This post is just to inform to anybody having an old MB, that it is not very difficult to install, thanks to MCPF (which you can download from the OS X Hackers.net web site) Mountain Lion or even Mavericks in an unsupported old MB and without great efforts needed.
I was frustrated when my old white MB 2.1 passed away due to a hardware failure after I had bought for it a new original Apple battery and a SSD intended to replace the 5400 rpm 2.5" internal HD
I bought therefore an old MB 4.1 with a 2.4 Core 2 Duo running OSX 10.7 Lion, the last MB model taking that type of rechargeable battery.
As we know, Lion is the last OSX which officially works with the MB 4.1 according to Apple.
After several repeated failures with MCPF running from that MB 4.1, I installed in an external USB HD connected to a MP 6.1 (late 2013, running 10.10 Yosemite) several partitions, one with the MCPF installer for 10.8 and another with the MCPF installer for 10.9. That worked without problems.
Before modifying anything in the MB, I cloned to an external USB drive the original 10.7 Lion coming with the MB 4.1. for elementary safety reasons since one never knows for sure what can happen when trying something non endorsed by Apple.
Alternatively one can simply keep the original 2.5" internal HD with 10.7 Lion in it and put instead inside the MB a different HD, preferably, of course, a SSD.
Old MB models until the 4.1 of Early 2008 have the great advantage that it is easy to access both the RAM and the internal HD without having to perform risky things to open the computer.
I could accordingly on the same occasion replace one of the two 2 GB 667 MHz RAM SoDimm modules with a 4 GB one I had bought second hand for my deceased MB 2.1, giving me a total of 6 GB, officially unsupported according to Apple but actually accepted by the MB 4.1 without problems.
However that would not have been necessary to install Mavericks. Less RAM does it as well.
By connecting the USB HD this time to the MB, and booting from the 10.8 installer partition, the MB updated from Lion to Mountain Lion (it kept all the Apps and files, no clean install).
I then did the same but instead booted from the partition with the Mavericks MCPF installer.
It then updated from ML to Mavericks (keeping again all the Apps and files although, of course, some had to be updated to the new OSX 10.9).
I assume that I could have done the update directly from Lion to Mavericks but cannot say it for sure, since I did not try it.
The only issue I had was that the Profiler indicated a Graphic Card with only 6 MB Video RAM instead of the 144 MB of non dedicated (shared) video Ram that the 3100 graphic card of this MB uses.
A second installation of Mavericks from the same MCPF installer over the first one corrected this.
As everyone knows graphic acceleration used in 10.9 and newer OSX is not possible with such old MB and must be accepted.
Of course all the credits go to the developers who created MCPF.
I simply followed their indications. No big deal at all.
That I succeeded does not necessarily implies that everybody else will (needless to say I do not take any responsability!)...and of course, everything non endorsed by Apple and not covered by Apple Care has potential dangers everybody should be aware of and decide if he risks or not...
However such old MB like mine (7 years old) cannot possibly still be covered by any Apple Care and besides, one can buy one for little money, risking therefore much less than with experiments involving more modern and valuable computers.
The MCPF is supposed to install Yosemite as well but I did not dare go so far with a MB 4.1.
Since most attention in this forum and almost all posts related to OSX, focus presently (logically) to El Capitan, I found that this post about older OSX might be of interest to people like me who are already satisfied with upgrading their old MB from 10.7 to 10.9.
Software updates from Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and other sources seem until now to work normally but booting from the recovery partition is for some rason I do not know not possible, showing instead on the welcome screen just the sad circle with a diagonal line over it, a small trade-off I can accept for having updated the old computer 2 OSX versions over the original Lion.
That's all folks...
Ed
I was frustrated when my old white MB 2.1 passed away due to a hardware failure after I had bought for it a new original Apple battery and a SSD intended to replace the 5400 rpm 2.5" internal HD
I bought therefore an old MB 4.1 with a 2.4 Core 2 Duo running OSX 10.7 Lion, the last MB model taking that type of rechargeable battery.
As we know, Lion is the last OSX which officially works with the MB 4.1 according to Apple.
After several repeated failures with MCPF running from that MB 4.1, I installed in an external USB HD connected to a MP 6.1 (late 2013, running 10.10 Yosemite) several partitions, one with the MCPF installer for 10.8 and another with the MCPF installer for 10.9. That worked without problems.
Before modifying anything in the MB, I cloned to an external USB drive the original 10.7 Lion coming with the MB 4.1. for elementary safety reasons since one never knows for sure what can happen when trying something non endorsed by Apple.
Alternatively one can simply keep the original 2.5" internal HD with 10.7 Lion in it and put instead inside the MB a different HD, preferably, of course, a SSD.
Old MB models until the 4.1 of Early 2008 have the great advantage that it is easy to access both the RAM and the internal HD without having to perform risky things to open the computer.
I could accordingly on the same occasion replace one of the two 2 GB 667 MHz RAM SoDimm modules with a 4 GB one I had bought second hand for my deceased MB 2.1, giving me a total of 6 GB, officially unsupported according to Apple but actually accepted by the MB 4.1 without problems.
However that would not have been necessary to install Mavericks. Less RAM does it as well.
By connecting the USB HD this time to the MB, and booting from the 10.8 installer partition, the MB updated from Lion to Mountain Lion (it kept all the Apps and files, no clean install).
I then did the same but instead booted from the partition with the Mavericks MCPF installer.
It then updated from ML to Mavericks (keeping again all the Apps and files although, of course, some had to be updated to the new OSX 10.9).
I assume that I could have done the update directly from Lion to Mavericks but cannot say it for sure, since I did not try it.
The only issue I had was that the Profiler indicated a Graphic Card with only 6 MB Video RAM instead of the 144 MB of non dedicated (shared) video Ram that the 3100 graphic card of this MB uses.
A second installation of Mavericks from the same MCPF installer over the first one corrected this.
As everyone knows graphic acceleration used in 10.9 and newer OSX is not possible with such old MB and must be accepted.
Of course all the credits go to the developers who created MCPF.
I simply followed their indications. No big deal at all.
That I succeeded does not necessarily implies that everybody else will (needless to say I do not take any responsability!)...and of course, everything non endorsed by Apple and not covered by Apple Care has potential dangers everybody should be aware of and decide if he risks or not...
However such old MB like mine (7 years old) cannot possibly still be covered by any Apple Care and besides, one can buy one for little money, risking therefore much less than with experiments involving more modern and valuable computers.
The MCPF is supposed to install Yosemite as well but I did not dare go so far with a MB 4.1.
Since most attention in this forum and almost all posts related to OSX, focus presently (logically) to El Capitan, I found that this post about older OSX might be of interest to people like me who are already satisfied with upgrading their old MB from 10.7 to 10.9.
Software updates from Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and other sources seem until now to work normally but booting from the recovery partition is for some rason I do not know not possible, showing instead on the welcome screen just the sad circle with a diagonal line over it
, a small trade-off I can accept for having updated the old computer 2 OSX versions over the original Lion. That's all folks...
Ed
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