OS X El Capitan (10.11) on Unsupported Macs macOS Extractor and MacPostFactor are apps that guide you through patching and installing OS X El Capitan (10.11), Yosemite (10.10), Mavericks (10.9), or Mountain Lion (10.8) on your older Mac. This thread focuses on OS X El Capitan. MacOS Catalina won't work on older Macs, but thanks to dosdude1's patcher, it can! Dosdude1 himself makes a cameo in this episode. For some reason Apple doesn't want to allow these Macs to run its latest operating system, currently macOS 10.13 High Sierra. This leaves the following Macs on macOS 10.11 El Capitan: MacBook Pro – late-2009 or earlier models; MacBook – late-2008 or earlier models; MacBook Air – 2009 or earlier models; iMac – late-2008 or earlier models.
2008 24-inch iMac - $200 (Mid-Cape)
2008 24-inch iMac. 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. NVDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512 MB. 320 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive. Superdrive. Reset to factory new with OS 10.5.4, Previously had OS X El Capitan installed. Works perfectly. Mouse not included. $200. ...
Late 2009 21.5 inch iMac - $200 (Longmeadow)
Used fully working 21.5 inch iMacSpecs listed in photoNo marks or scratchesApple Wireless key board and wired mouse includedEmail me with any further questionsIf this posting is still up, it is still availableAvailable for pick up after July 12th ...
24 inch iMac - $200 (Tonawanda)
2008 iMac 8,14 gigs ram upgradeable1.5 TB HDSuperdriveMacOS catalina with DosDude1 patcherscuffed up and has tape residue on it ...
24 inch iMac - $200 (Tonawanda)
2008 iMac 8,14 gigs ram upgradeable1.5 TB HDSuperdriveMacOS catalina with DosDude1 patcherscuffed up and has tape residue on it ...
24 inch iMac - $200 (Tonawanda)
2008 iMac 8,14 gigs ram upgradeable1.5 TB HDSuperdriveMacOS catalina with DosDude1 patcherscuffed up and has tape residue on it ...
20 inch iMac - $200 (Broward)
Silver 20 inch 4 gigs ram 250 hdd loaded with office pack and full adobe suite call nine546107143 ...
20 inch iMac - $200 (Broward)
Silver 20 inch 4 gigs ram 250 hdd loaded with office pack and full adobe suite call nine546107143 ...
iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch - $1,200 (Boise)
Like New 27-inch iMac, with original box. Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad included. This model, while has 16GB of RAM, has slots to upgrade to more.The computer has been wiped, reset to factory default and is updated to the most recent OS. Ready for immediate set up and use.SPEC ...
Added support for the final release of High Sierra. Includes a new version of Patch Updater that allows viewing and re-installing of installed patch updates. 2.3.2 - Fixed an issue with the AMD GPU Patch not working with Radeon HD 7xxx series cards. Fixed an issue where the tool may crash while creating a. A developer known as DOSDude1 has written a patch that works on Macs with the Penryn architecture. Using this still imposes certain limitations, but at least makes it possible to install macOS High Sierra on the following Macs.
1.0.1
- Initial release
1.1
- Fixed the native High Sierra installer, getting rid of the need to use and bundle the El Capitan installer. Download size is greatly reduced.
2.0.1
- Added a new feature that allows downloading of the macOS High Sierra Installer App directly from Apple.
2.1.0
- Added support for APFS.
2.1.3
- Changed APFS booting implementation, fixing an issue with iCloud services.
2.2.3
- Added a new System Preferences item for APFS users, that allows switching between APFS boot volumes on the same disk.
2.2.4
- Minor changes made to ensure compatibility with final macOS High Sierra release.
2.2.5
- Fixed a minor UI issue.
2.2.6
- Slightly changed the macOS Downloading implementation, saving all files to the specified directory instead of temporarily using the AppData directory.
- Minor UI tweaks made.
2.3.0
- Added a new patch for AMD Radeon HD 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx series video cards on the Mac Pro 3,1.
- Added a new backlight control patch needed for some systems.
- Slightly tweaked the APFS booting method.
2.3.1
- Added support for the final release of High Sierra.
- Includes a new version of Patch Updater that allows viewing and re-installing of installed patch updates.
2.3.2
- Fixed an issue with the AMD GPU Patch not working with Radeon HD 7xxx series cards.
- Fixed an issue where the tool may crash while creating a USB drive.
2.3.3
- Fixed a crashing issue with the post-install tool.
2.3.4
- Fixed an issue with the macOS Downloading feature.
2.3.5
- Fixed an issue where the AMD GPU Patch would be unnecessarily installed on some machines.
2.3.6
- Added notifications for when drive creation is complete.
2.4.0
- Added support for booting encrypted APFS volumes.
2.5.0
- Completely re-wrote initial installer volume creation/patching implementation.
- Added support for using an internal drive as a patched installer.
- Improved error catching.
- Decreased the likelihood that an error will occur while creating a patched installer drive.
2.5.1
- Fixed an issue where the application would fail to create bootable installer volumes under Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7.
- Fixed an issue where the Software Update Patch may cause the App Store to become unresponsive.
- Made minor UI changes.
2.5.2
- Added a new feature that allows custom/modified kexts to load even with SIP enabled, getting rid of the need to have SIP disabled when running a patched copy of High Sierra.
- Fixed an issue where the APFS patch would not work properly on some APFS volumes.
2.5.3
- Fixed a couple minor issues with the installation environment.
2.5.4
- Added a new feature allowing the download of macOS High Sierra to resume if an error occurs, or the download is stopped.
2.5.5
- Fixed an issue where the macOS Downloading feature wouldn't work under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
2.6.0
- Added support for downloading a 10.13.4 installer.
- Fixed an issue where drives created using a 10.13.4 Installer App would not boot.
2.6.1
- Updated to add support for a recent change of the way Apple serves the download of macOS High Sierra.
2.6.2
- Improved macOS downloading implementation.
2.7.0
- Added support for Broadcom BCM4321 WiFi cards.
High Sierra Patcher Dosdude1
Dosdude1 Patcher El Capitan. Oct 05, 2019 Let's say I want to install Catalina on an old iMac 7,1 (with SSE 4.1 support) to which dosdude1's APFS ROM Patcher has been previously applied. The iMac is currently running El Capitan, but I want to completely erase its disk and reformat it as APFS.
Off the top, I want to thank dosdude1.com for providing the software – and the instructions – to upgrade many older Macs to OSX Sierra. Please donate if you can!
The benefit to this update is that we are getting a number of Macs – Towers, Mini’s and iMacs – that can only go up to OS7 or OS8 and thus are increasingly out-of-date. If we can get at least some of these Macs up to OSX Sierra, we have a great chance to give them new life for a few more years. And that means we can give students, families, non-profit groups and others the ability to work with the latest OS and be as productive as they can be going forward.
The website lays out the requirements, supported (and non-supported) machines, things you’ll need and known issues (which we laid out in Part 1.)
You can use the instructions from dosdude1 to take you through the process. My intent here is to give you my take as I went through those instructions.
TAKE ONE
The instructions are clear that you need a flash drive of at least 8 GB in size. I found that you can get away with a smaller one. That said, you will need to get ahold of a copy of the Sierra installer by using a newer Mac to get it from the App store or dosdude1 gives you a link to the MEGA Unlimited site in New Zealand – but you can get instructions on how to download it from other websites as well.
You’ll also need a hard drive with an older version of the Mac OS (based on the requirements for the upgrade) or a blank drive. In either case, you’ll be installing Sierra – so it will be a “normal” install as you would with any Mac update, or a clean install on a new or blank drive.
Update: This is my main drive info. I did this upgrade on an exact copy:
NOTE – we plan to do a clean install and, with some additional software tools (like Open Office) we will plan to make a Time Machine backup to use to make clones for other Macs. (Yes there are other ways to make clones – as in using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cleaner. But I’ve found that using a Time Machine backup is actually quicker. (See note below about this.)
We’ll write about that experience in a future blog.
TAKE TWO
Download the Patcher Tool as instructed. Plug in the USB drive and format it using Disk Utilities. (That said, the Patcher Tool will format it anyway when you go to the next step.)
NOTE – I used a 6 GB partition on a large USB drive that I have with various OSX installers without a problem.
Dosdude1 El Capitan Patcher
It’s time to install OSX Sierra on the USB Drive. Make sure you know where the Sierra installer app is – the patch tool will want to know.
Dosdude1 Sierra Patch Tool Home Depot
Run the Patcher Tool and click on the Sierra icon to verify your Sierra install app. This went as planned for me. Now it’s time to install the OSX Base System on the formatted USB drive (or in my case – partition).
Remember, this will be the boot drive from which you’ll install OSX Sierra onto the drive of your choice.
With the USB drive selected, I clicked on “Start Operation” to begin installing the Sierra install app.
This is where I ran into some trouble – as the install would get almost all the way to the end and then give me an error message. I reformatted the USB drive and tried again. Same thing. Third time, I LEFT what had been installed on the USB partition and walked away. The install was successful this time! Not sure why but it was time to move on.
TAKE THREE
I keep a Time Machine backup and a SuperDuper backup of my boot drive, so I decided to use the backup as the guinea pig for this update. I rebooted the Mac from the USB drive (Apple Menu -> Restart – Press the Option key). If your USB drive only has one partition (with the Sierra install on it) you’ll see your boot drive and one that is called “OS X Base System.” THAT is what you want to boot from.
I intended to UPDATE from El Capitan (10.11), but if you want to do a clean install, you’ll need to boot into the install drive and then pull down System Utilities to format that drive (yes – you could have done this before as well).
Dosdude High Sierra Patcher
Proceed with the installation on the disk of your choice. This will take awhile so be sure to go into System Preferences and tell your Mac (using Energy Saver) to not go to sleep or turn off your hard drives.
Once installed, your Mac will boot into the new OS. You’ll know because the background will be the Sierra Nevada mountains and “About This Mac” from the Apple Menu will confirm it all.
TAKE FOUR
Dosdude1 Catalina Patcher
I was almost done! Although it LOOKS like you’ve upgraded properly, you still need to patch the new OS. So I rebooted BACK into the USB Sierra installer partition. This time, when it booted, I found a small box had popped up with four menu items. You only care about the last one – macOS Post Install. I chose that and it asks you to choose your Mac model.
Luckily – it TELLS YOU what Mac Model you have. Choose that model from the drop down box and you will see some suggested patches pre-populated for the model Mac you have. Select the drive you installed Sierra on and press PATCH. For some reason, I had to do this twice but it did finally take.
Dosdude1 Sierra Patch Tool Boxes
On the bottom of the Post Install, you’ll see “Complete!” on the left and a Reboot button. Ignore “Force Cache Rebuild.”
My Mac rebooted into the backup drive with Sierra installed. It worked perfectly! I checked for any updates and only had one – Pages – to update. The patched system should allow updates as well (at least for Sierra) but there have been none so far.
Dosdude1 Catalina Patcher
FINALLY
That was it! I will likely go ahead and install Sierra on my original El Capitan boot drive (2 TB) as well after giving Sierra a run through on the backup.
Given that the patches are Mac-specific, I’ll likely have to run the patcher tool on each machine we update at the MacRecycleClinic. The good news is, I can boot from the USB drive and install Sierra on any Mac that is supported. From there, I just have to run the Patcher Tool and choose the right version of the machine to patch.
The other plan (as mentioned above) – to create a Mac-specific Time Machine clone may not work but we’ll give it a try and report back. Redo hov1 lyrics english.
NOTE that there are still some restrictions with certain Macs – in some cases, for instance, WiFi won’t work – the website says machines ( a wide range actually) running the Broadcom BCM4321 WiFi module. The fix is to install a compatible WiFi card if one is available.
Dosdude1 Sierra Patcher Tool
Let us know your own experiences with this patch and any suggestions you might have to make it easier.