[SUCCESS] Catalina on MacBook Pro 4,1 (2,5 Ghz early 2008)

[tikakan]

Hi!

I love my old and very sturdy MBP from spring 2008. It is great for Websurfing and Emailing. Netflix runs too. But i wanted to see if a more recent OS can be run on this piece of hardware. Thanks to the wonderful Catalina patcher tool from @dosdude1 I could upgrade from El Capitan to Catalina 10.15., astoundingly OS X 10.15 runs quite well on it. Naturally the System got revamped over time (dual Crucial MX500 SSD instead of the HD and DVD drives, 4 GB memory and I swapped the Broadcom WiFi module a few years ago against the Atheros 5416, which works as AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x87)).

As mentioned, there are only a few minor issues, like the light theme graphics glitch and the keyboard backlight and the ambient light sensor not working. Never used the dark theme until now and it is a little annoying that the ALS/Backlight Keyboard is broken…

Any chance that an old kext from an earlier OS X would solve that issue?


Best,

Tina

 

[hybra]

Any chance that an old kext from an earlier OS X would solve that issue?

Hi Tina,
I happen to have the same machine (did you know you can upgrade to 6GB RAM too?) and was wondering about upgrading from El Capitan (last Apple supported OS) to High Sierra, Mojave or even Catalina.
Any major cons beyond the keyboard backlighting? I have read on a MacRumors thread that someone found a solution (Lab Tick), did you already find and tried that?

macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

Yeah, at least for the meantime, "Lab Tick" a small keyboard light utility that will auto dim and turn off keyboard light at your desired setting, also don't forget to load lab tick in the "start up" folder after you set it up so you don't have to mess with it again. It's an excellent substitute...

forums.macrumors.com

All in all, do you think I should go for the upgrade? I see your message is one month old now...Would you stay with Catalina or go back to High Sierra/Mojave for our glorious machine?

 

[tikakan]

Hi Hybra,

Thank you for the tip with labtick. I'm going to try it as soon as I update catalina to 15.2.

As far as I can tell, the MacBook pro runs quite good under Catalina. I only use it for Email and surfing. Netflix works too.

Only issue is that I have a dual SSD setup with 2 1TB SSDs, the one in the DVD drive caddy seems to be a little hard to boot.

I will report back, after the holidays

 

[hybra]

Thanks for the reply, Tina.
I am on High Sierra now, going to Catalina 15.2 very soon, wish us both luck!
Just since I am on HFS+ now, it's not very clear to me how to update my disk to APFS without doing a clean upgrade.

 

[hybra]

I still use High Sierra and my CPU temperatures are like 55-65° but I use an app called Macs Fan Control to run the fan up to 6000RPM always. My macbook pro has already failed the GPU twice and I reflowed it with an heat gun and reapplied thermal paste...so I try to extend its third life further. GPU temperature seems to max at 85° this way.
Does Catalina cause even more temperature rising than High Sierra?
For the keyboard backlight google search for an app (menu bar) called "LabTick", it works in High Sierra and in Catalina too it seems.
Did you convert your existing disk to APFS for Catalina, or started with a clean install? And how? Did you flash the ROM to have the APFS support?

 

[KRoBot]

I think Catalina cause less temperatures as High Sierra. My CPU has 65°C with Opera (20 Tabs) and other APPs on background. I also use Macs Fan Control and I select my CPU Diodes as temperature sources.

I have installed Lab Tick but it would be nice to use our light sensors for auto brightness control.

I used APFS on High Sierra, so I dont have to convert my SSD but I think its better to make a clean install. Some cons for Catalina are none eGPU Support with acceleration, no KB Backlight and no 32bit APP Support.
I need 32bit support for flashing my BlackBerry :/

 

[tikakan]

Hi guys,

I upgraded the Boot stick and have a fresh install running on 10.15.3. No problems at the moment. Labtick is very appreciated. Now my old MacBook pro 4,1 runs like a charm.

Is it possible to use this way to update to a newer version of the OS? Force OS X Update

Best wishes Tika