32bit efi on 2007 iMac, can this be hacked?

[ADDvanced]

Hi, I have a 2006 Mac Pro 1.1 (3.0x8/32gig/7970/ssds) that I wound up installing Pike's .efi bootloader on, running win7x64 and El Cap on. Works awesome.

I just finished setting up my garage, and found a nice home for my old 2007 iMac, 2.0 C2D, with the rare 7600GT upgrade and 2 gigs ram. Anyway, the thing works fine but the issue I'm having is that I can't find a supported modern browser for 10.6.8. I started searching about workarounds, but most of hte info is related to Mac Pros. Can I do the exact same type of boot.efi modifications to install a newer OS on this thing?

All I need it for is browsing for info while working in the garage.

 

[redheeler]

I installed OS X Mountain Lion on my iMac 6,1 (also has the 7600 GT) using MLPostFactor and have been running the latest version of Firefox on it despite no official support from Mozilla (see this thread).

I would not recommend installing any version of OS X later than Mountain Lion as you will lose GPU acceleration on the 7600 GT (this isn't an issue on 2006 Mac Pros with aftermarket/upgraded MacOS-compatible GPUs); but the iMac 6,1 will run a current version of Linux and Firefox/Chrome (web browsing works well in Linux Mint, only issue I've noticed is some page tearing while scrolling).

 

[ADDvanced]

I installed OS X Mountain Lion on my iMac 6,1 (also has the 7600 GT) using MLPostFactor and have been running the latest version of Firefox on it despite no official support from Mozilla (see this thread).

I would not recommend installing any version of OS X later than Mountain Lion as you will lose GPU acceleration on the 7600 GT (this isn't an issue on 2006 Mac Pros with aftermarket/upgraded MacOS-compatible GPUs); but the iMac 6,1 will run a current version of Linux and Firefox/Chrome (web browsing works well in Linux Mint, only issue I've noticed is some page tearing while scrolling).

I have 10.6.8 currently. It runs great, it's just that there are no modern browsers that work anymore. Why would anything post 10.8 lose the 7600gt drivers? Could I just move the GPU drivers from 10.6.8 to a newer OS?

Not really interested in running linux.

After my Mac Pro 1.1 being so fantastic to upgrade, I am a bit disappointed I can't do the same thing with this iMac. Any other ideas?

 

[redheeler]

I have 10.6.8 currently. It runs great, it's just that there are no modern browsers that work anymore. Why would anything post 10.8 lose the 7600gt drivers? Could I just move the GPU drivers from 10.6.8 to a newer OS?

Unfortunately no, the kexts won't work in a newer OS than Mountain Lion.

Not really interested in running linux.

After my Mac Pro 1.1 being so fantastic to upgrade, I am a bit disappointed I can't do the same thing with this iMac. Any other ideas?

OS X Mountain Lion will run a lot of newer apps that Snow Leopard can't including the latest version of Firefox as I already mentioned.

As for hardware upgrades, there are still some that are worthwhile. You can put in up to 4 GB RAM, though the OS will only be able to use 3 GB (hardware limitation as far as I can tell). You can also put in an SSD. I've done both of these for my own iMac 6,1 and both made a difference even running OS X Mountain Lion.

 

[ADDvanced]

I'm really struggling to install 10.8.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...n-imac-6-1-with-mac-post-factor-help.2096830/

 

[DarkSel]

The 2007 iMac should support up to El Capitan officially. I upgraded mine to Mavericks without issues a while back.

 

[redheeler]

I'm really struggling to install 10.8.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...n-imac-6-1-with-mac-post-factor-help.2096830/

In my post I clearly wrote MLPostFactor, not MacPostFactor. This is because when I tried using MacPostFactor on my iMac 6,1 it wouldn't successfully boot, and I had to use the older MLPostFactor to create the installer.

To save you some time, here's a direct link to download MLPostFactor.
[doublepost=1514074787][/doublepost]

The 2007 iMac should support up to El Capitan officially. I upgraded mine to Mavericks without issues a while back.

The OP has an iMac 6,1 which is actually the Late 2006 model, not Mid 2007. The Late 2006 24" is the only iMac model which shipped with a GeForce 7300 GT or 7600 GT GPU.

 

[ADDvanced]

In my post I clearly wrote MLPostFactor, not MacPostFactor. This is because when I tried using MacPostFactor on my iMac 6,1 it wouldn't successfully boot, and I had to use the older MLPostFactor to create the installer.

To save you some time, here's a direct link to download MLPostFactor.
[doublepost=1514074787][/doublepost]
The OP has an iMac 6,1 which is actually the Late 2006 model, not Mid 2007. The Late 2006 24" is the only iMac model which shipped with a GeForce 7300 GT or 7600 GT GPU.

Derp. Thanks, I thought you just did it so long ago that you did it before the name change. I'll retry again with that version. Thanks man! Much appreciation!

 

[ADDvanced]

Do I need 10.7 for this? ML post factor won't run on 10.6.8, but when I try to run it on my macpro (el cap) to patch the fresh 10.8 install USB, it just hangs.

 

[ADDvanced]

Ok, I tried got it working, but it still wouldn't boot. At this point I wanted to just start over, so I wiped the drive, but then read that I need the mountain lion app in the applications folder. Is there a way to just do a clean install of 10.8, not an upgrade? Because that's what I need to do now.

 

[ADDvanced]

Okay, started over, cleaned HD and installed 10.6.8 again

Trying this now:

Using MLPostfactor from bash script

A simpler way would be to use the MLPostfactor script written by pjherron available from github. With this script, the steps to upgrade to 10.8.4 from 10.6.8 on your Mac Mini can be summarized as below:

1. Download MLPostFactor 0.3 and unzip it to desktop
2. Copy the ‘Install OS X Mountain Lion.app’ folder from your 10.8.4 installer disc to the Applications folder
3. Create a 8 GB or larger partition on the target drive to host the patched installer. The volume label should be Install and it should be automatically mounted at /Volumes/Install
4. Create another partition, 20GB or more, on the target drive where you will install 10.8.4. Alternative, if you do not need the original Snow Leopard partition, you do not need to create this partition and can simply choose to install on the Snow Leopard partition later, losing all existing data.
5. Run the upgradesl2ml.sh script and give it 30 minutes to an hour to complete. When done, reboot the machine and choose to boot from the 10.8.4 installer partition just created
6. When prompted, choose to install 10.8.4 on the partition created in step 4, or simply overwrite your Snow Leopard partition. It is highly recommended to format the partition and perform a clean install – do not perform an upgrade as there are known issues.
7. Let the installer run. The process will either end in an error or a white screen – this is normal. Reboot the machine when this happens.
8. Choose to boot from the 10.8.4 installer partition again (not the partition where you installed 10.8.4 to).
9. When the installer finishes starting up, choose MLPostfactor from the Utilities menu and let it repair the partition where you’ve just installed 10.8.4
10. When the repair is done, reboot your system and choose to boot from your fresh Mountain Lion partition. It should boot normally
11. Done, you can now enjoy Mountain Lion on your Mac Mini 2006!

http://www.toughdev.com/content/201...in-lion-10-8-4-on-a-late-2006-mac-mini-a1176/

It seems like most writeups are from a 10.7 machine

 

[ADDvanced]

Okay, I'm not doing that because I can't figure out scripts. I am doing this:

http://genjit.su/wp/install-mlpostfactor-from-snow-leopard/

This is where I am getting confused:


Step 3. Patch the installer.
Once it’s done, enter the following command in terminal.
replace Graphics_2 with Graphics for pre-10.8.1 (AFAIK — didn’t attempt to install pre-10.8.1)

for PACKAGE in Components.pkg Graphics_2.pkg Kernel.pkg; do; sudo installer -package $PACKAGE -target /Volumes/Installer Disk Name; done

This will install the remaining patches.


Can anyone help me with this part?

 

[ADDvanced]

HA! GOT IT! Just booted and it worked perfectly. In case anyone else ever needs this, this is what I did:

sudo installer -package components.mpkg -target /Volumes/Install

sudo installer -package Graphics_2.mpkg -target /Volumes/Install

sudo installer -package Kernel.mpkg -target /Volumes/Install

Once I installed those, I rebooted from the INSTALL drive, installed 10.8, then ran ML post factor to patch up the fresh Ml install. PITA but done!