macOS 10.12 Sierra Unsupported Macs Thread

[KernkraftX360]

Can anyone help me confirm this issue? :

I have trouble getting connected to Yahoo Messenger on Messages (macOS Sierra) these past days. Would love to hear if others are having the same problem

 

[howiest]

Everything is backed up but I'd rather not go through the trouble of a reinstall without any guarantee that its just not gonna happen again in a few weeks.

Any help or suggestions would be welcome.

Any way you can run DiskWarrior on your Sierra volume? That's the first thing I would do in that predicament.

 

[reilfheim]

Hey there! I have a macbook pro 5,5 and upon checking the instructions I know there should be no issue making this great update. Unfortunately I've hit a wall after step 7 (installing the os) after its reboot. It's now showing a stop sign and when I go to safe mode it shows that the OS is not supported (mac-f2268acb). I'm confused now since I was not expecting this to appear.

I'm currently downloading Yosemite.dmg to recover it, but I was hoping someone who has encountered this problem to give me some pointers to troubleshoot this. I can't access Disk Utility too which is a bummer. I hope I did not just brick it! :,D

 

[dosdude1]

Hey there! I have a macbook pro 5,5 and upon checking the instructions I know there should be no issue making this great update. Unfortunately I've hit a wall after step 7 (installing the os) after its reboot. It's now showing a stop sign and when I go to safe mode it shows that the OS is not supported (mac-f2268acb). I'm confused now since I was not expecting this to appear.

I'm currently downloading Yosemite.dmg to recover it, but I was hoping someone who has encountered this problem to give me some pointers to troubleshoot this. I can't access Disk Utility too which is a bummer. I hope I did not just brick it! :,D

You need to boot off your USB drive a second time and run the post-install patch...

 

[reilfheim]

You need to boot off your USB drive a second time and run the post-install patch...

Thanks for the response! It's fixed ! You're right that I had to boot off my USB drive again. I was just so confused why it wasn't showing on the bootable drive list. So I just replugged the usb and voila - it's there and works again lmao! Thank you!

 

[ampman]

How it Works ?

Added a new feature allowing users to download macOS Sierra from the App Store on unsupported Macs.

 

[rosencraft]

Hi,

.......manually and rebooted my touchpad and keyboard suddenly did not work anymore. I tried to reset smc and to reset pram without success. Also without safe mode and recovery I felt a bit lost.....

It happened again today, (MacBook Pro Mid 2009 15inch 5,3): I booted my macbook pro and my touchpad and keyboard suddenly where not working anymore...
This time at least I had the recovery partition working since I applied the recovery patch.
So far I understood that the problem is due to the Legacy USB Injector Kext not loading correctly.
Only usb peripheral I have connected is the Logitech unifying receiver
The only modification I remember I did to my Sierra OS was to install Toast 15 which in turn installed Soundflower.kext
It seems to me that each time that a new kext (and maybe also launch daemon / launch agent?) is added or deleted by any program the keyboard and touchpad stop working at next boot, is it possible (maybe some cache rebuild is forced)?

So far I have booted into recovery partition and using terminal I disabled SIP with
"csrutil disable" and rebooted but without success.


Can please anyone explain me what commands I have to use in the Recovery terminal to make usb and keyboard work (and Legacy USB Injector Kext work)?

@dosdude1 can you please add two things that will save a lot of time to all people that have this problem?

1) a very short guide using terminal commands in recovery partition to get back a functional usb, keyboard, and touchpad on Sierra OS? I suggest to post this guide on the first page

2) To include the sierra post install tool in the recovery partition if possible or on a third partition so if anything happens we could rerun the post install tool without having to recreate again the patched usb install (which requires at least for me to have the usb pen with me, to format it and wait the patchtool to do its job and luckily I kept the sierra image on my other mac and I do not have to redownload it)

Thank you

 

[2Applepieman]

It happened again today, (MacBook Pro Mid 2009 15inch 5,3): I booted my macbook pro and my touchpad and keyboard suddenly where not working anymore...
This time at least I had the recovery partition working since I applied the recovery patch.
So far I understood that the problem is due to the Legacy USB Injector Kext not loading correctly.
Only usb peripheral I have connected is the Logitech unifying receiver
The only modification I remember I did to my Sierra OS was to install Toast 15 which in turn installed Soundflower.kext
It seems to me that each time that a new kext (and maybe also launch daemon / launch agent?) is added or deleted by any program the keyboard and touchpad stop working at next boot, is it possible (maybe some cache rebuild is forced)?

So far I have booted into recovery partition and using terminal I disabled SIP with
"csrutil disable" and rebooted but without success.


Can please anyone explain me what commands I have to use in the Recovery terminal to make usb and keyboard work (and Legacy USB Injector Kext work)?

@dosdude1 can you please add two things that will save a lot of time to all people that have this problem?

1) a very short guide using terminal commands in recovery partition to get back a functional usb, keyboard, and touchpad on Sierra OS? I suggest to post this guide on the first page

2) To include the sierra post install tool in the recovery partition if possible or on a third partition so if anything happens we could rerun the post install tool without having to recreate again the patched usb install (which requires at least for me to have the usb pen with me, to format it and wait the patchtool to do its job and luckily I kept the sierra image on my other mac and I do not have to redownload it)

Thank you

+1 same happened to me, fixed by running usb fix again. i had to connect an external usb keyboard and mouse and the next boot the mbp keyboard and touchpad were not working.
anyway thanks dosdude1 for the awesome work bringing sierra to older machines..

 

[Ultracyclist]

Little update:

Just put in the last piece of the Mac mini 3,1 Sierra puzzle. The WiFi

Tools used:

Standard tools for opening Mac mini 2009
Old plastic card (gym membership card)

I cut the card to size of the org. wifi card.

As the new card is smaller it will only be attached to the card with 2 screws (pic1) right top and under the flexible cable in (pic 2).
To make the 3 acres from the org. card work I drilled slightly smaller holes in the card the last screw is located in the bottom left (pic 1) where it should.

The new wifi card if firmly in place, but the antenna cable on the bottom (pic 1) is a bit on the short now, but is still fits.

Totaling my Mac mini 3,1 setup

Mac mini early 2009
Intel Core 2 Duo 2,0Ghz P7350
8Gb Ram
Samsung 730 EVO 250Gb SSD
Hitachi 1 TB HDD
New WiFi module from a A1342

OS macOS Sierra

It has been a nice little project so far.

Bought this mini 4 weeks ago for about €80,-
Spent €12,- on the WiFi card
€30,- on Ram
€74,- on the SSD
and €6,- on the extra HHD caddy

Just like my other Mac's its €202 well spent (for a server)

 

[dosdude1]

It happened again today, (MacBook Pro Mid 2009 15inch 5,3): I booted my macbook pro and my touchpad and keyboard suddenly where not working anymore...
This time at least I had the recovery partition working since I applied the recovery patch.
So far I understood that the problem is due to the Legacy USB Injector Kext not loading correctly.
Only usb peripheral I have connected is the Logitech unifying receiver
The only modification I remember I did to my Sierra OS was to install Toast 15 which in turn installed Soundflower.kext
It seems to me that each time that a new kext (and maybe also launch daemon / launch agent?) is added or deleted by any program the keyboard and touchpad stop working at next boot, is it possible (maybe some cache rebuild is forced)?

So far I have booted into recovery partition and using terminal I disabled SIP with
"csrutil disable" and rebooted but without success.


Can please anyone explain me what commands I have to use in the Recovery terminal to make usb and keyboard work (and Legacy USB Injector Kext work)?

@dosdude1 can you please add two things that will save a lot of time to all people that have this problem?

1) a very short guide using terminal commands in recovery partition to get back a functional usb, keyboard, and touchpad on Sierra OS? I suggest to post this guide on the first page

2) To include the sierra post install tool in the recovery partition if possible or on a third partition so if anything happens we could rerun the post install tool without having to recreate again the patched usb install (which requires at least for me to have the usb pen with me, to format it and wait the patchtool to do its job and luckily I kept the sierra image on my other mac and I do not have to redownload it)

Thank you

I can't figure out why this is happening to people, the only plausible cause I can think of is that SIP is enabled, preventing the kextcache from being built with modified kexts... You can run "csrutil status" in Terminal to see if SIP is disabled. Also, after forcing cache rebuild, you may need to run "sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel" in your Sierra install to fully rebuild the kextcache. As for the recovery partition containing the post-install tool, I was planning on doing that, and intend to implement that in the future. What I may end up doing if this issue persists is to just simply modify IOUSBHostFamily.kext, instead of using the LegacyUSBInjector kext, maybe that'll work a bit better.

 

[kyubidark7]

It happened again today, (MacBook Pro Mid 2009 15inch 5,3): I booted my macbook pro and my touchpad and keyboard suddenly where not working anymore...
This time at least I had the recovery partition working since I applied the recovery patch.
So far I understood that the problem is due to the Legacy USB Injector Kext not loading correctly.
Only usb peripheral I have connected is the Logitech unifying receiver
The only modification I remember I did to my Sierra OS was to install Toast 15 which in turn installed Soundflower.kext
It seems to me that each time that a new kext (and maybe also launch daemon / launch agent?) is added or deleted by any program the keyboard and touchpad stop working at next boot, is it possible (maybe some cache rebuild is forced)?

So far I have booted into recovery partition and using terminal I disabled SIP with
"csrutil disable" and rebooted but without success.


Can please anyone explain me what commands I have to use in the Recovery terminal to make usb and keyboard work (and Legacy USB Injector Kext work)?

@dosdude1 can you please add two things that will save a lot of time to all people that have this problem?

1) a very short guide using terminal commands in recovery partition to get back a functional usb, keyboard, and touchpad on Sierra OS? I suggest to post this guide on the first page

2) To include the sierra post install tool in the recovery partition if possible or on a third partition so if anything happens we could rerun the post install tool without having to recreate again the patched usb install (which requires at least for me to have the usb pen with me, to format it and wait the patchtool to do its job and luckily I kept the sierra image on my other mac and I do not have to redownload it)

Thank you

I had the same problem in my MacBook Pro Mid 2009 (13"). I copied my data into a external HDD using a shell from the recovery partition and then installed El Capitan, and I'll wait for more news about this problem.

Thanks @dosdude1 for your work!

 

[Phil T]

I have the MacBook Pro mid 2009. I had the issue with the keyboard and trackpad not being found. A hard reboot when it happened fixed it and I have not had the issue again since.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Running so far so good on MacPro 3,1 (Early 2008).
After install completed, but before reboot I launched terminal and replaced the PlatformSupport.plist file with the one used by the installer partition so that I could boot into macOS without issue.


EDIT:

iMessage having issues ... crashed several times.
Graphical elements missing in iMessage on the display I'm running off of the 8800GT card (non issue on GTX650 card). iMessage crashes when moving between displays running on different cards.
Using Nvidia web drivers vs OEM Apple drivers make no difference in this.

 

[GSinIL]

First off thanks to all the guys that provided the tools and input for this!!
I just upgraded my MacPro 3,1 with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB card via dosdude's tool.

I did run into an issue though: when I tried to upgrade my existing El Capitan drive, the installation quit about halfway and the Mac turned itself off.
When I tried to reboot, black screen and after about 1min. Mac powers off.
Could not even boot into recovery partition.
Finally I took the tray with the partially upgraded SSD out and only then was I able to boot agIn from the installation USB stick.
After that I did a Sierra upgrade to another old partition that was still 10.8. That worked fine.
At this point I thought my first attempt failed due to a potential issue running El Capitan on an SSD, so I restored the latest El Capitan backup to another partition on an empty internal HDD (advantage of having 4 cages with HDDs )
Ran the installer again on the HDD El Capitan installation, same issue, halfway in the process, quits and powers off.

What did work was a new clean install on the wiped out SSD partition, then restoring El Capitan from backup on another HDD and run the migration assistant to get the date over.

Now everything seems to work fine...

Thought I'd share.

GS

 

[ac2334]

Does the typo that Dosdude fixed for the ambient light sensor apply to mid-2009 Macbook Pros? What is the best way to test that ALS is working?

 

[jaxparo]

Little update:

Just put in the last piece of the Mac mini 3,1 Sierra puzzle. The WiFi

New WiFi module from a A1342

This module from the A1342 uses the BCM943224PCIEBT chipset as 802.11n BT 2.1, which is the same as the original, which doesn't support Continuity (Handoff, Airdrop), so it's nice to have a working module, but it would be nicer to have an upgraded 802.11ac BT 4.0LE to get the full Sierra upgrade working.

I have bought and tried the module with the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 which came from a 2014 Mini A1347 Mini 7,1. While I was able to get the smaller card to fit, it must have different ribbon cable wiring because the Mini wouldn't boot at all, no chime, no nothing other than small white light when the card was plugged in. When the card was swapped back for the original, it booted normally. Unless I bought a dead card, it appears the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 upgrade will NOT WORK for a Mini 3,1.

This leaves other possible options. The 2011 & 2012 Mini 5,1 & 6,1 both have 802.11n BT 4.0. I don't know if the BT 4.0 is the "LE" or "low energy" version required for Continuity support? Still, either of these may work? Since the BCM943224PCIEBT card isn't from a Mini, but rather a MacBook, it's possible MacBooks or MacBook Pro's may have an adaptable card.

When I was fitting the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 the antenna cable connector fittings were slightly different, and wouldn't snap positively. My solution, which was moot since the card caused an unbootable status, was to use a small washer & thin plastic with a miniature paper clamp to hold the antennae cables firmly in place. I mention this in case other cards have this antennae cable fitting issue.

 

[Dr.Watson]

This module from the A1342 uses the BCM943224PCIEBT chipset as 802.11n BT 2.1, which is the same as the original, which doesn't support Continuity (Handoff, Airdrop), so it's nice to have a working module, but it would be nicer to have an upgraded 802.11ac BT 4.0LE to get the full Sierra upgrade working.

I have bought and tried the module with the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 which came from a 2014 Mini A1347 Mini 7,1. While I was able to get the smaller card to fit, it must have different ribbon cable wiring because the Mini wouldn't boot at all, no chime, no nothing other than small white light when the card was plugged in. When the card was swapped back for the original, it booted normally. Unless I bought a dead card, it appears the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 upgrade will NOT WORK for a Mini 3,1.

This leaves other possible options. The 2011 & 2012 Mini 5,1 & 6,1 both have 802.11n BT 4.0. I don't know if the BT 4.0 is the "LE" or "low energy" version required for Continuity support? Still, either of these may work? Since the BCM943224PCIEBT card isn't from a Mini, but rather a MacBook, it's possible MacBooks or MacBook Pro's may have an adaptable card.

When I was fitting the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 the antenna cable connector fittings were slightly different, and wouldn't snap positively. My solution, which was moot since the card caused an unbootable status, was to use a small washer & thin plastic with a miniature paper clamp to hold the antennae cables firmly in place. I mention this in case other cards have this antennae cable fitting issue.

[doublepost=1476009380][/doublepost]I have 2 x 2009 early minis and want to update to sierra. Of course it appears to be a no go except for now. However I have also read that wireless can be regained by using an external wife dongle rather than going through the route clearly explained above.
Has anyone done this? and with which one?
Cheers

 

[dosdude1]

This module from the A1342 uses the BCM943224PCIEBT chipset as 802.11n BT 2.1, which is the same as the original, which doesn't support Continuity (Handoff, Airdrop), so it's nice to have a working module, but it would be nicer to have an upgraded 802.11ac BT 4.0LE to get the full Sierra upgrade working.

I have bought and tried the module with the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 which came from a 2014 Mini A1347 Mini 7,1. While I was able to get the smaller card to fit, it must have different ribbon cable wiring because the Mini wouldn't boot at all, no chime, no nothing other than small white light when the card was plugged in. When the card was swapped back for the original, it booted normally. Unless I bought a dead card, it appears the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 upgrade will NOT WORK for a Mini 3,1.

This leaves other possible options. The 2011 & 2012 Mini 5,1 & 6,1 both have 802.11n BT 4.0. I don't know if the BT 4.0 is the "LE" or "low energy" version required for Continuity support? Still, either of these may work? Since the BCM943224PCIEBT card isn't from a Mini, but rather a MacBook, it's possible MacBooks or MacBook Pro's may have an adaptable card.

When I was fitting the BCM94331PCIEBT3B #607-9561 the antenna cable connector fittings were slightly different, and wouldn't snap positively. My solution, which was moot since the card caused an unbootable status, was to use a small washer & thin plastic with a miniature paper clamp to hold the antennae cables firmly in place. I mention this in case other cards have this antennae cable fitting issue.

The ONLY card you can use are those that came with the 2009 or 2010 Unibody MacBook model A1342, the cards from newer machines either use a different interface completely, or are not electrically compatible with the Macmini3,1. And no, the A1342 card is NOT the same chipset as the original, the original was a BCM4321, the A1342 card is a BCM4322, which is why it's compatible with Sierra.

 

[Dr.Watson]

Many thanks for the info. All clear now.

 

[fischersd]

Many thanks for the info. All clear now.

Umm. dosdude1 was answering jaxparo's question.

You can add a wifi dongle to get wireless networking under Sierra, but many of the continuity features won't work as the system sees those as removable cards, so makes those features unavailable. Basic networking will work fine though.
If you don't care about the continuity/handoff features, then that could be a good option for you.

 

[gpatpandp]

Can someone please confirm the exact location of where the post install patch tool installs the AmbientLightSensorHID.plugin ? After running the tool and not noticing any difference, I have checked both Extension folders and it is not in either of them.

 

[dosdude1]

Can someone please confirm the exact location of where the post install patch tool installs the AmbientLightSensorHID.plugin ? After running the tool and not noticing any difference, I have checked both Extension folders and it is not in either of them.

It's located in /System/Library/Extensions/AppleSMCLMU.kext/Contents/PlugIns/

 

[TyShawn]

Thanks for these tools. I am now able to upgrade my iMac 9,1

 

[ohaquall]

dosdude1,

Can the audio issue found in the 8.1 system be fixed ? Is that hardware related ?

Thank you so much for your brilliant patch.

 

[dfran1]

Early Mac pro 2008 3,1 Sierra10.12
I used this method last week and my mac is performing so much better than 10.11 !!
I copied all my stuff back using the mac os utility when it first loads from other hard drive, working great.
All has been great for me Safari perfect, mail perfect, iMessage perfect, magic mouse 2 perfect, I can't find anything not working.
Thank You!!!

question:
Is there something a card or ? to get handoff and copy past (feature) from iOS to my mac pro or vise versa ?
I know apple says its not supported in my 3,1 mac pro but thought I would ask.
Thank you!