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+---- Thread: Downgrade High Sierra to Snow Leopard (/showthread.php?tid=5878384)
Downgrade High Sierra to Snow Leopard - FigureItOut - Aug 26, 2018
Long time lurker, first time poster (and user).
I'd send a PM given some of the posts I've read, but I can't do that until 25 posts have come and gone, so I'm at your collective mercy:
I've got a Mac that was upgraded to High Sierra, but it's a 2008 MacBook; came with Snow Leopard originally. Obviously, the Book is way too old for HS and I can't figure out why Apple - the Nanny State IT prescriptivists that they are - wouldn't say, "Hey, get a new MacBook". But, nope, installing HS is no worry - rolling it back to SL, though, well, forget about it.
I've tried everything that's out there - a bunch of make bootable USB tuts using Transmac and terminal commands from the Book itself. I gave this command (enabling legacy ROMs, I thought): sudo nvram enable-legacy-orom-behavior=1, but that did not a damn thing. There were no Time Machine backups I could draw on either.
When I try to boot ANYTHING off of the USB, I get nowhere. I can make a USB with the SL dmg that's recognised from the Option key, but it won't install - it tells me to hard reboot (in a varied and appreciated collection of languages) - and I'm hit and miss getting other OSes to show from a bootable USB drive. The best I've gotten so far is a continuous loop trying to boot into Ubuntu 18.04.1. Here's the errors that I get if I try to install Ubuntu:
Couldn't get size: blah blah blah
MODSIGN: Couldn't get UEFI db list
Couldn't get size: blah blah blah
Yadayadayada: MMIO write of 0000807e FAULT at 100c1c
Then, there's a a '1 of 3' start job that just stays at 23s and won't move an inch.
If I mount the dmg of SL from the desktop, I get a error that I'm on Install OS X 23.1, so there's some issue with this and the OS is 'pre' 23.1, but I can't get any other versions of Install OS X.
I can't access a DVD - like an actual DVD, believe it or not - to burn the dmg and see if that will work, so I'd like to provide info on the success/failure of this route, but can't. If you think that it will work, I'll make a plan to get some, but, even if I had one, the dmg is over 6 GBs; I'll have to find a sub-4.5 GB SL install, which doesn't exist. With the age of the Book, it won't be able to handle a dual layer DVD (or would it?).
I can't see the point of cracking open the case because it won't do a thing that could help me if I removed RAM or the CMOS battery, but if there's a good reason to get inside this paperweight, let me know and crack into it.
I just can't believe that I'm this blocked out. But I may be just suffering n00b issues as I've avoided Mac like the plague:
Me: I'm super with computers. Watch me!
Not me: Can you do X for me?
Me: You bet, what kind of machine do you have Dell, Toshiba...? What version of Windows do you run?
Not me: I'm on a Mac.
Me: Nice knowing you.
So, if I'm all over the show and not making any sense with this:
tl/dr:
I want to downgrade High Sierra to Snow Leopard, which is the original OS of this (2008) MacBook, but it just won't listen.
Help a brother out,
FitO