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OS X El Capitan on Unsupported Macs

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
Good news everyone - the RMC Team has a OS X Patcher I tried today that is a piece of cake.

After booting a test installation off an external firewire drive, I was successful upgrading my 10.7.5 install (MacBook 2,1) using the installer created by this script. I like that it is a project you can follow/contribute to on GitHub. Follow these instructions to the T and sure it'll work on the first shot!


enjoy!
 
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nnm4evr said:
Hello. You need use offline versions of macOS Extractor. I have download only two offline versions and can't say where to download others. Offline versions - 1.4.3 (Official) and 1.4.5 Beta 2 (Unofficial Edition by Me, I just download needed packages from official site and add it to main package, then edit paths in file distribution.dist).

P.S. I'm still dont resolve my problem with installation... If anyone can help me - 👍Like from me!
Click to expand...
For me the 1.4.3 version worked (not the beta 2)
 
I followed this magnificent video:

everything work well, everything except the configuration ...
I'm already download so many different software, and finally I followed this video work very well...
the only thing was, it stops on installation (configuration screen) 1.jpg
simply freezes...
wont let me do anything else, it remains on this screen, i must turn off the mac, to use again ... why?
please some solution, im so close to the installation of el capitan...

Thanks for the help and comments
 
BrianBaughn said:
I have a successful installation of El Capitan 10.11.6 on a MacBook 4,1 using method 3 with variations.

Keeping it short, what I ended up doing was:

  1. Installing EC and applying all updates to a USB-attached SSD on a MacBook Pro 3,1 already running EC
  2. Putting all the proper kexts, as discussed elsewhere in this thread, into the Extensions folder
  3. Replacing the “Apple_iSight.kext” with one from a Lion installation into the Extensions folder (see below)
  4. Performing all the proper blessings and permissions changes
  5. Putting the USB-attached SSD with EC into one of the MacBook 4,1 USB ports
  6. Creating a USB flash rEFInd stick and inserting it into the MacBook 4,1
  7. Starting up the MacBook 4,1 and setting SIP to “off” in the rEFInd bootloader
  8. Selecting the EC disk and starting it up
  9. Manually installing and configuring rEFInd to the EFI partition on the MacBook 4,1 making sure that I setup the SIP switch to OFF (and only off)
  10. Rebooted into El Capitan without the USB rEFInd stick attached

The iSight camera didn’t work (and the light was stuck “on”) without the Lion kext and I actually tried that last, re-blessing and “permissioning” again. I was surprised that worked.

The graphics issues are there but tolerable. The screen brightness is stuck at a reasonable level. I installed the free “QuickShade” app via the App Store which allows some control over brightness.

The USB ports, Bluetooth, audio, wifi all work. No worries anymore about Apple updates mucking it all up as there won't be any.

It wasn't as easy as it sounds but it would be if I had to do it again!
Click to expand...

Hi everybody, confirm that install EC on Macbook 4.1 with GMAX3100 graphics card with method 3, have some problems the audio does not go and the volume is disabled and the graphics card gives me only 6 MB of memory, do you have any idea how it can solve these problems, thanks for the contribution to everybody

sorry for my bad english
 
Dancin Forever said:
Good news everyone - the RMC Team has a OS X Patcher I tried today that is a piece of cake.

After booting a test installation off an external firewire drive, I was successful upgrading my 10.7.5 install (MacBook 2,1) using the installer created by this script. I like that it is a project you can follow/contribute to on GitHub. Follow these instructions to the T and sure it'll work on the first shot!


enjoy!
Click to expand...

Installing on my macbook 4.1 it gives me this error, can you help me? I did the whole procedure without errors
 

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I'm not able to boot with RMC fresh key.
My recovery partion was done with Mac post factor (OSX Hacker).
Sorry for the question, but how to restaur the recovery partition to be able to boot on the USB Key ?

Thank you all !
 
Ensure you start with freshly formatted usb key. I also downloaded a fresh copy of OS X using https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader. When you switch on your mac use the options/alt key to select which drive to boot from .. boot from the os-patcher usb key. Do the installation and then after install you must again boot from the osx-patcehr usb-key and run the patch. After that you can boot drifty form for HD/SDD. Follow the instructions here:- https://sites.google.com/view/rmc-team/osx-patcher, it really is super easy
 
Hello all…

I have a working installation of El Capitan on a MacBook 4,1. How do I get the NoSleep extension installed? More precisely, how do I get from the NoSleep Github page to having the NoSleep extension installed?

Edit: I think I just figured out it's not compatible with El Capitan.

Edit#2: I decided disabling sleep when the lid is closed is a bad idea anyway due to the heat buildup.
 
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Hi, i am having a problem too installing the el captain on my macbook 2,1. I downloaded the installation image with the https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader and used the https://github.com/rmc-team/osx-patcher to create the bootable usb for installation. So far, so good, but on the installation, when is supposed to wait 35 to 45 minutes to complete, right after 1 minute appears the restart button alone with no info, and then it freezes. Is it some kind of problem, or is it installing the OS but this appears because of installing the OS on unsupported mac?

IMG_20200509_133912.jpg
 
BrianBaughn said:
I have a working installation of El Capitan on a MacBook 4,1. How do I get the NoSleep extension installed? More precisely, how do I get from the NoSleep Github page to having the NoSleep extension installed?

Edit: I think I just figured out it's not compatible with El Capitan.

Edit#2: I decided disabling sleep when the lid is closed is a bad idea anyway due to the heat buildup.
Click to expand...

I initially ran into issue with getting NoSleep to work on my MacBook 2,1 and figured out what the issue is - the latest version of NoSleep doesn't check for compatibility.

The NoSleep version (1.4.0) included with RMC OS X Patcher works. Don't let the app update or turn auto update on. If you do, you get a broken NoSleep install that I found a pain to fix.

I eventually got it to work by getting the right code bits into their respective directories (app, prefpane, and extension) and code signing.

Hope this might help for you too.
 
Miguel Freitas said:
Hi, i am having a problem too installing the el captain on my macbook 2,1. I downloaded the installation image with the https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader and used the https://github.com/rmc-team/osx-patcher to create the bootable usb for installation. So far, so good, but on the installation, when is supposed to wait 35 to 45 minutes to complete, right after 1 minute appears the restart button alone with no info, and then it freezes. Is it some kind of problem, or is it installing the OS but this appears because of installing the OS on unsupported mac?
Click to expand...
 
udance4ever said:
Good news everyone - the RMC Team has a OS X Patcher I tried today that is a piece of cake.
Click to expand...

I echoed udance4ever. Here's my experience successfully installing El Captain on MacBook 3,1 coming from Lion (10.7.5).

I used the the same “prepare-install-patch” method. Some hiccups along the way, but still pretty smooth all things considered.

  • Preparing USB installer drive was almost frictionless, except:
    • I wasn’t sure where to get the installer app, but 0403979 very promptly pointed me to using MacOSDownloader
    • MacOSDownloader took about 20 min download + an hour behind the scene all up. I wasn’t patient the first time, and interrupted the process after download seems to have stopped without much happening (and probably now have a few GB of temp file space unreleased somewhere in my other mac).
  • Installing El Captain was also frictionless, except:
    • Selecting "Restart" from menubar didn’t generate a response. I had to type “reboot” in Terminal whenever reboot was needed.
    • I left the El Captain install process running but came back to find a blank screen, so had to hard-reboot.
  • Patching
    • After successfully patching, I rebooted the macbook but it got stuck in the bootloop for 10-15 times (initially thinking they were normal OS X upgrade loops) before hard-booting it again.
    • I re-did the patch and it didn’t bootloop anymore and successfully booted into El Captain.
  • Software-updating
    • I was eager to install the latest Apple software updates (2018-004 or 006 I forgot). Once updated and rebooted, both the keyboard and trackpad became unresponsive, so I couldn’t go pass the login page.
    • I repeated the install-patch-update process to find again an unresponsive keyboard and trackpad once updated and rebooted, at which point I was convinced that the Apple update step was the culprit, and so re-did the patching step again (i.e. install-patch-update-patch). The keyboard and trackpad happily came back.
Now patiently and eagerly awaiting graphics acceleration patch from parrotgeek1...
 
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When I first tried to install El Capitan on my 20" Late 2006 iMac (iMac5,1), I was unsuccessful. I just recently have decided to reattempt to upgrade Lion to El Capitan. Unfortunately I have encountered an error:
Install macOS Extractor 1.45 Error.png


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

May 24, 2020 Update: I saw on the Discord channel that this is a known problem, I will try with the RMC patcher.
 
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Running again in issues, trying to use newest version of OSXPatcher to install El Capitan to my enhanced former iMac 4,1, now calling itself iMac 5,1

Following the instructions on the homepage of RMC but having massive problems creating the USB installation pendrive. Terminal is full with errors of the kind "can't copy - no such file or directory", "can't set a flag - boot.efi is not a directory",

trying to install from working Lion 10.7.5 - failing again 🙁
 
CalvinNismo said:
What did you do to solve this? I’m having the same issue on my MacBook 4,1.
Click to expand...

Just in case anyone is having similar issues to me, I have managed to get a clean install of El Capitan installed (today) successfully. I used the RMC Team Patcher rmc-team.ch/osx-patcher and downloaded the El Capitan installer through Terminal using their downloader tool (today), this is available on their GitHub. I download the operating system and created the install USB on a 2015 MacBook Air on Mojave. I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t have worked on the MacBook 4,1 though. I didn’t have an OS on there, hence why I used my other computer.

I set my date in Terminal to 1st of May 2019 as well to get around the certificate issue with clean installs of El Capitan.

I had one issue installing, and had to restart. The issue was something to do with ‘Essentials.pkg’, it needed to restart. So I restarted, booted back into the installer and after that it installed fine. I’ve installed the security updates just fine and then re-patched and all is great!

I’m happy I’ve got El Capitan installed as I’ve tried quite a few times to get either Yosemite or El Capitan installed, but to no avail before today. I’ve had success installing Mavericks with both the RMC Team patcher and MacPostFactor (though not a clean install with MacPostFactor). Thanks [mention]0403979 [/mention]for the great tool and to the rest of the RMC Team.
 
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I managed to get El Capitan to boot on my Mac mini 2,1. I used the RMC osx patcher and downloader. Later, I shut down and started it up again and it refuses to boot. Anyone have any ideas as to why it would boot only once?
 
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gretsch27 said:
I managed to get El Capitan to boot on my Mac mini 2,1. I used the RMC osx patcher and downloader. Later, I shut down and started it up again and it refuses to boot. Anyone have any ideas as to why it would boot only once?
Click to expand...

Did you install the security updates? If so boot back into your USB drive, as you’ll have to patch your system again.
 
CalvinNismo said:
Did you install the security updates? If so boot back into your USB drive, as you’ll have to patch your system again.
Click to expand...
I don’t think so. Not intentionally at least. I rebooted to see if it would recognize my usb WiFi stick, since the onboard WiFi wasn’t working. I’ll try patching again anyway. I have a partition for lion and a partition for el cap, and when I select el cap in the boot screen, I think it fails and falls back to lion.

I installed it in the first place by putting the mini in target disk mode and installing to that drive using my Mac Pro 4,1. Not sure if that matters.
 
gretsch27 said:
I don’t think so. Not intentionally at least. I rebooted to see if it would recognize my usb WiFi stick, since the onboard WiFi wasn’t working. I’ll try patching again anyway. I have a partition for lion and a partition for el cap, and when I select el cap in the boot screen, I think it fails and falls back to lion.

I installed it in the first place by putting the mini in target disk mode and installing to that drive using my Mac Pro 4,1. Not sure if that matters.
Click to expand...

My Mac started automatically downloading and installing the updates on the first boot with the account creation. I did have internet access to sign into my Apple ID for account creation though and didn’t restrict internet access.
 
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metalcorn said:
I am having difficulty with MacPostFactor 2.0.1. After I click "Skip ad," the program hangs for a very long time on "Waiting for you to click 'skip ad.'" So far I've had it stuck there for an hour? This has happened multiple times.
Click to expand...

Same here.. Can anyone help? Tried every solution on every forum, and every “solution” online i’ve tried. Stuck on “please wait” or “skip ad” screen.. Ugh! on MacPostFactor V 1.0.1
[automerge]1592140724[/automerge]
udance4ever said:
Good news everyone - the RMC Team has a OS X Patcher I tried today that is a piece of cake.

After booting a test installation off an external firewire drive, I was successful upgrading my 10.7.5 install (MacBook 2,1) using the installer created by this script. I like that it is a project you can follow/contribute to on GitHub. Follow these instructions to the T and sure it'll work on the first shot!


enjoy!
Click to expand...

I’ve tried it... Keeps giving me error codes! Anyone else?
[automerge]1592140783[/automerge]
Sir Charles82 said:
Running again in issues, trying to use newest version of OSXPatcher to install El Capitan to my enhanced former iMac 4,1, now calling itself iMac 5,1

Following the instructions on the homepage of RMC but having massive problems creating the USB installation pendrive. Terminal is full with errors of the kind "can't copy - no such file or directory", "can't set a flag - boot.efi is not a directory",

trying to install from working Lion 10.7.5 - failing again 🙁
Click to expand...

Yep. In the same boat.
 
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