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iM 4,1-14,4 Maximum os Imac 24 early 2008 ?

Mad Kat

Mad Kat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 11, 2019
129
7
Italia
Hi guys, a little question,
I find myself with an old Imac 24" from early 2008,
processor 3.06 ghz Intel core 2 duo, ram 4 gb ddr2 800 mhz, gpu Nvidia geforce 8800 gs 512 mb, ssd 1tb crucial mx 500, Osx El capitan

I kindly wanted to ask you, the maximum Os that I can install with patch?
without causing me problems with wifi since I use it with cellular hostpost

Thank you very much
 
It has been shown that you can get Monterey on one of those. Pretty impressive but it would run like garbage.
I think the recommended extent to go with a Mac of that age is Catalina, 10.15.

I'm not sure if you'd need to do additional hardware upgrades, or if wifi would be broken, but there may be the option of getting a cheap USB wifi dongle if necessary.
 
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only concerns are:
1) if I have to make it do apfs formatting, since I don't think I did it for el capitan
2) if I should put high sierra or majave to not risk too much, since I only have 4gb ram
3) if in case I format, I can recover all the documents from time machine (el capitan).

Thank you very much
 
Mad Kat said:
only concerns are:
1) if I have to make it do apfs formatting, since I don't think I did it for el capitan
2) if I should put high sierra or majave to not risk too much, since I only have 4gb ram
3) if in case I format, I can recover all the documents from time machine (el capitan).

Thank you very much
Click to expand...
1) You'd have to check. I think you could install High Sierra without being forced into APFS, but Catalina forces APFS? Not sure.
2) 4GB is a bit low, but no OS will run particularly worse on that. The most important upgrade is an SSD.
3) Why not Partition your drive. Then you keep your El Cap installation on one half, and the other half could be an APFS drive. You can then migrate your data over using Migrant Assistant or Time Machine.
 
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Keep it to what you know!
Stay with MojavePatch (32bit-compatibility) and stay with HFS+ (MojavePatch allows to stay with HFS+)
Less hassle, less regrets, more performance compared to Catalina.
I had a bunch of 2008/09 iMacs running that way.
(BTW: Your iMac is in great shape: SSD, fastest CPU. But You should spend it maxed-out RAM)
 
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Thanks a lot guys, I decided to install os Mojave.. better to go step by step
One last tip, how can I partition an existing ssd with El Capitan already installed, to create a partition for Mojave?
What program do you recommend me? and maybe how to do it :)

If after having partitioned, and assessed that Mojave works well ditto wifi, can I then merge the partitions?

Thank you very much
 
You can use Disk Utility to split the El Capitan partition. Click on the “Partition” tab and on “+”.
 
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so when I partition I do it in apfs on hfs+ partitioned ssd, then I install Mojave on it, and if after testing everything works, I migrate everything from El Capitan, initialize hps+ partition in apfs, and lastly I merge into one partition where there was Mojave ... if ok I proceed
now i am preparing usb

thank you guys
 
You can’t format as APFS in El Capitan. Format the new partition as HFS+ first and use Disk Utility after booting from the USB installer to reformat as APFS.
 
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I'd stay with Mojave/HFS+. Better stay off a mixed HFS+/APFS-hassle!!!
You may partition the SSD with DiskUtility. But keep in mind, that the order of partitions define, if and how you can merge partitions.
Your ElCapitan is in first place. So any other partitions come on second, third etc place.
If you install Mojave onto the 2nd partition, you cannot delete the first partition with ElCap and make it part of the second partition.
To check all functions I'd go for this partition-scheme (all HFS+) since Your SSD has a lot of space:
[1] ElCap (your current system and data) => upgrade to Patched-Mojave here
[2] DATA (optional place to migrate your data and keep the os-partion smaller)
[3] MojavePatch-TestDrive (install and check-out MojavePatch here)
[4] ElCap_Backup (Clone Backup of [1])
[5] MochavePatcher (very last partition [16GB] for system-install and -recovery). So You won't need an USB-Stick.
Make sure to have proper external backups of [1] and optional [2]/DATA before starting any further changes on partitions.
Create [5] a 16GB partion at the very end of the disk to install the patched macOS-Installer here (run the MojavePatcher on ElCap[1] and install the patched macOS installer to [5]) This partition is quite important, because You won't need any USB-Stick for future patched-macOS-Installations or repair.
Partitions [3] and [4] are optional and serve as a first playing-ground for Mojave [3] and save-haven for Your working ElCapitan-Installation [4].
After a test-drive with the patched Mojave on [3] You may upgrade ElCapitan [1] to patched Mojave. You'll see, that the patched macOS-installer on [5] comes on pretty handy for those redundant macOS installing procedures.
After having ElCap on [1] successfully upgraded to patched-Mojave You may delete the Mojave-Test-Drive [3] and add it to the DATA-Partition [2]
You may also delete an (emptied) DATA [2]-partition and add it to partition-[1].
Or You may even clear your ElCap-Backup-Partition to add it to any preceding partition ... (If you have enough space left on the drive I'd keep: [1] patched-Mojave; [2]DATA; [3]ElCap-CloneBackup; [4] patched-macOS-installer).

Have a look at the "Early Intel - Trash or treasure? MacBook Pro 2008" thread about fine-tuning of patched Mojave.

I had four 2008/09 24"iMacs running patched Mojave as ThinClients for RDP-connections to a Win-Terminal-Server. Did run fine! After having to move to a Win10Pro-File-Server last year those iMacs got an upgrade to Win10Pro to serve as a full-client workstation. Didn't perform well under Win10Pro and heavy loads unfortunately and had to be replaced by mid2012 15" MBP9,1. Sold one of the iMacs, another one was a giveaway to a nice person, who fixed my old car. One died somehow, but one is still left for any forthcoming tasks ...
My long-time daily-driver has been an early2007 17" MBP4,1 with patched-Mojave (HFS+). Didn't wan't to let go HFS+ and 32bit-support ...

Cheers, good luck to You and the iMac!
...and upgrade RAM ;)
 
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Mad Kat said:
I'm undecided about the apfs or hfs+ format ..?
Click to expand...
Better stay with HFS+ and avoid APFS. MojavePatcher fortunately supports to stay with HFS+.
If you install patched-Mojave from the scratch, You have to prepare the harddrive as GPT/HFS+ to stay with HFS+.
Didn't have any complain about HFS+ on my early2008 MBP.
And I can access the drive through TDM by my older PPC/intel Macs.
 
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To date I haven't had a chance to update mine yet
Imac 24 of 2008
3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor,
RAM 4GB DDR2 800MHz,
Nvidia geforce 8800 gs 512 mb gpu,
SSD 1TB Crucial MX 500,
Osx The captain

but google chrome can no longer be updated due to the old system!
I was wondering if by switching to Mojave I wouldn't find myself in the same situation in a short time, and then move to a higher system.

and then is opencore or dosdude1 better? always if there is nothing else more reliable
 
I would be tempted to go beyond mojave but I'm afraid it will give me problems on such an old Mac and especially the wifi that I need to connect to the internet with hostpost iphone
 
@dosdude1 's patchers (Mojave for 32bit-support or Catalina) do fit the c2duo better than the OCLP-patched macOS-versions beyond macOS 10.x
For browsing better switch to Firefox and it's recent versions.
 
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but by any chance have you already heard of the MDS program for downloading all versions of OSX? or is there another way to download all installers... I have them all up to Catalina (I like having them all)
 
Mad Kat said:
but by any chance have you already heard of the MDS program for downloading all versions of OSX? or is there another way to download all installers... I have them all up to Catalina (I like having them all)
Click to expand...
No idea, what you mean by MDS ...
I'd download the patcher, download the macOS-Installer through the patcher and build the patched macOS-installer onto an extra 16GB partition at the very end of the SSD.
 
Hi, I ran on an old mbp 15" Mojave with dosdude1 and everything went smoothly (apart from the boot screen showing patch loading)
Now it allows me to make updates and asks me if I want to update to Sonora!
Question, have any of you already tried it on old Macs or is it better not to go too far?

Macbook pro 15" mid 2009 with 1tb ssd and 8gb ram
 
Don't do the update from within patched 10.15. It will break. I recently updated my 09 mbp to Monterey (12.7) from 10.15, but I had to use open core legacy patcher to do it.
 
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The only thing I understood is to use dosdule patch 1 for 10.14 and 10.15 (opencore is already recommended to me here), while for all subsequent versions 11.7, 12.7, 13.6, 14 to use opencore
I should make n.2 Macbook pro 2009, n.1 imac 24 2008, n.1 imac 27 2010, n.1 imac 21.5
Question with opencore can I risk putting Montery 12.7 on all these? without having any problems

Use by all only trivial family office use, no special or heavy software, and all are equipped with a crucial 1TB SSD

And once the USB has been created I can use it on everyone to facilitate installations

Thanks so much guys
 
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