Who’s with me and running a MacBook Pro 2012 or older

Use the program by dosdude1 and ur good to go

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As I said “never give up, never surrender”. Catalina running on 256gb USB stick. Now, I never said it would run well. Seems ok until I try to copy something from internal drive, or anything else that has to store data on the USB drive. 2010 MBA still uses usb2.
Never got it to work by cloning drive. The whole APFS scheme is weird. High Sierra creates one volume. Catalina creates 2.
Finally completed the dosdude1 patcher install after starting from scratch. Took about 3 hours.
By the way, I have run earlier MacOS on USB drives. I think I now remember why I didn’t continue using them.

What @kickrocksbud2020 said.
Be aware this is really early days since Catalina release, so at least in my case, dosdude1 version is buggy.
No AirPlay, no Sidecar, Disk Utility not working correctly.

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Correct #Bgeeoz Catalina itself is already buggy so adding the idea your running it on hardware that was now limited from using newer software it is what it is, if you are a serious photo or video editor or rely on everything to work exact for work or expect all 32 applications to work out of box when Catalina already is not good at that then do not try installation of Catalina or dosdude1 until Catalina more stable in general.
Now that being said. I have no issues with disk utility or airplay and sidecar I wanna say on a past episode of #Conversations-about-our-shows:macbreak-weekly that mr Rene said sidecar only will run on the last few newer macs as its to do with a part of the hardware so that wouldn’t work on older machines regardless.

I wish I still had my MacBook Pro 2012 and wasn’t looking at a dead keyboard on my current Macbook, and typing on an external keyboard.

Holy cow. I need to find out how to do this with my older Mac mini that I love (still love) but it’s been relegated to a bookend. I thought about putting Linux on it but would rather be able to continue to upgrade it. I’m going to read everything in this thread. I’d love to know how you got past the Apple police.

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I have one of the same machines with same issues, and more.

Have you seen this? https://github.com/julian-poidevin/MBPMid2010_GPUFix/releases/latest

That is a software ‘fix’ of sorts for the KPs with the 330M that allows you to keep running it.

Mine is a daily driver with this patch and runs great under all workloads without any further assistance.

I knew of a hardware fix involving swapping a small component but didn’t know about a software solution until now.

I’ll give it a try. I guess I don’t need that 16“ MacBook Pro after all.

Installed the patch, and will run with it. Still using gfxCardStatus so that I can monitor when I am on the 330M and when I’m on the Intel video. There are certain web sites that are making it switch after a few seconds. I’ll see if crashing still occurs.

This may be a life saver! Then I can delay upgrading until Apple has an even newer Intel CPU and maybe the next WiFi standard as well.

Just crashed again… so even with the “patch”, it’s not a full solution. I’d be happy with some way to fully disable the 330M and have the OS think I have a laptop model without a separate GPU.

I have a 2013 15” MBP - i7, 16G, 512GSSD (I upgraded) running Catalina and it runs superbly!! I also have newer Macs but this old horse just keeps on running!!

I have a mid-2010 iMac as the machine at my teaching studio. I replaced the HHD with SSD and it’s running great, whatever it’s last supported OS.

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I collect working older laptops which I wipe and reinstall the OS. For MacBooks I install the highest version of MacOS that I can. Most of the MacBooks that are donated to me are the aluminum unibody models from 2008 to 2012. The older runs max out at El Capitan. But even that is fine for the public school teachers to whom I donate the units. My favorite unit is a 15" MacBook Pro that had a trashed screen. I removed the lid, installed a USB dongle and connected it to an external monitor. Runs Catalina like a champ.

Update on running Catalina on an older Macbook Air using dosdude1 Patcher.
Been running for over a month, and use Catalina almost exclusively. Normally leave MBA powered on, with screen in sleep mode. After a few days, system seems to get bogged down, with response time to open apps increasing up to 30-45 seconds at times. A reboot clears the problem. Normally nothing running other than normal Mac background processes.
But on 3 occasions, could not get system to shut down. Had to force shut down. And, when trying to reboot, ran into problem getting system to find startup disk. Each time, selected a different startup disk (multiboot options of High Sierra, Catalina, and Windows 10), which resulted in a password recovery option, which I exit, and system reboots normally.
I am assuming the startup problem is a result of the forced shutdown.
I also am assuming the Catalina slowdown is result of trying to run the new OS on unsupported hardware.

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MBP 8,2 here, its a little rough around the edges (discrete gpu disabled via kexts and superdrive doesn’t work anymore) but I upgraded it to 16gb of ram and an SSD years ago and I would take it any day over my work Dell 7480.

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Yeah, what is it with the superdrives in these laptops… mine has also stopped working. Perhaps I should pull it out and freshly lubricate the sliding parts and perhaps it’ll work again? It doesn’t suck in a disc anymore. Considering how little it got used over the years, you’d think it would still be functioning.

Thanks! Didn’t know anything about the patch.