macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[thegurgz]

Has anyone figured out how to get rid of the EFI boot option at startup when booting onto an APFS disk after patching the EFI chip using APFS ROM Patcher 2.0? I have gone through the mounting process, but it does not show the booting files that I would delete to get rid of it.

 

[0134168]

GTX680 does NOT require Web Drivers. It will work just fine regardless of whether or not you have them installed.

Thanks. I was just puzzling over which of the kernel driver extensions it would use. Both NVDANV50HalTesla.kext and NVDAResmanTesla.kext have 680 strings in them. Also, I see the same drivers in High Sierra 10.3.6 so does that mean the WebDrivers are optional under patched HS as well?

As dosdude1 told you, no drivers needed. Have it on my Mac Pro 3.1, following his advice, and works like a charm.

 

[dosdude1]

Has anyone figured out how to get rid of the EFI boot option at startup when booting onto an APFS disk after patching the EFI chip using APFS ROM Patcher 2.0? I have gone through the mounting process, but it does not show the booting files that I would delete to get rid of it. View attachment 780365

This is a glitch with the ROM patch itself. I will be updating it in the future if I find a solution to this, but unfortunately, being at college away from my house makes testing quite difficult.

 

[0134168]

Thanks. Now to wait for the card and do the flash. I am going to use the instructions from

which uses a well defined combination of tool versions to do the flash. I see from the threads elsewhere here that people are having problems with various versions of nvflash. Also, I noticed that the recent readme files with those don't mention the -5 option for the program. The only part of the YouTube instructions that I find suspect is the need to have the original graphics card inserted during the flash. I would think that even with the PC roms in the GTX 680 inhibiting the display of the boot selector that the 'C' key should still allow booting from a CD and simple console graphics to execute the 'nvflash -5 -6 gtx68mac.rom' from the installed card pre-flash. Also, the idea of flashing a card with only one of two power cables attached seems odd.

I tried that first, but no success for me. So I bought a flashed card. Not much expensive than a non flashed one.

Hope you are luckyer

 

[DuncanGarp]

MacBookPro5,3 with "switchable" Graphics Display.



Can expert folks in this thread please explain on these two and if issues (acceleration, etc.) exist as far as Mojave is concerned?

Thank You.

 

[dosdude1]

MacBookPro5,3 with "switchable" Graphics Display.

View attachment 780367

Can expert folks in this thread please explain on these two and if issues (acceleration, etc.) exist as far as Mojave is concerned?

Thank You.

No issues on 9400M/9600M GT based systems with Mojave (except for the minor graphics anomalies in light mode as all non-Metal GPUs produce). You can use the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences to switch GPUs.

 

[Macbookprodude]

I just want to come in here and want to thank all of you here for making Mojave on my MBP Late 2011 a reality. I was seriously angry at Apple for dropping the support on devices that we can actually upgrade (to a certain extent) and therefore denying new software to run on Macs that are definitely capable on doing so (as I can see right now). Apart from the graphical artifacts mentioned on the initial post, Mojave is running absolutely fine and stunning on my MBP without any issues or crashes or anything. I recently (shortly before WWDC) upgraded this MBP with an SSD and more RAM so I was quite angry for them to 'drop support' on my machine but now I can rest assured that thanks to all of you here, I'll still be able to have the newest OS on my machine without any hitches (so far).
Thank you. You guys rock!

What good is it if the AMD chip can't be used for acceleration ?

 

[DuncanGarp]

No issues on 9400M/9600M GT based systems with Mojave (except for the minor graphics anomalies in light mode as all non-Metal GPUs produce). You can use the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences to switch GPUs.

Thank you so much @dosdude1.

If I may, I have another question regarding your excellent tools.
Is there a difference, as far as intent or capability, between your APFS Rom patch included on your macOS Post Install and your APFS ROM/EEPROM patch? Tried the latter on my MacBookPro5,3 and it failed. But the former did succeed in implementing.

Appreciate your excellent work.

 

[RukaziSintakumo]

What good is it if the AMD chip can't be used for acceleration ?

Well, of course there might be some systems that have problems with that. But my system was already running with the internal Intel HD 3000 option, so 3D acceleration etc is running totally fine for me.^^

 

[BookEmDanno]

Thank you so much @dosdude1.

If I may, I have another question regarding your excellent tools.
Is there a difference, as far as intent or capability, between your APFS Rom patch included on your macOS Post Install and your APFS ROM/EEPROM patch? Tried the latter on my MacBookPro5,3 and it failed. But the former did succeed in implementing.

Appreciate your excellent work.

I'm curious as well. ~Mahalo!~

 

[jackluke]

To the iMac 9,1 (early 2009) owners with Nvidia GT 120/130: does the "Legacy Video Patch" or @ASentientBot Legacy Tesla Patch enable the QE/CI on Mojave as way as for 9400m/320m models?

edit:
I answer to myself, found this official document: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4212/~/which-nvidia-geforce-gpus-have-tesla-architecture?
(Hey @ASentientBot your Nvidia Tesla Patch should cover all those GPUs, once again great job!)

edit2:
So I add other questions for @dosdude1 :
On Mojave iMac with i3 cpu Ati 4670 (21.5") or i5 cpu Ati 4850 (27"), does your QE/CI patch work properly (apart the light mode menu) ?
And does from Mojave beta 10 AppStore still crash on those ATI gpus?

edit3:
Another curiosity, does iMac i3 cpu require the "telemetry plugin patch" for Mojave booting ?

 

[Badruzeus]

Well, normally.. using CoreDisplay stock binary from 10.14 Beta; what error appearred on Console's log when switching from Dark to Light mode was:

WindowServer (IOAcceleratorFamily2)...

...but, with CoreDisplay from 10.13.4 what I get is:

kernel (IOAcceleratorFamily2)...

So, I think.. a weird grayed Top Menu Bar with LightMode appearance is not caused by CoreDisplay (though, I could be wrong for sure). Graphics acceleration under 10.14 Beta (18A384a) are still working fine with 10.13.4's CoreDisplay (on my case), but.. it doesn't fix this Top Menu Bar issue. FYi only.

 

[mrdunderhead]

Awesome page so far except with some holes.

i have currently been testing this complete with the beta signup from apple themselves great news is that with the patcher i have seen no need for metal compatible graphics or why it says its needed.

i can confirm the patcher works excellent on the latest beta from apple for installation

problems apple has a new update system for receiving updates for beta subscription users hopefully someone will produce a way to update the beta once installed so we can test other beta versions or this is going to be dead fast again.

far from that awesome progress

 

[iscs]

Actually I have 2 questions:
- I have MacBook Pro mid 2009 5.5 and I install Mojave latest beta on ssd formate APFS and it boot APFS with patcher and I receive updates . so I do not apply rom patch .. what is the issue if I stay like that and not take the risk to patch rom beside those text shown in the boot .
- Second question I try to patch rom I got 3 choices for my rom ID ( picture attached ) and I make picture from MB so which one I must choose not to damage it .

 

[jackluke]

View attachment 780392 View attachment 780393 Actually I have 2 questions:
- I have MacBook Pro mid 2009 5.5 and I install Mojave latest beta on ssd formate APFS and it boot APFS with patcher and I receive updates . so I do not apply rom patch .. what is the issue if I stay like that and not take the risk to patch rom beside those text shown in the boot .
- Second question I try to patch rom I got 3 choices for my rom ID ( picture attached ) and I make picture from MB so which one I must choose not to damage it .

I would advise to NOT risk, and stay HFS+ with Mojave, or with APFS "Software" EFI patch.

Should be the second choice, but many here (me too) have bricked similar machines even taking the "correct choice".

But the user "victor30r" asserted had bricked with very similar as your machine, un-bricked with firmware restoration cd, and then re-done the APFS ROM patching and successfully obtained APFS working natively.

Here the conversation: Intel Macs Firmware Restoration CDs

victor30r answer
(follow the conversation from there and, if you don't speak the victor30r's language, use the translator as I did)

 

[AnonMac50]

Thanks. Now to wait for the card and do the flash. I am going to use the instructions from

which uses a well defined combination of tool versions to do the flash. I see from the threads elsewhere here that people are having problems with various versions of nvflash. Also, I noticed that the recent readme files with those don't mention the -5 option for the program. The only part of the YouTube instructions that I find suspect is the need to have the original graphics card inserted during the flash. I would think that even with the PC roms in the GTX 680 inhibiting the display of the boot selector that the 'C' key should still allow booting from a CD and simple console graphics to execute the 'nvflash -5 -6 gtx68mac.rom' from the installed card pre-flash. Also, the idea of flashing a card with only one of two power cables attached seems odd.

When my Nvidia GPU was shot in my late 2013 MBP I wasn't able to use any key combinations on the boot screen until I disabled it and used my Intel (which was still working) instead.

 

[ivofonseca]

View attachment 780392 View attachment 780393 Actually I have 2 questions:
- I have MacBook Pro mid 2009 5.5 and I install Mojave latest beta on ssd formate APFS and it boot APFS with patcher and I receive updates . so I do not apply rom patch .. what is the issue if I stay like that and not take the risk to patch rom beside those text shown in the boot .
- Second question I try to patch rom I got 3 choices for my rom ID ( picture attached ) and I make picture from MB so which one I must choose not to damage it .

I also advise you not to risk if you don't exactly know what you are doing; I did it with a MacBook Pro 5,3 (choosed the second opinion btw) and bricked my machine – 200€ for the repair service, that included the replacement of the chip itself. Be also aware that the Firmware Restoration CD doesn't work with all Mac models.

 

[pkouame]

Well, normally.. using CoreDisplay stock binary from 10.14 Beta; what error appearred on Console's log when switching from Dark to Light mode was:

WindowServer (IOAcceleratorFamily2)...

...but, with CoreDisplay from 10.13.4 what I get is:

kernel (IOAcceleratorFamily2)...

So, I think.. a weird grayed Top Menu Bar with LightMode appearance is not caused by CoreDisplay (though, I could be wrong for sure). Graphics acceleration under 10.14 Beta (18A384a) are still working fine with 10.13.4's CoreDisplay (on my case), but.. it doesn't fix this Top Menu Bar issue. FYi only.

The main menu bar is mostly controlled from the HIToolbox framework (within Carbon). There you can eliminate the weird grey menu bar so it displays white in Light and black in Dark. An easy "workaround" if you can live without menu bar transparency.

 

[jackluke]

The main menu bar is mostly controlled from the HIToolbox framework (within Carbon). There you can eliminate the weird grey menu bar so it displays white in Light and black in Dark. An easy "workaround" if you can live without menu bar transparency.

While, as per your previous explanations, the vibrancies, in particular "light mode" greyed "windows-side-bars" in Finder and core Apps are controlled into the Appkit.framework , if tomorrow GM will be released, could you release a preliminary beta "hybrid light mode" ?

 

[pkouame]

While, as per your previous explanations, the vibrancies, in particular "light mode" greyed "windows-side-bars" in Finder and core Apps are controlled into the Appkit.framework , if tomorrow GM will be released, could you release a preliminary beta "hybrid light mode" ?

That's the plan! I am toying around with various ways of delivering a harmless and reversible patch, but will definitely reach out to some of you to help me test. I don't see Apple extending the beta cycle beyond the 9/12 event, so this has to land between now and then.

 

[arqueox]

That's the plan! I am toying around with various ways of delivering a harmless and reversible patch, but will definitely reach out to some of you to help me test. I don't see Apple extending the beta cycle beyond the 9/12 event, so this has to land between now and then.

Count on me

 

[jhowarth]

This is a glitch with the ROM patch itself. I will be updating it in the future if I find a solution to this, but unfortunately, being at college away from my house makes testing quite difficult.

I ended having to destroy the gpt partitioning and reformat as APFS from scratch in order to purge all traces of the APFS patching even after manually removing the installed files. It actually is advantegous to clean install from a freshly partitioned disk. Strangely, the Convert to APFS option in Disk Utility only converts single HFS volumes at a time so you end up with the recovery partition outside of the container for the converted APFS partition. Apple hasn't current a tool yet that allows APFS partitions to be moved across containers or merging containers.

I tried that first, but no success for me. So I bought a flashed card. Not much expensive than a non flashed one.

Hope you are luckyer

Out curiosity, what make and model of GTX 680 did you originally try to flash? My understanding is that the stock EVGA models (mine is a 02G-P4-2684-KR Superclocked with backplate) are very well behaved compared to random vendors who may or may not be close to the spec. The part of those flashing instructions that I disliked was the use of two graphics cards in the machine at once. This can cause grief with 'nvflash -4 -5 -6' when both cards are Nvidia. I intend to flash with the 680 as the single card in the machine and more importantly with it fully powered. I noticed in the video, the fellow was playing games removing all the drives and only attaching a single power cable to the 680 in order to not overdraw the power supply due to having two cards in the machine.

 

[mrploppy]

Strangely, the Convert to APFS option in Disk Utility only converts single HFS volumes at a time so you end up with the recovery partition outside of the container for the converted APFS partition. Apple hasn't current a tool yet that allows APFS partitions to be moved across containers or merging containers.

So what happens if you go ahead and convert the recovery partition to APFS?

 

[jhowarth]

So what happens if you go ahead and convert the recovery partition to APFS?

It would end up in its own separate container instead of the normal partitioning of...

/dev/disk4 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +499.9 GB disk4
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Mojave HD 105.8 GB disk4s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 43.5 MB disk4s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 509.6 MB disk4s3
4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk4s4

where everything resides in a single container. Interestingly, the High Sierra installation on a supported machine automatically creates this expected configuration. I am guessing that Apple might be deleting the recovery partition and then creating replacement one in the single container. As far as I can tell, the diskutil conversion routines create separate containers and they don't have a move or merge functionality for containers added to diskutil yet.

 

[thegurgz]

I ended having to destroy the gpt partitioning and reformat as APFS from scratch in order to purge all traces of the APFS patching even after manually removing the installed files. It actually is advantegous to clean install from a freshly partitioned disk. Strangely, the Convert to APFS option in Disk Utility only converts single HFS volumes at a time so you end up with the recovery partition outside of the container for the converted APFS partition. Apple hasn't current a tool yet that allows APFS partitions to be moved across containers or merging containers.

I’ve done some investigating and what i came up is what it does when you convert to apfs is just move the OS volume and the VM into the container, keeping the recovery partition outside of it and not creating the Preboot at all. It isn’t until you do an installation (update, reinstallation or clean installation) of OS that it moves the recovery partition into the container and creates the Preboot volume. I have screenshots that I will edit and post once I get home.
EDIT:
Before install:

Post Install:

Out of curiosity, how did you destroy the gpt partitioning completely?