If anyone knows of a good combination of DosDude1 and/or OCLP 0.43 (or earlier) patches that work on the 2009-2011 era "silverback" iMacs and Minis (where hardware-acceleration, wifi, and or color-accuracy are usually fubared), please post of it. (I'm especially interested in anything set-up robust enough to work with all of the models (i.e., such that a single external boot drive will correctly launch on any 2008-2011 machine as well as the 2012-2019 ones).
I am narrowing in on a solution for this, a work-in-progress that I call MacOS Mojo (for Mojave-Optimized), and am close to the Grail, with only cosmetic issues remaining despite having nearly zero experience tinkertoying with OS components (i.e., on the level of, say, the creator of *Mavericks Forever*). I thought about making a new thread (given that this one is nearing 800 pages and 20,000 posts), but will post here for now.
Prefatory note: I will not provide a list of software sources; a minimal level of prowess is required here, and the ability to find things on the internet serves as a handy Litmus test.
**=== Mojave on 2010/11 iMacs & others ===**
(...where "& others" refers to machines also not on Dosdude1's fully-patched list.)
**Recommended items list:**
1. external USB drive, ideally several. ( I get used SATA SSD mechanisms from a recycler very cheaply, and use them with a spiffy Sabrent SATA-USB csble.)
1a. (optional) Create a Yumi/Ventoy drive on one external with plenty of space (ideally 250gb or bigger). On it, have the latest ISO of RescueZilla. (Note: many flashstick-type externals are chinesium scam-trash with horrible throughput; a SATA SSD is vastly superior to most of them for, especially, USB external work.)
2. The following software is required: DosDude1 Mojave patcher, OpenCore v0.4.3 (and no later).
2a. All of the following software (some of which is now hard to find) is very useful: Carbon Copy Cloner 5 (CCC5), GetBackupPro3, Paragon Hard Drive Manager 1.2.241, Himmelbar, MainMenu, MacsFanControl, Find Any File, and one of Peggle Nights or Angry Birds Seasons or any other OpenGL 32bit game.
3. (if necessary) Access to a second intel Mac, to marshal the items above and to create the resources below. (Note: the Dosdude1 patcher can be created on, but will not boot, most 2014+ Retina machines.)
**Procedure**
0. On your prep Mac, go to (menubar) Finder > Preferences and check the box to show hard-drives. In System Preferences > General, set scrollbars to Always.
00. (Aggravation avoidance) Launch Terminal, and input *sudo spctl --master-disable* and enter user password. Then in System Preferences > Users & Groups, change password to nothing. Then in System Preferences > Security & Privacy, click the lock (and don't type anything for a password), then uncheck rhe Require password box. (Allow apps downloaded From: section should show "Anywhere" with a dotted circle. --Yay! You can now use your old Mac without having to type a password every five seconds, or pay obeisance to the App Store gatekeeper. (You are going to get asked for a user password a LOT doing all these steps.)
1. Prepare a DosDude1 Mojave patcher: The dd1 patcher (like many installers) will wipe an entire external drive, but actually uses very little space. After creating it, launch (Applications > Utilities) Disk Utility and create a new 9gb size MacOS Extended-journaled partition at the end of the device. (The icons for these drive partitions will both appear on the desktop.)
1a. Launch CCC5, create a new cloning session (if none exist), drag the dd1 patcher partition icon into Source and the 9gb one into Destination. Under Source, set to Copy Some Files, and uncheck everything but the System Folder. Under Destination, set SafetyNet to Off. Then start the clone; as it finishes, CCC5 will ask if you wish to create a Recovery Partition; let it. Now under Source, set to Copy All Files, and do a second clone pass. (Congrats: the majority of that external drive is now freed up, and the small 9gb dd1 installer is easy to archive or clone elsewhere -- such as at the back end of the 500gb or 1tb internal drives in most iMacs.)
2. (On the target "unsupported" machine now, with the external drive connected) Boot into the dd1 Mojave installer and open Disk Utility; erase the internal or target drive to MacOS Extended-journaled, then partition it into four equalish pieces. Then erase the second one as APFS, then install Mojave into that APFS partition. When finished, run the post-installation patches over the same partition. (The Mac might reboot after installation -- and fail to launch since Mojave isn't patched yet -- requiring you to manually reboot into the dd1 installer.) Important: check the box for Recovery Partition, and select the disk(x)s(y) 650mb partition following the 9gb one at the end of the external installer drive. (Rerun additional times as needed for other applicable recovery partitions.)
3. Restart into Mojave. About this Mac > System Update ...install the 005 and Safari updates (which will take their jolly sweet time). Do NOT install any listed newer version of the OS! After it reboots, check Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor's memory to verify that ram usage is not excessive (~2gb on 8gb machine). Install CCC5, GBP3, and the other utilities now. Clone the installation, even if still imperfect, to the third or forth drive partition. Reboot into it to verify it works, then reboot back to the original, and clone a second time to the first drive partition. (If the clones use excessive memory according to Activity Monitor, run a second clone pass with GBP3, then a third with CCC5 again.)
On many Macs, you're mostly done at this point if the color palette looks correct and wifi works, and you can skip-read the rest. (Launch either of the games cited above to quickly verify if hardware-acceleration is wotking.) On a 2010/11 iMac, colors will be wrong and hardware-acceleration disabled, but wifi will work after the patch.
4. Reboot into Recovery Partition 10.14.6, and launch Terminal from the menubar. Input *csrutil disable* and hit Enter, then reboot into the first target drive partition (the MacOS Extended-journaled clone made above.
5. Launch OpenCore 0.4.3, and let it build, then install (note that the "build" button changed after clicking it) a boot EFI for your machine on the target drive. (It may require you reboot at this point.) The OpenCore EFI now becomes the default first-booted item on the machine, which then displays the usual option-key bootloader list (except with better icons) for a few seconds before launching the default OS partition (which will be the one used to install it); defaults for either can be reset using the usual (Option/Alt) and Ctrl key tricks.
5a: Paragon Hard Drive Manager 1.2.241 is occasionally used for two reasons: a) cloning 200mb EFI boot partitions (either OpenCore or "unmolested"), and b) cloning pre-migrate partitions whose clones made by CCC5 and/or GBP3 show wild ram consumption in Activiry Monitir.
6. On a 2010 or 2011 iMac (and perhaps certain others), you'll need to rerun the opencore 0.4.3 application and run the root-patch function *after* checking the box for 10.14/15 hardware-acceleration. (Note: running the dd1 patches again may bollocks the whole thing, which is why I tend to make partition clones every odd step of the way.)
After restarting, you'll have a Mojave 10.14.6 installation on an "unsupported" non-"metal" i-series DVD-model with working wifi, bluetooth, sound, color-palette, dual-mode, and hardware-acceleration and Open GL support.
7. To create a pre-Migration "golden-master" archive of the working install, boot RescueZilla from the Yumi/Ventoy drive, and create a backup of the relevant portions (which will be the 200mb EFI, the first OS partition, and the 9gb dd1 inataller partition if you like). After that's finished and you've restarted, *then* use the Migration assistant to import your regular Mojave (or earlier) load-out from another machine's drive-clone.
8. (optional but recommended) Disable all of the following in Terminal: MRT, MDS_stores, Reportcrash, Spotlight Indexing, and Software Update. (I also disable Notifications because 99% of them are Apple scare-mongering BS.)
(Further edits and tweaks forthcoming....)
