Do we have any imac experts here?

[Tony C]

Hi,

I was recently given an old iMac 13,1 and was hoping

to upgrade the OS to the latest supported.

The iMac has Mountain Lion and I've found a few sketchy

references stating that it could be updated to Catalina only.

I've gone through several attempts getting it to boot from a bootable

USB installer, but nothing I've tried works. Trying to run newer installers that I've copied to

this computer have also failed, for various reasons. (It's been months since I've

tried working on this, and I've gone through many attempts to upgrade the OS).

Furthermore this iMac can't even connect to the App store to download newer installers. I have wired ethernet

connected, which works on other sites, but the App store can't be found.

I only want to use this computer to look at our vacation pics, because

of the large monitor.

Can anyone help me understand how to get this upgraded to Catalina?

Thanks

Tony

[G Gifford]

What operating system is on it now?

Jerry 

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[Robert Brown (RLBrown)]

Hi Tony,

Have you tried a two-step upgrade?

First, upgrade from Lion to High Sierra.

Second, upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina.

You should save your images from the old iMac onto a USB stick or iCloud by trying anything.

If you have another more recent Mac, you can try to use the old Mac as a second display for the new Mac. Here are some instructions.

— Robert Brown

[Jose Francisco Medeiros]

I am fairly sure that a 2015 iMac has a firmware based Internet Recovery that will let you install the default OS X version or the latest version of OS X that is supported.

• Option-Command-R: Start up from macOS Recovery over the internet. Use this key combination to reinstall macOS and upgrade to the latest version of macOS that’s compatible with your Mac.
  
  https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-macos-recovery-on-an-intel-based-mac-mchl338cf9a8/mac

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[Tony Cappellini]

>> If you have another more recent Mac, you can try to use the old Mac as a second display for the new Mac. Here are some instructions.

THanks for that link, but I already have 2 monitors on my Macmini.

I would just like to be able to see slide shows of our vacation pictures on the Imac, because I only need to move a single monitor

into the living room.

I haven't figured out a way to stream the pictures from my MacMini to our non-smart TV. (We will probably be updating the TV

to a smart TV in a few months, after we have some framing done to hold the new TV- as part of a wall-mounted book shelf)

On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM Robert Brown (RLBrown) <rob...@rlbrown.org> wrote:

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[Tony Cappellini]

Thanks Joe, but for this Imac you have to go through a two-step process to get to the latest (Catalina) supported by the system.

Nothing worked for me. I'm not ruling out that I did something wrong though.;_)

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[Tony Cappellini]

Robert,

>>Have you tried a two-step upgrade?

>>First, upgrade from Lion to High Sierra.

>>Second, upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina.

Yes, that didn't work. I can't remember what the problem was (I did this many months ago), but it would not boot from the USB stick

to get into High Sierra. When I searched for the error messages, there were some bugs in (not sure which OS) that prevented me from booting,

and trying the workaround was too confusing.

I've installed Mister on my M1 Macmini and used that to make the bootable USB stick.

>>You should save your images from the old iMac onto a USB stick or iCloud by trying anything.

I don't think I could sign into iCloud though, that Mac has problems getting to the App store as well.

It's very strange. I even reinstalled (Nuke & pave, re: Mac Geek Gab) Mountain Lion to start from a fresh OS.

On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM Robert Brown (RLBrown) <rob...@rlbrown.org> wrote:

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[Tony Cappellini]

" The iMac has Mountain Lion"

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[Jose Francisco Medeiros]

This worked for me on my 2013 MBP.

Option-Command-R: Start up from macOS Recovery over the internet. Use
this key combination to reinstall macOS and upgrade to the latest
version of macOS that’s compatible with your Mac.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-macos-recovery-on-an-intel-based-mac-mchl338cf9a8/mac

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[G Gifford]

Here is a Google search with possibe answers.

How can upgrade the MacOS on my 2015 iMac running Mountain Lion?

Jerry

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