macOS 10.12 Sierra Unsupported Macs Thread

[fischersd]

Cool. That works.

By the way, I think that's a Russian utility. Once made the mistake of actually going to his/her homepage in .ru and got spammed and hacked. Nothing against russians...just make sure you're fully virus protected when going abroad. But I believe mac.softpedia.com does a decent job of filtering things like that.

So ambient light on mbp 5,3 solution...this was too easy Thanks again.

Heh. Yep, I know it's Russian. It's a good utility...saves keystrokes, but sure don't go to any of their websites.

 

[aquaticflow]

The ID for "Install OS X El Capitan" is 1018109117

It denied me (I must have installed using that GM installer last year) oh well, guess that will have to do.. I'm sure it's adequate..

 

[pkouame]

Heh. Yep, I know it's Russian. It's a good utility...saves keystrokes, but sure don't go to any of their websites.

Yes. Used it on first login after my initial Sierra patch on this mbp 5,3. --> after the initial churn of the first install, I was alarmed to find barely 1G left of my original 8GB. With almost no apps (except Activity Monitor) loaded. Yikes! Restarted and still wasn't pleased with my memory footprint. After running kext-utility as simple maintenance, I recovered almost 2G of free space. Just crunching and rebuilding kext caches I guess. Made a big difference for me. One of these days, I'll sit down and properly tune my entire kext environment, I'm sure there's tons of stuff I no longer need to load.

 

[harlleysathler]

Sorry to bother you again, bUT can anyone tell me a model of wifi+bluetooth that works on sierra? I will buy to replace the stock unsupported on my mini 3,1.

Thank you all and, again, sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[dosdude1]

Sorry to bother you again, bUT can anyone tell me a model of wifi+bluetooth that works on sierra? I will buy to replace the stock unsupported on my mini 3,1.

Thank you all and, again, sorry for the inconvenience.

You can get one from a Late-2009 MacBook model A1342, take the casing off, and it'll fit in just fine.

 

[Smacky]

The patcher has an issue. It's not patching the AmbientLightSensorHID.plugin currently. (that's why it's not enabled, despite you selecting that).

Edit: If you look on the USB drive that has the patcher, under /Applications/Utilities/macOS Post Install/Contents/Resources you'll find the AmbientLightSensorHID.plugin

You can use kext utility to apply it to your system.

Thank you @fischersd and @pkouame for finding such a quick solution!
Hats off to you both

 

[foxlet]

For those who want an UI to switch to AUS in order to get further Sierra updates, now exists AUSEnabler

After selecting a catalog, just open the App Store and update away!
*Note: The app requires a working internet connection to fetch the latest catalog URLs.

http://swdist.furcode.co/bin/AUSEnabler.zip

 

[pkouame]

For those who want an UI to switch to AUS in order to get further Sierra updates, now exists AUSEnabler

After selecting a catalog, just open the App Store and update away!

http://swdist.furcode.co/bin/AUSEnabler.zip

Very nice! An option to reset to default a la --clear-catalog (even though that will effectively silence updates on unsupported machines) would make it feature complete. Just for some who maybe a little antsy about the whole thing...capturing some logs even just to console is always helpful for debugging. Just my 2 cents...feel free to ignore.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

 

[foxlet]

Very nice! An option to reset to default a la --clear-catalog (even though that will effectively silence updates on unsupported machines) would make it feature complete. Just for some who maybe a little antsy about the whole thing...capturing some logs even just to console is always helpful for debugging. Just my 2 cents...feel free to ignore.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

That function is already in there, just not in that screenshot.

 

[pkouame]

That's function is already in there, just not in that screenshot.

Way ahead of us all...as always.

 

[aquaticflow]

For those who want an UI to switch to AUS in order to get further Sierra updates, now exists AUSEnabler

After selecting a catalog, just open the App Store and update away!

http://swdist.furcode.co/bin/AUSEnabler.zip

Not that I'm afraid of the command line, but nice work! I will probability use this when I switch back to 10.12

 

[pkouame]

Thank you @fischersd and @pkouame for finding such a quick solution!
Hats off to you both

Really didn't do much, was all @aquaticflow and @dosdude1 who updated his tool ... but I'll take the kudos anyway (hard to come by these days)
By the way, did you fix your problem using one of these methods? Is your ambient sensor now working for keyboard and screen?
Haven't touched mine yet, but would be good to know for others in our boat.

 

[Digital64]

Could you boot into El Cap and let me know which Kext is handling the WiFi there? If it's using the same BRCM43XX kext, we might be able to create another injector for the BCM4321 or spoof it as BCM4322.

Hello First time here, but a read most of the threads here and wanted to add my experience:

I have Three Mac Pro : 3,1 2Quad cores of 3,0Ghz with Capitan, a 4,1 flashed to 5,1 2Quad cores 2,8Ghz and 24Gigs of 1333 Ram and at Home a 4,1 Solo Quad core 2,66 16Gigas of 1066 Ram also flashed to 5,1.

First two have a Atheros Ar5bxb72 "3" antennas WiFi working great at 300Mbits/s . My Home MacPro has a BCM94321 that only works with Capitan at 130Mbits/s when booting from el Capitan HD . I Installed Sierra, downloaded from apple site, on a separated HD, When booting from Sierra my WiFi card it appears not present "no hardware," as if hardware was turned off/ or disabled :-(

GOOD News i got it back working copy the IO80211Family.kext from Capitan ( noted 5 Plugins ) and installed to Sierra (which had missing the AppleAirPortBrcm43224.kext plugin) installed with Kext Utility 2 ,a very handy tool !! rebooted and WiFi is back again !! (note a had do disable SIP from recovery via terminal)

Hope this Helps others

 

[Smacky]

Really didn't do much, was all @aquaticflow and @dosdude1 who updated his tool ... but I'll take the kudos anyway (hard to come by these days)
By the way, did you fix your problem using one of these methods? Is your ambient sensor now working for keyboard and screen?
Haven't touched mine yet, but would be good to know for others in our boat.

Yes mine appears to be working as expected now. Took it outside into the sun and screen brightness went to max, back indoors and brightness turns back down

 

[sejm]

You have one part wrong, the update binaries still come intact from http://swcdn.apple.com/, not my servers (because that's just too much bandwidth and storage for a project with no budget) and Apple's CDN is used from when you start the download until you install the package and restart. You can check the sucatalog itself by opening it with a text editor.

Thanks for the amazing work!

Any chance you can release the source of your tool, so we can self-host the feed?

 

[pkouame]

Hello First time here, but a read most of the threads here and wanted to add my experience:

I have Three Mac Pro : 3,1 2Quad cores of 3,0Ghz with Capitan, a 4,1 flashed to 5,1 2Quad cores 2,8Ghz and 24Gigs of 1333 Ram and at Home a 4,1 Solo Quad core 2,66 16Gigas of 1066 Ram also flashed to 5,1.

First two have a Atheros Ar5bxb72 "3" antennas WiFi working great at 300Mbits/s . My Home MacPro has a BCM94321 that only works with Capitan at 130Mbits/s when booting from el Capitan HD . I Installed Sierra, downloaded from apple site, on a separated HD, When booting from Sierra my WiFi card it appears not present "no hardware," as if hardware was turned off/ or disabled :-(

GOOD News i got it back working copy the IO80211Family.kext from Capitan ( noted 5 Plugins ) and installed to Sierra (which had missing the AppleAirPortBrcm43224.kext plugin) installed with Kext Utility 2 ,a very handy tool !! rebooted and WiFi is back again !! (note a had do disable SIP from recovery via terminal)

Hope this Helps others

Awesome news. Don't have 3 cMPs (you lucky duck ) just an aging 3,1 . Could you list the 5 plugins kexts you replaced? There are many here either having wifi issues or wanting to upgrade their cards. Also is continuity fully operational on your 3,1. Thanks for sharing. And great wifi bandwidth by the way! Where are you located?

 

[KernkraftX360]

I'm happy to announced that I have finally upgraded my 2008 3,1 2008 Mac Pro, to macOS Sierra. Thanks so much to +dosdude1 and +pkouame for their never ending support on the advices, tutorials and methodologies to complete this upgrade. Although I had an issue with my GT730, which produces intense graphics glitches to a point where no work can be done on the mac pro due to these subsequent issues with Nvidia web driver -f01. Thus, replacing it with my older GT640 manages to remove the graphics glitches.

I will return to my GT730 when Nvidia has come up with the latest update to eradicate the problem. Again, macOS Sierra work wonders on this machine. I do not know why Apple decides to remove the support officially. Great work by +dosdude1 and +foxlet for their development to continue support on these legacy machines. Cheers and have a wonderful evening.​

 

[peerapon]

Hi, Just to Thanks @dosdude1 and @foxlet for the great tools that actually extended my Late 2008 MacBook Pro 5,1 another 1-2 years.

I successfully installed Sierra on MacBook Pro 5,1 Late 2008 Unibody without finding any problem (yet).

My MBP spec is with 8GB RAM & 230GB SSD.

Additionally, I was try using SD Card first, but found an error, it couldn't boot.
So I changed it to USB FlashDrive and got success.

Thanks again.

 

[RumorzGuy]

Folks, just to let everyone know, for the time being, I have abandoned using macOS Sierra on my early 2009 iMac, and I have returned to using the last build of El Capitan.

I won't take up all of your time with the details, but suffice it to say that I had a very nasty experience with the 10.12.1 update this morning which resulted in my keyboard, my Magic Mouse, and even my wired mouse becoming totally inoperable, so that I could not log into my active system.

I tried everything multiple times: resetting the SMC, zapping the PRAM, booting into Recovery Mode, and trying to boot into Safe Mode.

Ultimately, I had to install Mountain Lion on another external partition, and then from there reformat my internal hard drive, and do a clean install of El Capitan.

I have been at this all day working on getting everything back in order, and I am still not done yet, and I am tired.

This old iMac -- almost eight years old -- doesn't have too much time left on it, so I will be sticking with El Capitan until I can afford to purchase a new machine. Everything I have been through with Sierra on this machine just isn't worth the hassle for features which I really don't need, and which I even wouldn't use.

Thanks again to those of you who have worked so hard, and invested so much of your time, to help us get Sierra installed on our machines.

The question is, given the general age of our machines, and the problems and challenges we have had to endure, in order to get it working on our machines, is a Sierra upgrade really worth it? Looking at Apple's list of selling points for Sierra, I have come to the conclusion that at least in my case, the Sierra upgrade has not been worth it. Thus I have abandoned it, and I in fact have a peace about it.

Not only that, but because I performed a clean install of El Capitan, and also stopped using a number of apps and system enhancements, I have noticed a renewed snappiness in my machine, particularly in how fast apps load now. So again, I am pleased.

 

[humar]

Successfully updated my Late 2008 Alluminiun Unibody to Sierra with @dosdude1's patch tool!
Just a simple question: will I get .1, .2, and so on Sierra updates without doing nothing or not?

 

[dosdude1]

Successfully updated my Late 2008 Alluminiun Unibody to Sierra with @dosdude1's patch tool!
Just a simple question: will I get .1, .2, and so on Sierra updates without doing nothing or not?

Yeah, if you install the Software Update Patch in the post-install tool, the system will automatically receive system updates (thanks to @foxlet). It will also install a tool in your /Applications/Utilities folder to revert to stock settings, or apply the patch (custom catalog URL) again.

 

[thewebgal]

What graphics card do you use on your Mac pro 2008? The nvidia web driver that's made for sierra giving me graphics glitches.

2009 macPro here - 4,1 patched to show as 5,1 -
In June I swapped my original NVida 512 card for a Mac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB -
its working fine for me!

 

[pkouame]

Folks, just to let everyone know, for the time being, I have abandoned using macOS Sierra on my early 2009 iMac, and I have returned to using the last build of El Capitan.

I won't take up all of your time with the details, but suffice it to say that I had a very nasty experience with the 10.12.1 update this morning which resulted in my keyboard, my Magic Mouse, and even my wired mouse becoming totally inoperable, so that I could not log into my active system.

I tried everything multiple times: resetting the SMC, zapping the PRAM, booting into Recovery Mode, and trying to boot into Safe Mode.

Ultimately, I had to install Mountain Lion on another external partition, and then from there reformat my internal hard drive, and do a clean install of El Capitan.

I have been at this all day working on getting everything back in order, and I am still not done yet, and I am tired.

This old iMac -- almost eight years old -- doesn't have too much time left on it, so I will be sticking with El Capitan until I can afford to purchase a new machine. Everything I have been through with Sierra on this machine just isn't worth the hassle for features which I really don't need, and which I even wouldn't use.

Thanks again to those of you who have worked so hard, and invested so much of your time, to help us get Sierra installed on our machines.

The question is, given the general age of our machines, and the problems and challenges we have had to endure, in order to get it working on our machines, is a Sierra upgrade really worth it? Looking at Apple's list of selling points for Sierra, I have come to the conclusion that at least in my case, the Sierra upgrade has not been worth it. Thus I have abandoned it, and I in fact have a peace about it.

Not only that, but because I performed a clean install of El Capitan, and also stopped using a number of apps and system enhancements, I have noticed a renewed snappiness in my machine, particularly in how fast apps load now. So again, I am pleased.

Ouch! And thanks for sharing and participating actively here. I'm sure you've helped many.

I have two friends with iMacs circa your specs.
Both have gone through complete system board swaps direct from Apple (with their apologies) In one case three consecutive swaps! All related to poor heat dissipation, fried some chips...

I would seriously consider running a hardware diagnostic. It can be a little involved, but generally worth it as it cycles through a very extensive number of component checks. They really don't build them like they used to, not a rant. Just a fact.

PM if you need some details on how to run a full system board check up, it's way beyond the disk utility permissions repair. Really an engineering tool that even Genius bar brainiacs sometimes don't know about. How to run the diagnostic depends on your system, but it seems like you've kept the original install discs. Google is always your friend. Ran one a few months ago on a friend's 13 macbookpro 2012 with a fan that wouldn't stop. Turns out some key heat sensors malfunctioned. Apple replaced his board also. For a small price though since it was out of warranty.

Glad you were able to restore.

 

[Blackriton]

Yeah, if you install the Software Update Patch in the post-install tool, the system will automatically receive system updates (thanks to @foxlet). It will also install a tool in your /Applications/Utilities folder to revert to stock settings, or apply the patch (custom catalog URL) again.

I looked the contents of the last version 4.1.2 of your Patcher and I noticed inside the ressources the
Software Update Patch Toggle app. included. I have already successfully patched my MacPro 3,1 (early 2008) with an older version of your patcher. Could I just extract and run this app. to be able to upgrade directly via the AppStore when the 10.12.1 upgrade will be available ?????? Is it the right procedure or its better to rerun
the complete PostInstall patcher ???????? As I'm not as a good expert than you, I prefer to ask before getting in trouble.....!!!!!!!!!! And great thanks for your amazing work as my MacPro is running perfectly actually.......!!!

 

[KernkraftX360]

I looked the contents of the last version 4.1.2 of your Patcher and I noticed inside the ressources the
Software Update Patch Toggle app. included. I have already successfully patched my MacPro 3,1 (early 2008) with an older version of your patcher. Could I just extract and run this app. to be able to upgrade directly via the AppStore when the 10.12.1 upgrade will be available ?????? Is it the right procedure or its better to rerun
the complete PostInstall patcher ???????? As I'm not as a good expert than you, I prefer to ask before getting in trouble.....!!!!!!!!!! And great thanks for your amazing work as my MacPro is running perfectly actually.......!!!

I have the same exact question @dosdude1 do we need to upgrade the Mac Pro 2008 again with the new patch tool to receive future updates? Please let me know. Or is there a method to do it even after updating to sierra with your older patcher?