Saying Good-Bye to the Millennium Falcon

  • Nov 17, 2022
  • 3 Min Read

I’ve used a Mid-2010 Mac Pro since 2011. More storage. More RAM. Maxed out the video card with an AMD RX 580. It’s my Millennium Falcon.

Now it’s time to move on. I’m migrating to Apple silicon by the end of 2022. Part of what kept the Falcon alive?

šŸ‘‰šŸ½ OpenCore Legacy Patcher (GitHub)

If Apple says, “Your Mac can’t run that version of macOS”, OCLP says, “Yes it can.” šŸ˜ With OCLP and a little help from Mr. Macintosh (YouTube) and me, you can too.

My OCLP 0.4.2 Settings

Using Mr. Macintosh’s video, I bought a 1.0 TB Accelsior 1M2 PCIe NVMe SSD from OWC and successfully installed OCLP and Big Sur on it.

If OCLP 0.4.2 were around when I first attempted this, these would’ve been my patcher settings:

(As of 2022 Feb 11)

  1. Debug Settings:
    • Enable Verbose Mode: True
    • Set SurPlus Settings: True
  2. Security Settings:
    • Set System Integrity Protection (SIP): True
  3. SMBIOS Settings
  4. Boot Volume Settings
  5. Miscellaneous Settings:
    • Set ShowPicker Mode: True
    • Set TeraScale 2 Accel: True
    • Set AppleALC Usage: True
    • Set Windows GMUX support: False
    • Set 3rd Party SSD Support: True
    • Set FeatureUnlock: True
    • Set NVRAM Write: True
    • Set Content Caching: True

For my Mac Pro, the two most important settings were:

  1. Debug Settings:
    • Enable Verbose Mode: True
    • Set SurPlus Settings: True

With Verbose Mode enabled, you’ll be able to see where your Mac fails to start up. (If it happens, no big. Hold the power button for 10 Mississippi’s, then hit the power button again.)

SurPlus allows you to use storage like OWC’s Accelsior 1M2 to boot macOS. If you read any mentions of LateBloom with PCIe storage, it’s likely old intel as LateBloom was replaced by SurPlus (thankfully šŸ˜…).

If this smells like a Hackintosh, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I recommend getting an old(er) Mac over building a Hackintosh any day of the week.

That said, there are some gotchas:

  1. If you’re using a non-blessed, but compatible AMD card, you may need to swap out that card with a blessed video card as the occasional escape route.

  2. If you’re using a USB-based Bluetooth dongle, you may have to unplug it-then-plug it back in so macOS will see it.

Some particulars from my personal notes:

  • It’s OK to modify the Patcher Settings then install a different build of OCLP multiple times. Something doesn’t work? Iterate.
  • When choosing the disk to install OCLP in Disk Picker, slow down and pay attention. The intended disk number may change.
  • SIP - you still have to actually enable/disable SIP in Recovery Mode.
    • Once enabled/disabled in Recovery Mode, the OCLP SIP settings are applied.
  • Recovery Mode - accessed by hitting Spacebar at the Show Picker.
  • It’s OK if you get the āƒ . Just press Power, wait 10 Mississippi’s, then try again.
  • mountEFI script - super handy for uninstalling OCLP EFI contents, if needed.
  • Set the USB BT dongle as the default BT host.
    • Bluetooth Explorer - set default host
    • sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=always

That era of the Mac Pro was special to me. It was truly pro kit, and it helped me make a living, right up to the moment I clicked Post on this. But now it’s same to say good-bye.

Godspeed, Falcon. šŸ