This was by-far the toughest install ever. I've been hackingtoshing since El Capitan, but this one drove me cRaZy! The one thing I can say is I've learned a few things along the way to a successful install of Catalina 10.15.2. My advice? Walk away when you get frustrated; but NEVER give up. I've been trying for about a week now and early this morning - "paydirt".
The thing that drove me nuts was getting a black screen and when I didn't get a black screen it was only because I couldn't even get past Clover. I confess, I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I'm one of those kind of guys who doesn't like reading the instructions. I'll give in every now and then, otherwise, its just a matter of trial and error. One thing I learned? Less is more, when it comes to the configplist in the EFI. I started having success when I left off a lot of what entries I'd made trying to get it to work. WTH, now we're getting somewhere. One bit of advice. Backup your good install of Mojave. I've been dual booting Mac OSX for awhile, most times, it seems more trouble than its worth. Windows dosen't even boot in this, my self built machine. BTW, this makes my second build. (computer).
Last night I gave Catalina another try. This time I just let my machine keep going. I knew the system had installed, but I couldn't see it for that black screen. I went to bed hoping when I woke this morning I'd be greeted by Catalina, but it wasn't to be. I knew she was there, she was just hiding from me. So I had a thought: Remove the DVI cable from my Radeon RX580 graphics card and plug it into my Asus Prime Z270-A motherboard for Intel Graphics. Was Catalina hiding there? YES, she was and everything worked. Sound, internet, my reolink security cameras came up, Quicktime. My applications, I'd installed in Mojave! They were all there and they worrked. Most times I have a terrible time getting sound to work. But this time I started with a very stable install of Mojave and when I did the Direct Update (according to tonymack.com instructions, err what I'd read of it) I was pleasantly surprised that it was all there. Now to solve the problem of the black screen and having to use Intel Graphics instead of my radeon card.
I continued to play around with my configplist, changing a setting that made it impossible to even get into Catalina though the onboard Intel Graphics. I tried everything and then I remembered I had a clean install of Mojave. I could just boot it up and open Catalina's config files bad setting (in Mojave) and change what I'd changed back to what had worked. There is always a way to get things back to where they once belonged. Joe Joe.
So I'm not exactly sure how I finally got it all to work, but I did and it makes me feel much better. Here is a screen shot of my "About this Mac". Notice the Graphics entry: RX 580 8 GB. Now to find something else to repair.
Happy Holidays, Folks. NEVER GIVE UP.
