macOS 14 Sonoma on Unsupported Macs Thread

[jacou]

How did you reset the NVRAM?

As @houser said from the boot menu with option key and then space bar. The boot chime got pretty loud so I guess it was successful but doesn’t help with booting unfortunately.

 

[OKonnel]

As @houser said from the boot menu with option key and then space bar. The boot chime got pretty loud so I guess it was successful but doesn’t help with booting unfortunately.

Hi @jacou . These problems are usually solved by redoing the complete installation with the latest version of the operating system.
It may also help to use the OCLP 1.6.0 Nightly build that you can download from the SOURCE.md link in the OCLP Code on its Dortania page.
Obviously you'll need another Mac to create the USB Key and if it's not the same model of Mac REMEMBER that in OCLP settings you must MANUALLY select that yours is an iMac 14.1 !!! Otherwise it won't work or you could make the situation worse.

 

[jacou]

Hi @jacou . These problems are usually solved by redoing the complete installation with the latest version of the operating system.
It may also help to use the OCLP 1.6.0 Nightly build that you can download from the SOURCE.md link in the OCLP Code on its Dortania page.
Obviously you'll need another Mac to create the USB Key and if it's not the same model of Mac REMEMBER that in OCLP settings you must MANUALLY select that yours is an iMac 14.1 !!! Otherwise it won't work or you could make the situation worse.

That also didn’t do it unfortunately 🙁 I installed 14.6.1 again over the existing system also tried OCLP 1.6n and the same problem is still there. Guess I’ll have to format the computer then as a last option.
Thanks guys for your help 🙏

 

[OKonnel]

That also didn’t do it unfortunately 🙁 I installed 14.6.1 again over the existing system also tried OCLP 1.6n and the same problem is still there. Guess I’ll have to format the computer then as a last option.
Thanks guys for your help 🙏

In this case, one could support the hardware hypothesis that a friend in an earlier post attributed to heat.
For my part, however, I recalled that the only time in more than 30 years of use when a computer has crashed in an almost similar fashion, I discovered that there was a slightly defective RAM module. The only utility that allowed me to find this out is the free TestMem program, which starts at startup and performs a lengthy low-level check of the RAM.
You can find everything on its official site, including how to create the USB key to start the test at Mac startup.
But I hope other friends will chime in to propose a solution. I think by now there are many of us who are curious about what may have happened.

 

[jacou]

In this case, one could support the hardware hypothesis that a friend in an earlier post attributed to heat.
For my part, however, I recalled that the only time in more than 30 years of use when a computer has crashed in an almost similar fashion, I discovered that there was a slightly defective RAM module. The only utility that allowed me to find this out is the free TestMem program, which starts at startup and performs a lengthy low-level check of the RAM.
You can find everything on its official site, including how to create the USB key to start the test at Mac startup.
But I hope other friends will chime in to propose a solution. I think by now there are many of us who are curious about what may have happened.

That sounds interesting and could make sense. By now I doubt that it’s a software problem at all. I formatted my iMac (which actually is the 14.2 model) and did clean installs of 14.6.1 and 14.5 with the help of OCLP but both resulted in the same issue. Before installing the post install root patch the system is booting into that typical sluggish state BUT with weird horizontal lines in some grey coloured areas. I never saw them before so I suspected that something could be wrong with the GPU.
I didn’t think about the RAM though and am hopeful that it could be the cause of my problem.

 

[OKonnel]

That sounds interesting and could make sense. By now I doubt that it’s a software problem at all. I formatted my iMac (which actually is the 14.2 model) and did clean installs of 14.6.1 and 14.5 with the help of OCLP but both resulted in the same issue. Before installing the post install root patch the system is booting into that typical sluggish state BUT with weird horizontal lines in some grey coloured areas. I never saw them before so I suspected that something could be wrong with the GPU.
I didn’t think about the RAM though and am hopeful that it could be the cause of my problem.

The iMac 14,2 is also my Mac [CPU i7, 24GB RAM, nVidia GTX780M 4GB VRAM] and it runs very well and perfectly with macOS 14.6.1 & OCLP 1.6.0 latest Night build

EDIT

Dear @jacou , the odd markings on the display you speak of are undoubtedly a sign of RAM and/or GPU corruption or otherwise a very serious hardware failure, and if you don't first identify and fix it, it is completely useless to insist on wanting to install macOS.

In your place, at any rate, I would make a trivial attempt: try to erase the NVRAM WELL and install macOS 10.15.7 Catalina.

The best way to erase NVRAM is as follows:
- at the boot chime PRESS simultaneously and hold down the CMD+P+R keys
- then CONTINUE to hold them down until you hear the initial BONG sound FOUR times.

Then unplug ALL peripherals, unplug the power cord and wait 30 seconds or more before plugging it back in. This way you will have also reset the SMC.

Finally Install Catalina via a USB Installation Key that you will start after pressing the Option key at boot.

If you're lucky and your iMac starts working again, you can hopefully try to install OCLP and Sonoma 14.6.1 again.

 

[jacou]

iMac 14,2 is also my Mac [CPU i7, 24GB RAM, nVidia GTX780M 4GB VRAM] and it works very well and perfectly with macOS 14.6.1

I see yes I’m quite certain that something on my logic board or GPU must have blown then earlier today. Without graphics acceleration the system is booting and kind of working but once the graphics driver is installed the system isn’t booting up anymore.
That’s very frustrating. I guess I’ll have to depart from my good old 11 year old companion then and dive into the shiny world of silicon, speed and non repairability 🫠

I wish you better luck with your 14,2!

 

[arukhlev]

Good afternoon. You need to remove everything related to OpenCore in safe mode. After that, without rebooting, install OpenCore 1.4.3 with patches. It was all the same

 

[OKonnel]

VERY IMPORTANT FOR ALL USERS WITH A 14,2 iMac (27" late 2013) and perhaps users with other Macs as well.

If you have installed one of the latest builds of OCLP 1.6.0 Nightly, please check if “Continuity Camera” is working.
This morning, in fact, I wanted to use “Continuity Camera” with FaceTime but the screen remained black.
So, I installed the official version of OCLP 1.5.0, rebooted, activated the new EFI Boot by holding down the Option key at startup and clicking on the EFI Boot icon, and NOW “Continuity Camera” works fine again.

I should point out that IT WAS NOT NECESSARY to reinstall the “Post Install Patch” of OCLP 1.5.0 as well.
This problem, then, is caused by the new OCLP builds, and I hope the Developers will find a remedy so as not to alter what, on the other hand, works fine in our Macs with 1.5.0 and perhaps even with the early 1.6.0 Nightly builds.

 

[0134168]

VERY IMPORTANT FOR ALL USERS WITH A 14,2 iMac (27" late 2013) and perhaps users with other Macs as well.

If you have installed one of the latest builds of OCLP 1.6.0 Nightly, please check if “Continuity Camera” is working.
This morning, in fact, I wanted to use “Continuity Camera” with FaceTime but the screen remained black.
So, I installed the official version of OCLP 1.5.0, rebooted, activated the new EFI Boot by holding down the Option key at startup and clicking on the EFI Boot icon, and NOW “Continuity Camera” works fine again.

I should point out that IT WAS NOT NECESSARY to reinstall the “Post Install Patch” of OCLP 1.5.0 as well.
This problem, then, is caused by the new OCLP builds, and I hope the Developers will find a remedy so as not to alter what, on the other hand, works fine in our Macs with 1.5.0 and perhaps even with the early 1.6.0 Night builds.

"Nightly". You dont need either the caps nor the bold.

 

[OKonnel]

"Nightly". You dont need either the caps nor the bold.

I agree with you, @*******, but in this case I empathised with those who, like me, haven't used FaceTime or Photo Boot for a long time and therefore didn't realise the loss of 'Continuity Camera' functionality.
This morning we had a granddaughter with us who lives far away and since she was very sad about her departure, I wanted to show her how her grandmother and I see her great in the iMac's display.
Unfortunately, the baby and her mother (my daughter) were leaving and had to take the train. So I did not have time to try to remedy the sudden and unexpected discovery of a malfunctioning 'Continuity Camera'.

So I would have very much appreciated it if someone, as I did, had discovered the problem and done everything possible to get my attention.
In fact, we often scroll through the Forum quickly and many posts slip by. Maybe you use a Mac, but I and many others use mobile devices and between work and family commitments we are forced to be a bit superficial.

Thank you, finally, for the correction Night -> Nightly. The proofreader corrected me and if you go and read my previous posts I have been writing Nightly for years.

EDIT
I corrected Night to Nightly and in doing so saw that it was originally spelled Nightly correctly.

So, I wanted to remove the boldface, but decided to leave it in the (somewhat illusory, I know...) hope that some Developers will notice it even though, for some time, almost all of them prefer to frequent Discord.
In this way I would still be giving a little help to the Community without any impropriety, since the use of boldface is an action provided for by Forum netiquette and therefore made possible by the text formatting buttons.

 

[0134168]

I agree with you, @*******, but in this case I empathised with those who, like me, haven't used FaceTime or Photo Boot for a long time and therefore didn't realise the loss of 'Continuity Camera' functionality.
This morning we had a granddaughter with us who lives far away and since she was very sad about her departure, I wanted to show her how her grandmother and I see her great in the iMac's display.
Unfortunately, the baby and her mother (my daughter) were leaving and had to take the train. So I did not have time to try to remedy the sudden and unexpected discovery of a malfunctioning 'Continuity Camera'.

So I would have very much appreciated it if someone, as I did, had discovered the problem and done everything possible to get my attention.
In fact, we often scroll through the Forum quickly and many posts slip by. Maybe you use a Mac, but I and many others use mobile devices and between work and family commitments we are forced to be a bit superficial.

Thank you, finally, for the correction Night -> Nightly. The proofreader corrected me and if you go and read my previous posts I have been writing Nightly for years.

EDIT
I corrected Night to Nightly and in doing so saw that it was originally spelled Nightly correctly.

So, I wanted to remove the boldface, but decided to leave it in the (somewhat illusory, I know...) hope that some Developers will notice it even though, for some time, almost all of them prefer to frequent Discord.
In this way I would still be giving a little help to the Community without any impropriety, since the use of boldface is an action provided for by Forum netiquette and therefore made possible by the text formatting buttons.

No, sir, don´t misunderstand me! I said "Nightly" meaning that is normal that some things don´t work with betas. I´m so happy you could fix it. And thanks for sharing.

 

[OKonnel]

No, sir, don´t misunderstand me! I said "Nightly" meaning that is normal that some things don´t work with betas. I´m so happy you could fix it. And thanks for sharing.

Glad to hear it, @*******. I am well aware of the risks of Beta test versions, but sometimes, in adjusting or improving the Code, to adapt OCLP to newer unsupported Macs, it can happen that the Developers don't realise that they have caused problems for Macs like mine and others where, until now, everything worked fine.

But whereas there used to be a lot of us with unsupported Mac models and therefore sent a lot of feedback to the Developers, now they are more involved (rightly) in thinking about the latest Mac models.

So it is always a good idea to report something that you are absolutely certain about.

I would also like to speak on Discord and sometimes I do. But I don't know English and I find it hard because the dialogue in Discord is very fast and also I can't use the translator within the Discord app directly.

Best regards and thanks for the friendly chat 😍

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

That sounds interesting and could make sense. By now I doubt that it’s a software problem at all. I formatted my iMac (which actually is the 14.2 model) and did clean installs of 14.6.1 and 14.5 with the help of OCLP but both resulted in the same issue. Before installing the post install root patch the system is booting into that typical sluggish state BUT with weird horizontal lines in some grey coloured areas. I never saw them before so I suspected that something could be wrong with the GPU.
I didn’t think about the RAM though and am hopeful that it could be the cause of my problem.

My Imac 14,2 with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4 GB card gets occasional text glitches on Safari tabs on the secondary 30" cinema Display. Reloading the page doesn't fix it. No horizontal lines, though. Running 32GB RAM, but barely using it for anything. Just browsing, primarily.

I haven't repasted this machine. It is nearly 11 years old. Its got two SSDs inside, one Slotted AuraX2 from OWC, and one generic SSD in the place of the old spinner.

 

[olrik77]

Hello,

macOS Sonoma is installed on my Mac mini 7,1 with OCLP.
Everything seems to be working fine!
Only one small problem: when starting up, the progress bar stops about halfway through and nothing happens; I have to shut down and restart, sometimes several times, to get it to work.
Any ideas?
Thank you in advance for your invaluable help.

Serviteur,

 

[PropClear]

Hello,

macOS Sonoma is installed on my Mac mini 7,1 with OCLP.
Everything seems to be working fine!
Only one small problem: when starting up, the progress bar stops about halfway through and nothing happens; I have to shut down and restart, sometimes several times, to get it to work.
Any ideas?
Thank you in advance for your invaluable help.

Serviteur,

Try an NVRam reset (spacebar in OCLP menu on the right side) may that helps!

 

[basslik]

Ho @basslik. You can install and use multiple versions of macOS on your internal disk or external devices.
However, as Apple continually updates APFS, read this article —> https://eclecticlight.co/2024/08/22/dual-booting-your-mac-with-multiple-versions-of-apfs/ and the comments carefully to understand what not to do.
For example, perhaps get distracted by using Catalina's Disk Utility functions (or Terminal commands) with volumes where later operating systems are installed and this can cause unexpected problems and data loss.
I don't know if you only damage one volume or if there is a risk of damaging the entire disk and then being forced to format it.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Running Sonoma 14.6.1 with OpenCore 1.5.0 with the latest Pro Tools 2024.6.

Really smooth, and a tad smoother than Monterey. Still running it through it's paces.

Still have Monterey as a backup.

 

[rehkram]

I noticed Sonoma 14.7 was available as an OTA update. Downloading it at present.

 

[houser]

I noticed Sonoma 14.7 was available as an OTA update. Downloading it at present.

You mean a developer beta right? May I ask what you are hoping for with that?
Issues with 14.6.1 or just feeling restless?

 

[rehkram]

Nothing really, 14.6.1 is working fine. I think the risk level is acceptable, will post results later.

It is a great excuse to get out of my hot attic where I've been running electrical wiring for days.

 

[rehkram]

14.7 is up and running on a 2012 rMBP10,1 after an OTA update over 14.6.1
No details on whether it's a beta or not, info on it seems to be unavailable around the web at present.
The build number looks like a public release though: 23H122

No surprises during the upgrade, took a while, several auto reboots. Reinstalled the OCLP root patches, rebooted and voila, it works. Activity Monitor looking good, no fans running as present. Weird!

 

[houser]

14.7 is up and running on a 2012 rMBP10,1 after an OTA update over 14.6.1
No details on whether it's a beta or not, info on it seems to be unavailable around the web at present.
The build number looks like a public release though: 23H122

Comes up as a dev beta here. Nice to know it appears good though..

 

[rehkram]

Will report any issues I discover asap

 

[MacinMan]

Since people here keep eyes out on beta and development releases, anyone know if Monterey has another update in the works? I'm just trying to determine if Monterey is done before officially moving this iMac 17,1 off macOS to Linux, or choosing to use Open Core Legacy Patcher.

 

[jotzet]

My Imac 14,2 with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4 GB card gets occasional text glitches on Safari tabs on the secondary 30" cinema Display. Reloading the page doesn't fix it. No horizontal lines, though. Running 32GB RAM, but barely using it for anything. Just browsing, primarily.

I haven't repasted this machine. It is nearly 11 years old. Its got two SSDs inside, one Slotted AuraX2 from OWC, and one generic SSD in the place of the old spinner.

Hmm, @Eriamjh1138@DAN - do you have a screenshot of the font rendering issue? Some time ago I posted a similar issue, but nobody seems to have this (now on Ventura, back then it was on Sonoma though)