?

The idea is not one of there being a standard list to apply across the board but that if one particular item fails, you might be able to look through the error message, identify something, get that thing from Mojave and put it into Catalina.

All said and done, the flag is most useful for running relatively small and/or relatively self contained utilities. These would typically be stuff run from the command line but could be things like drivers for peripherals. Bigger and/or complex programs will probably have more failure points.

The general idea is to try stuff and try to patch if needed. Something like iTunes is probably not going to work out and you might as well stay on Mojave unless you can come up with the Ultimate Universal Catalina 32-bit Patcher of course.

It would great if you could package it such that users just need to double click on it once and the stuff would be put in the right places. That would be really nice.

 

[B S Magnet]

The idea is not one of there being a standard list to apply across the board but that if one particular item fails, you might be able to look through the error message, identify something, get that thing from Mojave and put it into Catalina.

In other words, no, no previous person has gone through to check all necessary libraries brought over from Mojave to restore 32-bit application function in Catalina. That answers this portion of my question. Cheers.

All said and done, the flag is most useful for running relatively small and/or relatively self contained utilities. These would typically be stuff run from the command line but could be things like drivers for peripherals. Bigger and/or complex programs will probably have more failure points.

The general idea is to try stuff and try to patch if needed. Something like iTunes is probably not going to work out and you might as well stay on Mojave unless you can come up with the Ultimate Universal Catalina 32-bit Patcher of course.

It would great if you could package it such that users just need to double click on it once and the stuff would be put in the right places. That would be really nice.

So what you’re getting at is a complete carryover of the libraries which make 32-bit applications function still in Mojave, coupled with the boot-args flag re-enabling the execution of 32-bit binaries, is not feasible [edit: …or not known].

Mention of iTunes relates to a longstanding archival project I’ve been working on for a few decades. iTunes 10.6.3 is the single version of iTunes which works across multiple platforms — big-endian PPC and little-endian Intel — and across every version of OS X/macOS between 10.5.8 and 10.14.6. All but one of my Macs have the means for that, and the archival library is one an external FW800 enclosure (with backups on a file server and a remote copy on the West Coast). It is also a known version of the iTunes database library which works seamlessly with a music application I still use to produce material in Snow Leopard (as subsequent versions of that software brought in a lot of dead weight, tighter, cloud-based integration with iOS-related products, and a UI which drifted from the straightforward clarity of the version I use now).

So there’s all that weighing in my mind when asking this question about Catalina.

My impetus for considering Catalina, if 32-bit application functionality (both command-line-accessed binaries and full-bore applications which present with the GUI and rely on additional support files contained within an .app directory) can be carried over successfully, is to enable the use of those applications, including iTunes 10.6.3, alongside the application whose base support, as of these last few months, requires Catalina or newer (i.e., browsers, Signal, and the like).

So given this, it sounds like “nope, this hasn’t been tried and/or, if it has and succeeded, hasn’t been compiled and shared online.” Which is fine and basically what I needed to know.

 

[TheShortTimer]

So given this, it sounds like “nope, this hasn’t been tried and/or, if it has and succeeded, hasn’t been compiled and shared online.” Which is fine and basically what I needed to know.

Perhaps we should spin this topic off into a dedicated thread.

 

[B S Magnet]

Sloppy start, but done.