iMmaculate iMac Late 2011 21.5"... With a HUGE problem!

[macinbot]

Spoilers: Firmware Lock issue incoming!

Been on the hunt for a good machine to run Photoshop CS4 under Mavericks 10.9, and also one that will do a decent job at Windows XP gaming. A single owner, incredibly well cared for Late 2011 iMac 21.5" popped up on Marketplace for $40 and decided it was the perfect machine for my needs.

Met up at a grocery store parking lot with this very nice, elderly (in his 70s) German immigrant original owner. Everything checked out, and included the original box, manual, keyboard, boxed Mighty Mouse, and boxed copies of 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard, and iWork 09.







We talked for a bit about this iMac, his new (2020) Macbook M1, and graphic design and web design work. Said our goodbyes and I headed home to test it out.

Initial boot up was great. Everything checked out. 12Gb ram was a nice surprise for a machine of this vintage. 10.7 Lion was installed.

With everything looking good to go, I plugged in my Mavericks USB flash drive install and rebooted with option key down so I could select the Mavericks installer volume.

Then I ran into this:



The dreaded firmware lock!

I emailed my elderly German Macintosh friend and explained the problem. But unfortunately, he doesn't understand the issue. Despite careful explanation (including photos and videos), he seems to believe that the user password and the firmware password are the same. And because he gave me login user / password combo, he doesn't understand (or doesn't want to understand) that the firmware lock requires a different password.

So now I'm stuck.

I tried the remove ram stick and pram reset (command-option-P-R) trick, but it appears this model is too new for that workaround, as it ignores the attempt and just boots up to the firmware lock screen.

I don't know any other way around the firmware lock. Ideas appreciated!

 

[volvo242gt]

@xenocide21, any ideas?

 

[max1zzz]

If you have access to s programmer and the appropriate soldering tools it is fairly trivial to dump the flash, patch out the password and flash it back. I’m not aware of any way to do it without soldering though

 

[luRaichu]

Will the Apple store still help you?

 

[ArbysTPossum]

You could pull the hard drive out, put an OS on it and put it back in, the machine should automatically attempt to boot from the internal drive. It doesn't remove the lock, but it sneaks passed it.

 

[olePigeon]

If this is the kind of iMac with a magnetic screen that's easily removable with a suction cup, then you can try the RAM trick. On some models of Intel Macs, removing a stick of RAM to change the total amount of RAM and booting it will also remove the firmware lock.

Incidentally, I also kept all the packaging for one Yellow and one Blue M1 iMac. When they get ewasted, I'm gonna squirrel them away in my office storage with all their accessories to keep them as minty as possible. Hopefully someone some day will also get a vintage minty iMac.

 

[macinbot]

If you have access to s programmer and the appropriate soldering tools it is fairly trivial to dump the flash, patch out the password and flash it back. I’m not aware of any way to do it without soldering though

I’m all for this in concept, but it is currently above my skill grade.

Will the Apple store still help you?

The jury is split on this. From anecdotal info, older Macs like this may get less scrutiny. Nearest Apple store is four hours out, so next time I go to the big city, I’ll see if they’ll let me slide on the info.

You could pull the hard drive out, put an OS on it and put it back in, the machine should automatically attempt to boot from the internal drive. It doesn't remove the lock, but it sneaks passed it.

See my update below.

If this is the kind of iMac with a magnetic screen that's easily removable with a suction cup, then you can try the RAM trick. On some models of Intel Macs, removing a stick of RAM to change the total amount of RAM and booting it will also remove the firmware lock.

Incidentally, I also kept all the packaging for one Yellow and one Blue M1 iMac. When they get ewasted, I'm gonna squirrel them away in my office storage with all their accessories to keep them as minty as possible. Hopefully someone some day will also get a vintage minty iMac.

I gave this a go already, and fortunately the ram on this model is still behind a little door on the underside of the iMac. Unfortunately it didn’t work.

I think this one does have the screen magnets, which will be nice for future SSD upgrade.

One day those boxes will be worth the effort.





So, some progress has been made. While this iMac did not want to let me boot from Snow Leopard DVD, the Startup Disk preferences panel oddly would let me select and boot into my Mavericks USB installer. So I’m now sitting on a fresh install of Mavericks 10.9.5 fully updated.

Next step is trying a Bootcamp install of Windows 7 to see if I can boot back and forth between them without the firmware lock getting cranky. If so, I might be able to install Windows XP over the Windows 7 partition. Which will effectively give me what I want out of this machine. I’d prefer no firmware lock for peace of mind, but funtionally this iMac *may* be good to go.

 

[macinbot]

In other news, the seller got back to me, but went on the defensive saying that he never claimed the machine could upgrade beyond the installed OS X version and that when he sold it to me it was in working condition. So there’s that.