If your Mac is older than 2012, you must use a third-party tool like the macOS Catalina Patcher by dosdude1 . This tool downloads the official installer and applies patches to allow it to run on older hardware, though some features like graphics acceleration may be limited on specific older GPUs. macOS Catalina dmg file download for old macbook pro
Once the macOS Utilities screen loads, select and click Continue.
Select your internal hard drive (usually named Macintosh HD ).