Bios incompatible with old system ?

[KarlBergeron]

Successfully installed Catalina but fail to install Sierra or High Sierra.
With High Sierra the installation stuck before the first reboot with a ban circle (slashed circle).
For Sierra the ban circle appear very soon.

The (Gigabyte Designare Z390) bios version is F8 (10/15/2019)
Is this version work with Sierra or High Sierra ?

The section of the manual for bios setting does not match the bios screen.
The screen main menu has no M.I.T, Bios, Peripherals, Chipset and Power
(the screen main menu is Favorites, Tweaker, Setting, System Info, Boot, Save and Exit)
So it is not obvious to make the right setting for the hackintosh...

Is it possible to downgrade the bios ?

 

[Jamesbond007]

Successfully installed Catalina but fail to install Sierra or High Sierra.
With High Sierra the installation stuck before the first reboot with a ban circle (slashed circle).
For Sierra the ban circle appear very soon.

The (Gigabyte Designare Z390) bios version is F8 (10/15/2019)
Is this version work with Sierra or High Sierra ?

The section of the manual for bios setting does not match the bios screen.
The screen main menu has no M.I.T, Bios, Peripherals, Chipset and Power
(the screen main menu is Favorites, Tweaker, Setting, System Info, Boot, Save and Exit)
So it is not obvious to make the right setting for the hackintosh...

Is it possible to downgrade the bios ?

Yes, it should be possible to downgrade the BIOS to say F6 or F7 if you want. Just use the Qflash function in the BIOS.

I use this motherboard myself and currently it runs MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 / High Sierra 10.13.6 / Mojave 10.14.6 / Catalina 10.15.6 with BIOS F7.

I have not attempted to install Sierra or High Sierra on it, however. I just use a previous installation to boot without going through the installation process.

 

[KarlBergeron]

> I just use a previous installation to boot without going through the installation process.

I don't know it was possible to do it ! Can you explain briefly how to do ?

 

[Jamesbond007]

I just use a previous installation to boot without going through the installation process.

I don't know it was possible to do it ! Can you explain briefly how to do ?

(1) If you do not have a previous installation of Sierra or High Sierra available, you will need to install Sierra or High Sierra first on another system based on an older motherboard and CPU. The systems I used were setup a long time ago on an Ivy Bridge (Intel 3rd generation CPUs) system based on Z77 / B75 motherboards. Patch them up to the latest security updates available. Ivy Bridge systems were pretty painless installing and running MacOS in my experience but you should be able to use others as long as they are compatible.

(2) Create a bootable USB stick (using Unibeast or other supported ways) with a suitable version of Clover on it. The versions of Clover included on the Unibeast USB sticks created by the Sierra and High Sierra versions (4045 for Sierra, 4428 for High Sierra) are good enough.

(3) Take the disk with Sierra / High Sierra out and install it into your Z390 system.

(4) Adjust the config.list file and the drivers on the EFI partition of that USB stick so that it can be used to boot Sierra / High Sierra on your Z390 system. You may need to experiment to add/delete drivers. In particular you need the Lilu.kext and WhateverGreen.kext for your RX 580. You will also need the files OCQuirks-4.efi and FwRuntimeServices.efi from the following post :

[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

This is a good time to make a full bootable backup and test the backup by booting directly from the backup disk: Press F12 at BIOS splash screen and select the backup disk. If the name of backup disk is Catalina Local Backup, then select this from the Clover Boot Menu: Boot macOS from Catalina...

www.tonymacx86.com

in order for Sierra / High Sierra to boot successfully on the Z390.

(5) If you succeed in booting Sierra / High Sierra you can then clone the system onto another disk on your Z390 system (or just use the disk you use to install Sierra / High Sierra).

My own Catalina system were also done in a similar way. I installed Catalina 10.15.6 on another system, patch to the Supplemental Update (which fixes a serious problem involving kernel memory leak), and then clone the system onto the NVMe SSD on my main system.

 

[KarlBergeron]

BIOS is OK to install High Sierra: my copy "Install macOS High Sierra" was corrupted !
With new one I was able to install and run High Sierra (HFS+ since I am not really happy with APFS)
My MultiBeast config:

Quick Start > Clover UEFI Boot Mode
Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC1220 Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC
Drivers > Network > Intel > IntelMausiEthernet v2.4.0 Bootloaders > Clover UEFI Boot Mode
Customize > System Definitions > iMac > iMac 14,2

I do not install anything else.

There are 2 missing feature:

a) no sound
Try with AppleALP and (RealtekALCxxx) ALC1220, and both without success.
"Systems Preferences -> Sound -> Output" complaint "No output devices found"

b) computer sleep force restart
CaseySJ in "[SUCCESS] Ongoing Status of Designare Z390 with i7-9700K" wrote
Update: 01-06-2019: Use of "darkwake=0" enables wake-from-sleep with one keystroke.
But I don't know where to change it.



> ... and then clone the system onto the NVMe SSD on my main system.

I do it on an external SSD using CCC, mount EFI partitions with Clover Configurator
and (Finder) copy EFI folder: successfully boot from external USB
Thank you. It is now safe to experiment.

> ... Yes, it should be possible to downgrade the BIOS to say F6 or F7 if you want.

Does your BIOS F7 show main menu with
M.I.T, Bios, Peripherals, Chipset and Power
or
Favorites, Tweaker, Setting, System Info, Boot, Save and Exit

 

[Jamesbond007]

BIOS is OK to install High Sierra: my copy "Install macOS High Sierra" was corrupted !
With new one I was able to install and run High Sierra (HFS+ since I am not really happy with APFS)
My MultiBeast config:

Quick Start > Clover UEFI Boot Mode
Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC1220 Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC
Drivers > Network > Intel > IntelMausiEthernet v2.4.0 Bootloaders > Clover UEFI Boot Mode
Customize > System Definitions > iMac > iMac 14,2

I do not install anything else.

There are 2 missing feature:

a) no sound
Try with AppleALP and (RealtekALCxxx) ALC1220, and both without success.
"Systems Preferences -> Sound -> Output" complaint "No output devices found"

b) computer sleep force restart
CaseySJ in "[SUCCESS] Ongoing Status of Designare Z390 with i7-9700K" wrote
Update: 01-06-2019: Use of "darkwake=0" enables wake-from-sleep with one keystroke.
But I don't know where to change it.

> ... and then clone the system onto the NVMe SSD on my main system.

I do it on an external SSD using CCC, mount EFI partitions with Clover Configurator
and (Finder) copy EFI folder: successfully boot from external USB
Thank you. It is now safe to experiment.

> ... Yes, it should be possible to downgrade the BIOS to say F6 or F7 if you want.

Does your BIOS F7 show main menu with
M.I.T, Bios, Peripherals, Chipset and Power
or
Favorites, Tweaker, Setting, System Info, Boot, Save and Exit

I use AppleALC to enable sound on my system. You need Lilu as well for AppleALC to work.

I use Classic mode in the BIOS so it is showing MIT / BIOS etc.

 

[KarlBergeron]

F2 let toggle between Advanced Mode and Easy mode
Is "Classic mode" the Advanced Mode ?
What I wish is Advanced Mode with main menu showing
M.I.T, Bios, Peripherals, Chipset and Power
My Advanced Mode show
Favorites, Tweaker, Setting, System Info, Boot, Save and Exit
and the motherboard manual (paper\pdf) has the wrong main menu...

 

[Jamesbond007]

F2 let toggle between Advanced Mode and Easy mode
Is "Classic mode" the Advanced Mode ?
What I wish is Advanced Mode with main menu showing
M.I.T, Bios, Peripherals, Chipset and Power
My Advanced Mode show
Favorites, Tweaker, Setting, System Info, Boot, Save and Exit
and the motherboard manual (paper\pdf) has the wrong main menu...

Yes, what Gigabyte called "Classic Mode" (F7 BIOS) is the Advanced Mode.

Yours (F8) is different from mine (F7) because Gigabyte changed the BIOS layout in the F8 BIOS which you currently have.

If you wish to use the older layout you will have to downgrade the BIOS back to F7. Of course this also means you will have to configure the BIOS options again as the BIOS install process will change the settings back to default.

Also when the motherboard manual was released with the motherboard, newer BIOS versions like F7 / F8 were not yet available. So the main menu it showed can be quite different from what we have now.