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Catalina compatibility...Old guard? Help Please!

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Joined
Nov 19, 2010
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243
Motherboard
Gigabyte EX58 UD3R
CPU
X5650
Graphics
Asus RX580 8GB
Mac
  1. Mac Pro
Officially my EX58 ud3r with MacPro 5,1 SMBIOS is apparently no longer supported for Catalina. Mojave works great for me but I was wondering if anyone has come up with a method for installing Catalina on this hack. I know Dosdude has a patch for real Macs but I have seeen nothing regarding a legacy Hackintosh rig such as mine. I'm certain my system has plenty of juice to run it if I can get it installed.
 
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I finally got Catalina installed on my GA EX58 UD3R. I had to change SMBIOS to iMac 14,2. I have a couple of significant issues remaining. The most significant is no detected ethernet cards. I have two ports in this rig, the original built in ethernet which I almost never used because early on I added the "Apple" Marvell Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8053. It was a great choice because it always just worked. It worked with every OS upgrade from Leopard to Mojave. Not so with Catalina. I hope someone can help me resolve this because without internet access it is a very limited use machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
*edited for clarity
 
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I have Cantalina installed and working with SMBIOS imac 14,2 however the CPU speed is much slower than with SMBIOS Mac Pro 5,1. Still wondering if anyone has successfully installed Catalina on Legacy x58 MB with a MacPro 5,1 SMBIOS.

Actually, I have booted to Catalina with the MacPro 5,1 a couple times but it does not do so reliably. I can NOT determine why it has worked on occasion but mostly not. It seems to boot right up to the final stage and hangs.
 
I'm surprised there is so little discussion of successful Catalina installs on Legacy x58 MB's. Is it because they are now so old or is it just a lack of success??? I do have it working again on my system although I do not feel compelled to leave the comfort of Mojave just yet.

Chime in if you are using Catalina on a Legacy x58 system.
Screen Shot 2019-12-10 at 9.50.13 AM.png


Let me edit for clarity. When I say X58 I mean also with SMBIOS MacPro 5,1. SMBIOS imac 14,2 certainly is fairly routine to accomplish but on my system imac 14,2 results in a slower CPU. I get max 12x multiplier times the 181 base clock for 2.17Ghz. With MacPro 5,1 I get 22x multiplier times 181 base clock for max 3.98 Ghz. Not sure what limits the multiplier to 12x in imac 14,2???
 
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@Going Bald is the person to ask about this motherboard as he owned a UD7 version of this board for 9 years now.
 
I have Cantalina installed and working with SMBIOS imac 14,2 however the CPU speed is much slower than with SMBIOS Mac Pro 5,1. Still wondering if anyone has successfully installed Catalina on Legacy x58 MB with a MacPro 5,1 SMBIOS.

Actually, I have booted to Catalina with the MacPro 5,1 a couple times but it does not do so reliably. I can NOT determine why it has worked on occasion but mostly not. It seems to boot right up to the final stage and hangs.
The Mac Pro 5,1 sysdef is not supported in Catalina - Late 2013 Mac Pro6,1 (desktop trashcan) is earliest Apple supports - see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210222
 
The Mac Pro 5,1 sysdef is not supported in Catalina - Late 2013 Mac Pro6,1 (desktop trashcan) is earliest Apple supports - see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210222
Thanks for the input @Going Bald. Yes, I am aware of Apple Sysdef restrictions. However, many folks on "real MacPro 5,1" systems are having success circumventing the restriction and with that as motivation I managed to install Catalina on my X58 SMBIOS, MacPro 5,1. It seems to work correctly now and boots reliably.

I would like to use SMBIOS MacPro 6,1 as you suggest since it is not restricted by Apple. My experiments with it have never successfully booted and seems to hang on the final boot stage where one usually expects to see the familiar Apple logo just prior to login screen.

Are you (or anyone) using SMBIOS Mac Pro 6,1 successfully with these Legacy X58 boards?
 
Thanks for the input @Going Bald. Yes, I am aware of Apple Sysdef restrictions. However, many folks on "real MacPro 5,1" systems are having success circumventing the restriction and with that as motivation I managed to install Catalina on my X58 SMBIOS, MacPro 5,1. It seems to work correctly now and boots reliably.

I would like to use SMBIOS MacPro 6,1 as you suggest since it is not restricted by Apple. My experiments with it have never successfully booted and seems to hang on the final boot stage where one usually expects to see the familiar Apple logo just prior to login screen.

Are you (or anyone) using SMBIOS Mac Pro 6,1 successfully with these Legacy X58 boards?
I never got 6,1 to work reliably.

There are methods out there to circumvent the model check and allow installation using MacPro5,1. One in particular, the one I used, was very easy to implement even though it was written for use on a "real" Mac. I have posted the question to the sites admins if I am permitted to post a link to the site. I did not mention it before because I am still waiting for a reply. I will get back to you as soon as I get an answer.
 
(excuse my English, I speak Spanish and I am translating with the google translator) Hi, I'm new to the forum (in fact I just created the account to ask here) @RandomNumber how did you manage to run Catalina in x58? I've been researching how to do it since yesterday and I only find people who say that in x58 you can't because you don't have uefi. I also wanted to see if someone can advise me on what parts to buy (motherboard and little else) to build an x58 machine with Catalina, I need it to be yes or yes x58 because the only thing I have on hand is an xeon x5675 that I have left over after update my server and 12gb of ram ddr3 (6 memories of 2GB) apart from that I don't have much money for the machine, that's why I want to take advantage of the pieces that I already have and take advantage of the fact that things from x58 are very cheap.

I want to build the next machine, but I'm not sure how compatible it is and if there are more compatible x58 machines for less money

cpu: xeon x5675
motherboard: asus tuf sabertooth x58
ram: 12GB 1333MHZ DDR3 ECC generic brand (in the future I would like to upgrade to 24gb of kllisre brand but I don't know if it's good)
PSU: GameFactor PSG650 650w 80+ bronze
GPU: RX 550 (but maybe you can get a second-hand rx 480 4GB in 160 dollars or less)

Sorry for putting such a long message, I don't want to run into so many problems installing Catalina
 
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