Where To Find Sierra 10.12.0?

[flatlander48]

No, it is the right USB port. This was pointed out when I built the machine 6 years ago. On the motherboard are 2 2.0 ports and 4 3.0 ports. It has always been in one of the 2.0 ports.

 

[kylec]

I'm talking about your system RAM. How many modules have you got and what slots are they in?

 

[flatlander48]

Sorry, when you said "stick" I thought USB Stick.

Anyway, the About This Mac seems to think that there are 4 memory slots, but the Gigabyte image is what's really there. The lone 8Gb card is in Channel B: DDR3_2. For this to be a problem I would think it would need to be something specific to Sierra as the card has been in the same location since I built it in 2014. As the Gigabyte information says, "Dual Channel mode cannot be enabled with only one DDR3 memory module installed."

 

[flatlander48]

Also, the config file on the USB device has an XML extension. Does it need that specifically? If I were to try the one from github I would need to convert that to an XML file. Offhand, I'm not sure how to do that...

OK, got that sorted: config.xml

No, still not right. plist is the actual extension. Ah, Finder says Kind is XML. Curious...

 

[flatlander48]

I now have the ability to edit config.plist...

 

[kylec]

It'll start to work if you move that RAM module to channel A.

 

[flatlander48]

Then that is peculiar to Sierra, otherwise the machine would never have run.

Anyway, That is tomorrow's first task. Glad I didn’t close the case up...

 

[flatlander48]

Moved the card earlier today and went from bad to worse. It doesn't boot at all. It never gets to Clover and the GIGABYTE splash screen never appears. It just continually tries to reboot...

 

[kylec]

Can it boot Windows or Linux with the RAM in channel A (closest to CPU on your board)? That's odd. Check that the RAM is well seated.

If it turns out that you have a slot that's not working, then there's a workaround, which is to fill out the memory section of the SMBIOS key in Clover's config.plist.

On the other hand, if you can boot another OS with RAM in channel A, but not OS X, then that's surprising.

And yes, my memory is that the channel B thing started sometime around 10.12, though I can't recall exactly when.

 

[flatlander48]

I don't have a Windows CD, but I have a couple of Linux distro CDs that are probably 8-9 years old. I can try them, but I have no idea whether they would run. However, if they attempted to boot, might that be proof enough?

The card is seated. Both latches engaged the card in the notches where they are supposed to. There is only a very slight upward movement possible; surely no more than 1/32” and probably less.

Another possibility is that I may have zapped the card. I do have a 2nd one as I had originally planned 16Gb for the original build.

As I mentioned above, I now have software that allows me to edit the plist and put it out in ASCII, XML or binary format...