bigmac VS Opencore-Legacy-Patcher

https://github.com/StarPlayrX/bigmac might actually be true

Where there's a will...

I used bigmac and eventually got it running on my 3,1 with a gtx780 (no DisplayPort :/)The link is here https://github.com/StarPlayrX/bigmac . Took some fiddling, but follow the instructions closely and it should work. The GUI tool failed to update kext files in OS X, and I had to run it on the bootable usb installer. Got there eventually, and it runs pretty smoothly. Unfortunately, I’m back on Mojave because it’s the last OS that worked with DisplayPort and 144hz on my gtx780. Good luck!

Check out https://github.com/StarPlayrX/BigMac

Thanks - monitoring https://github.com/StarPlayrX/bigmac to see its development too!

Not yet, it'll come with clean install support most likely. iMessage/Facetime should already work though. Honestly though, on Mac Pros, you should really use StarPlayrX's BigMac Patcher.

Use Big Mac from here. (https://github.com/StarPlayrX/bigmac, where you can use the alpha GUI version if you like which was what I used.) [Not sure if this step and the next are necessary.]

At a guess I would say probably using OCLP - https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher - lots of life left in old Mac’s using that tool !

I had this issue, too. But luckily, I've got a solution. First, you'll need to check your MacOS Sonoma version. If you're using 14.1 beta, this method will NOT work. In such cases, I recommend installing the official 14.0. Thankfully, this commit (https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/commit/1aee2e5dfa12d10e218a51e4151ac2e96705ae9e) solved the problem! However, the latest OCLP 1.0.1 still doesn't have it. To use it, you can build OCLP from code or use the OCLP Nightly link found here. After you find the nightly link and download OCLP, build it onto your MBP, and after rebooting, install the patches. If you look carefully, you'll see that 'experimental T1 Patches' will be available in the list of post-installation patches.

From what I've assessed reading other posts, Monterey (Ventura has USB & stability issues) with OCLP 0.6.7 is the most stable install for this device (have not yet seen any reports using OCLP 1.0+, although happy to see some new non-Metal fixes going in). This is a bit of a bummer, as Monterey will not likely receive updates past end of 2024 (next year).

I'm not taking a position on OCLP being trustworthy or not, but at least the project appears to be 100% open source [0], which is more than we can say about Apple.

[0] https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Have you explored https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher?

I have used it before and, in my experience and everyone else I know who has used it, the vast majority of time the newer versions run absolutely fine with no issues. Occasionally some newer features don't work, but I'd but confident that 2015/2017 iMacs would be able to run the latest version no problem.

Link to pull request to track OLCP Sonoma support state, you can also read more info there: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/pull/1077