macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[buckrock]

MacOS Big Sur 11.5 beta 3 InstallAssistant.pkg (20G5042c) 12.41GB download

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...iynb1uae4cnnvtzudkh9wfyt/InstallAssistant.pkg

1. macOS Big Sur 11.5 Beta 3 (20G5042c) - 071-52235 - Added 2021-06-15 17:34:18

 

[Mystere65]

Updated to beta 3 with OC 0.1.7 everything perfect.

 

[Dilli]

2011 machines have TB(1) not TB2.

I use 2011 Mac -> TB(1/2) cable -> Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter -> TB3 dock -> TB3 NVMe drive.

Waiting on the Terascale 2 patches to mature a bit before trying this with Big Sur.

Today I connected iMac => TB(1/2) Cable =>Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter => USB-C Samsung SSD enclosure. But it did not go well. There was no power to the drive nor the ssd mounted. Where did I go wrong.

Do I need to connect something else in-between. I read somewhere that Apple has locked the thunderbolt3 Adapter to not be recognised in older Macs.

 

[mdgm]

That’s where the AC powered dock comes in. The dock provides power to the drive. Another option is to use a drive with its own AC power supply.

The only bi-directional TB3 to TB2 adapter, but unfortunately it doesn’t supply power.

Depending on the model you have you may not be able to sue a USB-C drive as a boot disk. Not sure if Open Core changes this.

 

[Dilli]

That’s where the AC powered dock comes in. The dock provides power to the drive. Another option is to use a drive with its own AC power supply.

The only bi-directional TB3 to TB2 adapter, but unfortunately it doesn’t supply power.

Depending on the model you have you may not be able to sue a USB-C drive as a boot disk. Not sure if Open Core changes this.

Sad that it doesn't have its own power. So I need to make another investment to buy a USB C powered enclosure.
The tb3 adapter almost cost me 56$ non refundable.

Can you suggest some powered dock or ssd self powered enclosures

 

[Muckd]

Could you please enable verbose mode in OpenCore Patcher settings and send us the kernel panic or wherever it gets stuck?

so I've updated to 0.1.8 again, and its booting as it should, with a plug pull.
it isn't hanging like it was this morning.
on reflection, I didn't pull the plug after I updated to 0.1.8 this morning, and no matter what I tried after the first non boot , it just never booted.
I pulled the plug after updating this time around, and it booted back in just fine, I did a few subsequent reboots with pulling the plug and its booted without any problems.

 

[mdgm]

Sad that it doesn't have its own power. So I need to make another investment to buy a USB C powered enclosure.

You could try that. Though I'm not sure if booting of USB-C will work or not. Booting off Thunderbolt is more likely to work.

 

[Dilli]

You could try that. Though I'm not sure if booting of USB-C will work or not. Booting off Thunderbolt is more likely to work.

You are right . however, need to find a powered hub or a thunderbolt enclosure. If you have any pointers please provide link for same

will this hub do

 

[mdgm]

I'm pretty sure with the dock I've got and 2011 iMacs you need TB3 to boot the Mac not USB3 or USB-C. It's understandable that the 2011 iMac isn't designed to boot off USB3 when it doesn't have any USB3 ports.

I have an OWC TB3 Dock and a bus powered TB3 drive plugged into it. I figured I could always reuse the dock with a newer Mac as hopefully the TB3 docks will remain usable with Macs for some time.

I'm hoping to try seeing if I can boot off the external SSD into Big Sur using Open Core at some point.

 

[Dilli]

I'm pretty sure with the dock I've got and 2011 iMacs you need TB3 to boot the Mac not USB3 or USB-C. It's understandable that the 2011 iMac isn't designed to boot off USB3 when it doesn't have any USB3 ports.

I have an OWC TB3 Dock and a bus powered TB3 drive plugged into it. I figured I could always reuse the dock with a newer Mac as hopefully the TB3 docks will remain usable with Macs for some time.

I'm hoping to try seeing if I can boot off the external SSD into Big Sur using Open Core at some point.

Could you post the image of the dock. I will see if I can get it in my country which I doubt.

 

[mdgm]

Any TB3 dock that is compatible with High Sierra would probably be worth a try as these docks are more likely to be compatible with Macs with older Thunderbolt ports even if the manufacturer doesn’t advertise this.

This is the one I got: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/docks/owc-thunderbolt-3-dock

There is a newer version designed only for Macs with TB3 ports that are officially supported on Big Sur, which I haven’t tried, but presume would be less likely to work.

 

[K two]

so I've updated to 0.1.8 again, and its booting as it should, with a plug pull.
it isn't hanging like it was this morning.
on reflection, I didn't pull the plug after I updated to 0.1.8 this morning, and no matter what I tried after the first non boot , it just never booted.
I pulled the plug after updating this time around, and it booted back in just fine, I did a few subsequent reboots with pulling the plug and its booted without any problems.

PRAM battery?

 

[AlexSakha67]

Hi, I thought that the ATI Radeon HD 5770 video card ended its era with the releases of new macOS and I just lay there, even I forgot about it. I just admire you who created "OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher" to experience human creativity, intelligence, programming and more , the most important thing is that you give out-of-date technology (computers) a full-fledged modern to keep up with the times. Wonderful world, the technology of the future is yours😊
Downloaded installed "EasyRes", everything seems to be in order. TeraScale 2 Acceleration really works👍Super🙌🌟
My favorite hobby is "macOS Unsupported" ✨😊
My sincere thanks to: dosdude1, khronokernel, Syncretic, dhinakg, ASentientBot and many other programmers-authors.
High achievements👏

 

[Krutav]

Downloaded installed "EasyRes", everything seems to be in order. TeraScale 2 Acceleration really works👍Super🙌🌟

I've got a 2011 15" MBP, so when I try to boot into Big Sur OCLP with the TeraScale 2 GPU enabled, it gets stuck in a login loop. I see this is an issue that they are already aware of in the GitHub list of issues. Does anyone else here have the same model and are experiencing similar? The dGPU in here is far better than the Intel HD 3000...

 

[jowaju]

While testing the Firewire Boot portion of the OCLP 0.1.7 patcher, I devided to do a few benchmarks and thought someone might benefit from the info I got. Here's the breakdown of what I used :

1. Old USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 board salvaged from an HP DVD-Writer from around 2005. Uses external power brick.
2. Cheap USB 2.0 to Pata adapter from at least 10 years ago, it's basically just a black usb cable with a 44 pin IDE connector and 40 pin IDE connector at the other end. No name knock off, Jmicron chipset
3. New Mercury On-The-Go-Pro 2.5" SATA to UBS 3.0 / Firewire 800 Box

Drives :
1. 100GB 7200 RPM Laptop 44 Pin IDE Drive Hitachi Branded
2. 480GB PNY External USB 3.0 Portable SSD Elite - This is not a 2.5" Drive, it's about 1/4 that size
3. 480GB 2.5" SATA SSD Super Talent Branded

Config 1 : USB 2.0 with Spinning 100GB IDE Drive
This was the slowest config by far, coming in around 20-25 MB/s for both read and write.

Config 2 : Firewire 400 with Spinning 100GB IDE Drive
This was pretty much identical to the USB 2.0 config, at 20-25 MB/s for both read and write.


Config 3 : USB 2.0 with a fast 2.5" SATA SSD
Better at around 30 MB/s read and 35 MB/s write, much more usable than the spinning disk configs.



Config 4 : USB 2.0 with fast non-SATA SSD
Same as config 3, this looks like the top speed for USB 2.0 ports



Config 5 : Firewire 400 with fast 2.5" SATA SSD
Same as both of the USB 2.0 SSD results, 30ish write, 35ish read



Config 6 : Firewire 800 with Fast 2.5" SATA SSD
Pretty much double the speed of the USB 2.0 fastest SSD's at about 60 MB/s read and write



These were all drives that were booted from to MacOS Big Sur 11.2.3 with OCLP 0.1.7 installed to that drives EFI partition on a 24" 2008 iMac8,1. The spinning drives were usable but pretty painful, long stretches of no activity, lots of stalls and beach balls. The FW400 SSD Configs were surprisingly usable, but the PNY SSD Elite kept pace as well. The FW800 SSD Config is the obvious choice if you must have external storage. The price is sky-high though, the OWC Mercury On-The-Go-Pro case by itself is $50. You could buy a cheap $25 SATA SSD and spend 20 minutes replacing the internal drive in the iMac and get 2-3x the speed of even Firewire 800.

Side note - I had a lot of issues getting drives to boot USB, 3 of my 4 USB adapters failed to boot into Big Sur, including the USB 3.0 on the brand new On-The-Go-Pro. I could plug them in USB and use them when booted to another drive but they would NOT boot Big Sur, just a Prohibitory Sign halfway through the boot process. Not sure what the issue was but the Jmicron adapter was the only one that worked. The PNY SSD didn't use an adapter and worked flawlessly as well.

 

[mdgm]

The FW800 SSD Config is the obvious choice if you must have external storage. The price is sky-high though, the OWC Mercury On-The-Go-Pro case by itself is $50. You could buy a cheap $25 SATA SSD and spend 20 minutes replacing the internal drive in the iMac and get 2-3x the speed of even Firewire 800.

Thanks for doing those benchmarks. Of course replacing the internal drive is better provided you don't break things. As soon as you break something though the equation flips. So you need to price the risk of breaking things. I'm concerned with my 2009 Minis and 2011 iMacs that I might break something replacing the HDD with a SSD rendering the machine unusable.

Considering my 2009 Minis have 4GB RAM (I got CTO for the early 2009, late 2009 was standard config) and the 2011 iMacs have a RAM access door (already upgraded those to 8GB), there's not a strong case to pull the whole machine apart to upgrade RAM. Sure 8GB in the 2009 Minis would be better but I'd consider sticking with 4GB for attempting to boot Big Sur.

I have a couple of those OWC enclosures (one in use, with the other the SSD I wanted to use was dead so I'll need to get another 2.5" SATA SSD sometime).

 

[jgleigh]

Starting with OCLP 0.1.7, the default value for SecureBootModel is now False. What are the pros and cons of running with/without SecureBootModel under Big Sur?

 

[AlexSakha67]

I've got a 2011 15" MBP, so when I try to boot into Big Sur OCLP with the TeraScale 2 GPU enabled, it gets stuck in a login loop. I see this is an issue that they are already aware of in the GitHub list of issues. Does anyone else here have the same model and are experiencing similar? The dGPU in here is far better than the Intel HD 3000...

Working Around Legacy Acceleration Issues | OpenCore Legacy Patcher

 

[Dilli]

While testing the Firewire Boot portion of the OCLP 0.1.7 patcher, I devided to do a few benchmarks and thought someone might benefit from the info I got. Here's the breakdown of what I used :

1. Old USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 board salvaged from an HP DVD-Writer from around 2005. Uses external power brick.
2. Cheap USB 2.0 to Pata adapter from at least 10 years ago, it's basically just a black usb cable with a 44 pin IDE connector and 40 pin IDE connector at the other end. No name knock off, Jmicron chipset
3. New Mercury On-The-Go-Pro 2.5" SATA to UBS 3.0 / Firewire 800 Box

Drives :
1. 100GB 7200 RPM Laptop 44 Pin IDE Drive Hitachi Branded
2. 480GB PNY External USB 3.0 Portable SSD Elite - This is not a 2.5" Drive, it's about 1/4 that size
3. 480GB 2.5" SATA SSD Super Talent Branded

Config 1 : USB 2.0 with Spinning 100GB IDE Drive
This was the slowest config by far, coming in around 20-25 MB/s for both read and write. View attachment 1794182

Config 2 : Firewire 400 with Spinning 100GB IDE Drive
This was pretty much identical to the USB 2.0 config, at 20-25 MB/s for both read and write.
View attachment 1794178

Config 3 : USB 2.0 with a fast 2.5" SATA SSD
Better at around 30 MB/s read and 35 MB/s write, much more usable than the spinning disk configs.

View attachment 1794183

Config 4 : USB 2.0 with fast non-SATA SSD
Same as config 3, this looks like the top speed for USB 2.0 ports

View attachment 1794184

Config 5 : Firewire 400 with fast 2.5" SATA SSD
Same as both of the USB 2.0 SSD results, 30ish write, 35ish read

View attachment 1794179

Config 6 : Firewire 800 with Fast 2.5" SATA SSD
Pretty much double the speed of the USB 2.0 fastest SSD's at about 60 MB/s read and write

View attachment 1794181

These were all drives that were booted from to MacOS Big Sur 11.2.3 with OCLP 0.1.7 installed to that drives EFI partition on a 24" 2008 iMac8,1. The spinning drives were usable but pretty painful, long stretches of no activity, lots of stalls and beach balls. The FW400 SSD Configs were surprisingly usable, but the PNY SSD Elite kept pace as well. The FW800 SSD Config is the obvious choice if you must have external storage. The price is sky-high though, the OWC Mercury On-The-Go-Pro case by itself is $50. You could buy a cheap $25 SATA SSD and spend 20 minutes replacing the internal drive in the iMac and get 2-3x the speed of even Firewire 800.

Side note - I had a lot of issues getting drives to boot USB, 3 of my 4 USB adapters failed to boot into Big Sur, including the USB 3.0 on the brand new On-The-Go-Pro. I could plug them in USB and use them when booted to another drive but they would NOT boot Big Sur, just a Prohibitory Sign halfway through the boot process. Not sure what the issue was but the Jmicron adapter was the only one that worked. The PNY SSD didn't use an adapter and worked flawlessly as well.

Are using firewire drives worth it looking at these benchmarks. What should be normal speeds read/write for firewire 800 while using ssd. Just curious

 

[mdgm]

Are using firewire drives worth it looking at these benchmarks. What should be normal speeds read/write for firewire 80 while using ssd. Just curious

Firewire is worth it if you have a pre-2011 Mac that doesn't have Thunderbolt especially if you have a model with FW800 which is much faster than USB2. Considering Big Sur can be run unsupported on Macs from this era it's a useful feature.

If your Mac only has FW400 then those numbers seem to suggest that using a Firewire SSD doesn't make much sense at this point unless you already have the enclosure and the cords as USB2 achieves about the same performance.

If you have a 2011 Mac then Thunderbolt although it can be costly should be considered.

If you have a 2012 or newer Mac you should have at least USB3 or on the relatively new models USB-C in which case you shouldn't consider Firewire at all.

The OWC enclosure has both USB3 and FW800 ports so after retiring old Macs with FW800 ports the drive could be used with a newer Mac that has USB3.

 

[bbb555]

updated from OCLP 0.1.6 to 0.1.9
went without a hitch.
build, install, reboot
👍

 

[Dilli]

deleted by self.

 

[mdgm]

As I said before you may find that a USB-C drive won't boot that you need an actual TB3 drive to boot on the 2011 Mac. I haven't tried booting off a USB-C drive (I don't have any to test with as none of my Macs have USB-C ports) so don't know if that would work.

 

[Dilli]

As I said before you may find that a USB-C drive won't boot that you need an actual TB3 drive to boot on the 2011 Mac. I haven't tried booting off a USB-C drive (I don't have any to test with as none of my Macs have USB-C ports) so don't know if that would work.

Ok . I am not looking at Booting through SSD/HDD. My intention is only to use this setup for TimeMachine Backups and Data transfer using faster TB & Firewire 800 ports. Thats all.

 

[kuoshen]

My question was misunderstood. I just wanted to know if the speeds mentioned in the benchmark by @jowaju after using OCPL 0.1.7 is similar to normal speeds without patch for supported macs.

As you can see in my signature I have iMac mid 2011 27inch which has 2 thunderbolt 1 port with firewire 800 port at the back besides 4 usb 2.0.

I want to best utilize using thunderbolt and firewire ports. So I have apple thunderbolt 3, apple thunderbolt 2 to firewire 800 adapter, as well as thunderbolt (1/2) cable with thunderbolt jacks at both end.

Now question is how to best utilize these adapters and cables to get optimum speed.

I have an old WD MyBook enclosure which has 2 firewire 800 ports.

If I need to use thunderbolt 3 with my 2011 iMac I need a powered thunderbolt 3 docking station like you mentioned in your post to attach my external ssd/hdd.

I can use the apple firewire adapter to attach the 800 drives but BigSur ejects the drive for whatever reason since
Apple dropped support from Catalina onwards.

I have not yet used OCPL 0.1.7 patcher for firewire support as OCPL did not make me proceed with the installer so I have to use other method as mentioned in my signature.

My only concern is I want to use the thunderbolt 3 usb c adapter but I need to buy a dock which is very expensive costing over USD 200. So till the time I get a cheaper dock I need to hold on for a while.

Hi,

Hope this is not OT on this thread. I thought I'd chime in since I went thru this consideration some time earlier this year looking at Firewire 800 vs Thunderbolt 1 as boot disk for iMac 12,2 (Mid 2011), MBP 15" 2009 and iMac 14,2 (2013).

Started with a Firewire 800 SATA enclosure made by Akitio (I have the earlier version of this with FW800, FW400 and USB2.0 - https://www.akitio.com/blog/discontinued/neutrino-u3plus-eol) which I picked up used for about $5. With MBP 2009 on Firewire 800, macOS Catalina and Sandisk SSD Plus 256GB, I was getting speeds of sequential read 88MB/s (random 4K read 19 MB/s) and sequential write 80MB/s (random 4k write with 14 MB/s).

For the iMac 14,4, I purchased an old Seagate GoFlex thunderbolt SATA adapter for $15 (https://www.storagereview.com/review/seagate-goflex-thunderbolt-adapter-review) which I use to boot Big Sur on the unsupported machine. This way, I did not have to open it to replace the spinning hard disk. With the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter, Big Sur 11.4 and Samsung EVO 860 SSD 512GB, I was getting speeds of sequential read 378MB/s (random 4K read 160 MB/s) and sequential write 325MB/s (random 4k write with 10 MB/s).

I eventually put the Samsung EVO 860 inside the iMac 12,2 running Big Sur 11.4. I got speeds of sequential read 569MB/s (random 4K read 411 MB/s) and sequential write 536MB/s (random 4k write with 124 MB/s).

Some of the other thunderbolt options I considered were: Western Digital Thunderbolt Duo, OWC Mercury Elite pro dual, Lacie Rugged thunderbolt HDD, Akitio Thunder Dock with eSATA, Kanex thunderbolt adapter with USB3 and eSATA, and the Lacie Little Big Disk (limited to SATA2). Most were not available or cost too much. I considered using USB3 SATA enclosures but there is no way to enable TRIM for SSD.

Hope this helps.