In my previous post #7587, my frustration at being unable to install correctly Catalina 10.15 on my Mac Pro 5.1 almost led to giving up and returning to Mojave. However, at last I've succeeded in getting Cat 10.15.2 to operate smoothly on the 5.1, although there were a few subtleties in the process which took some work to discover.
Although dosdude's marvellous patcher states that it will only work with the correct Boot ROM installed, that turned out to be quite involved, mine being version MP.51.007F.B03. I followed dosdude's recommendation to run OfficialAPSFWUpdate.zip to update the Boot.ROM, but always unsuccessfully, with repeated “Broken Pipe” errors. It turned out that I had to reinstall High Sierra 10.13.6, and even during this process I kept getting errors like “.. this computer is too old to install this OS”. I finally succeeded by following the instructions on
http://setapp.com/how-to/download-and-install-old-mac-os-versions to install macOS 10.13.6 and with it Boot.ROM MP51.0089.800. Although Boot.ROM 144.0.0.0.0 was my final objective, I decided to call it quits with the former, and then went back to the Catalina v 1.3.0 patcher. After some trial and error, I worked through dosdude's patch procedure to get a nearly (*) fully functional Catalina 10.15.2.
First, here is my fairly basic system specification:
. Apple Mac Pro 4.1 (Early 2009) upgraded to Mac Pro 5.1
. 3.33GHZ 6-core Intel Xeon processor
. 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM
. NVIDIA GeForce GT120 512 MB Graphics
. Apple 27 in Cinema Display via mini display port
. Boot ROM MP51.0089.800 (previously MP.51.007F.B03)
. Broadcom Bluetooth 2.1 (0x4)
. Broadcom BCM4322 WiFi
. 1 TB, 120 GB SSD's in Bays 1 and 2 respectively
. 500 GB HDD's in Bays 3 and 4
In other words a fairly vanilla Mac Pro!
(*) Sidecar, Handoff and Continuity not yet available - awaiting installation of a BCM94360CD combo wifi and BT 4.0 card.
With the updated MP.51.0089.800 Boot ROM installed, dosdude's Catalina Patcher worked perfectly. (I even used the USB boot drive later to upgrade my MBP 8.2 from 10.15 to 10.15.2).
However, after installation, the Mac Pro could not be put to sleep manually, Hot Corners didn't work, the Cinema Display was not correctly identified in About This Mac or in System Preferences, and there was no display Brightness control. So I rebooted from the USB Bootable Drive, opened Post Install Patches, and selected the “Legacy Video Patch”.
On the next reboot from the 1 TB SSD, all the above problems had disappeared. And unlike dosdude's patched Mojave previously installed on my MP, it now boots straight to a black Apple logo on a white background, and the rolling startup script in its “box” no longer appears. Also, to get rid of the dark background in the top menu bar and Finder column, I opened System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and checked the “reduce transparency” box.
