Opencore Upgrade

[Trinidad Baltzell]

Ihad a happy high sierra install for the last few years. I finally need to upgrade it so just purchased a Sapphire RX580 to replace geforce 980ti.

The rest of machine is intel 9900K on Gigabyte z390 aorus pro, Samung Evo 970 ssd.

I have tried DP and HDMI ports. Various settings (enable disable igpu), radeon boot flag, setting number of ports to 5.

I can however access the machine via screenshare from another laptop this way.

Couple of things I notice are the lines

- Refusing new kext as.vig9696.Lilu, v1.6.3 already have prelinked v1.2.1.

- NvidiaGraphicsFixup: init @ failed to call parent 7

It seems to have an old Lilu registered but I don't know why that is?

I also don't have nvidiaGraphicsFixup in the OpenCore EFI so why is that appearing?

So after it went black again trying the intelmausi kext, I left it and was reading another webpage. Suddenly it came to life and I could log in and internet works. It still doesn't shutdown though.. and after forcing a shutdown, it takes a couple of minutes to startup again - maybe due to not shutting down properly?What do you think could be causing this?

Test this EFI Folder on a USB Drive which is formulated for your machine as an iMac 19.1, hopefully the result will be better. If successful and you decide to use it, you'll have to enter the machine data into the config.plist i.e S/N, SmUUID, Rom etc. Good luck.

The most straightforward route would have been to purchase a new machine that supported Mojave. The Apple macOS Mojave page lists all supported models. Clearly, no current generation Apple Silicon M1/M2/M3 Mac is compatible.

Note: the K610M is the least powerful upgrade, but it is the most straightforward7 without requiring any heatsink8 or temperature sensor9 modifications. Since this machine will be used primarily for audio production (rather than video), a simple GPU card is OK.

Note: after the vBIOS flash, the monitor will always be at full brightness until OpenCore kicks in. This means even after OpenCore patches are applied to the boot EFI, entering Recovery Mode or the like will have the iMac display at full brightness.

Owners of NVIDIA/AMD cards with a working EFI Boot screen can install the EFI folder directly to the EFI partition of the internal disk (process described in the OCLP docs). Having an EFI Boot screen one can always boot without OpenCore just by pressing alt/option on boot and selecting a supported macOS version like High Sierra.

History:Catalina Loader (CL) was another solution based on OpenCore to be installed on USB or SD devices and maintained more easily on visible file systems than on hidden EFI partitions. The solution was helpful in times without an EFI boot picker. Since we now fully support EFI boot with all AMD cards there is no need for this out of date solution.

When Apple classes a Mac as too old to receive macOS patches, it's usually a signal to the owner that a shiny new device is in order (if, of course, the owner kept it that long and didn't upgrade sooner).

A lot of the time, however, while the hardware of said device may no longer be performant, it may still be completely capable of running the latest macOS version, if only there was some way of forcing it to install. Oh wait, there is: Open Core Legacy Patcher.

No, given that the process for installing includes installing custom EFI bootloaders, performing a major version upgrade was surprisingly less well documented. So, if you're using one version of macOS thanks to OCLP, and want to upgrade to another (specifically, Sonoma), here's a good place to start.

Once the process is complete and verified, OCLP will ask if you want to install OpenCore on the stick. This is what allows what would otherwise not be able to run on your hardware to start up anyway, so choose Yes. It will build and ask for confirmation to Install to disk.

Once in the macOS recovery/install view, choose the 'install macOS' option to begin the upgrade. Choose to install it over the existing drive and it'll automatically know it needs to upgrade the installation, so don't go into Disk Utility or fiddle with the disk/partitions at all.

Once the installation begins, it will reboot a couple of times, and when it does, you'll need to make sure to hold option/alt on start-up so you can choose the external USB EFI partition again. Once in the EFI parition, choosing the macOS option instead of install macOS should be fine, as it'll know to continue the install.

Once finished and booted back into macOS, you may (should?) get a prompt from OCLP to say that you're still booted from the USB EFI parition, and ask if you want to install to the internal disk. Choose OK, then Install to disk.

Go back to the installer main screen and open up Disk utility to reformat your target partition HFS+, i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It can't be a new volume on an existing container, that only supports APFS format, it'll have to be a separate partition. Adjust your disk arrangement as required.

Please note that, as stated in my guide, I reverted to Clover on what was an existing Big Sur installation made with OpenCore. I'm not 100% certain that you'll actually manage to complete a fresh Big Sur installation with Clover 5128 or r5129 (latter is also Ok to use and I've actually updated from r5128 to r5129). But give it a try, you'll soon find out. You say this is a fresh installation but you've actually downloaded Big Sur and initiated its installation from Mojave, not from a booted USB installer, haven't you?

Ah that makes sense as the guide didn't say to install VboxHFS/HFSPlus and I could't get Clover to see the Installer USB at first.

I'll install with the Opencore EFI then copy the newest Clover EFI over. I stayed with Catalina as the Big Sur Geekbench results did not match it - there were quite a few errors I noticed in the Opencore guide. Opencore does not need a DSDT - it reads it from the firmware for example. I'm hoping if the Geekbench is 1700+ with the new Clover pack then I will stay with Big Sur. I attempted my own Opencore build and go very close with the Geekbench but not compatible to your Clover Catalina/Mojave packs with Clover.

No, this is a clean install. As I already formatted my working Catalina partition ready to install Big Sur - I was without a working version of macOS to check over the clover install.

I keep Mojave on a drive and use it over eSATA for one application that will never been brought over to x64 - it comes in handy in situations like this.

Thanks for the tip, I'll read better next time.

All bootloaders universally pull/read ACPI tables from BIOS (i.e. firmware). On paper, no Hackintosh bootloader needs a (patched) DSDT. It's just that over the years, ACPI patching developed greatly and what was done years ago through DSDT patching is nowadays done through dedicated SSDT patches that leave the loaded DSDT table more or less untouched. OpenCore came out at a time where such development had reached maturity, having already been vastly experimented and successfully used with Clover. That's for the story (or history)...

Focusing back on the E6230, I detailed the patches implemented back in 2018 to A19's original DSDT in my E6230 BIOS settings thread, so you may indeed rework them out through SSDTs or pre-programmed patches of the bootloader. It wouldn't be too difficult, most of them are well known and documented. The only patch missing in that list for the brightness keys and details are available here, in my E7250 guide or here, in my 7490 guide (same patches applied throughout). Jake Lo has also published SSDT alternatives for this brightness keys patch.

I was (and remain) too lazy to jump back into that and revisit, especially as Catalina or Big Sur work perfectly with my patched DSDT (even with OpenCore, Yes siree!). No issues and no worry to have on the matter.

Yeah I don't use a DSDT on my main desktop with Opencore, I don't even patch my SDST - I just use the premade ones. A few seconds added to my boot time is minor.

The issue with your Opencore E6230 was that the Geekbench scores fall short. I think the best I got out of it was low 1600s

I just installed with your Opencore pack and then replaced with your Clover pack and...I got a Geekbench score over 1700!!!!!!!

Thanks again Herve, saved me a headache - I'm too lazy to fully go in on a opencore build myself as this is just my daily internet / YouTube machine.

Interestingly I only went to Big Sur because I've noticed a painful glitch...the latest Catalina update...the security patch from a few days ago...it causes the horrible video glitches. I thought f#ck it, I'll just go with Big Sur instead of getting my old Catalina pre update installer out. I really shouldn't have been so stupid to update or without a cloned backup.

I've noticed the same thing happens with Mojave with the latest update it had (few months ago update). Fortunately I rarely ever go in Mojave and don't use it for the internet so security patches aren't an issue. I've kept it one shy of the latest update to stop the graphics glitches.

No glitches in Big Sur now tho so all good

Thanks again.

Strange about those graphics glitches you encounter in Mojave and Catalina. Not seen/experienced those. Did you have the Capri framebuffer memory patch in place? Anyway, water under the bridge if you're happy with Big Sur and it's fully functional with Clover

Yeah It is strange. I hadn't changed anything from your packs which were functioning great before the update so I assume the framebuffer memory patches were applied.

Yeah, Catalina is the past - the future is Big Sur on this machine...wow it is a lot smoother

Just need to fill in the missing drivers to get Filevault working again then hopefully no more messing for a while - Thanks again.

SMBIOS changed to MacBookPro11,1 to get around the the 11.2 update "Update cannot be installed on this computer".

Will probably change back to MacBookPro10,2 but doesn't seem to be any negative effects so far.

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