Accidentally erased MacBook Pro retina 2012

Herbie1 wrote:

While meaning to just erase data before selling my 2012 MacBook Pro retina, I’ve successfully erased the whole thing. Idiot.

It gives me the question mark in a folder icon or I can start it up in recovery mode. But. It can only download the OS from the internet, and it wants the password to my home network, yet it won’t let me type anything into the password box.

There is nothing else available on the screen.

I have a downloaded copy of Lion, but I can’t get to mount a .dmg (to try making a bootable installer on a USB drive) because I’m having to use my MacBook Air that is running Catalina, and Lion says it wants Snow Leopard, the previous OS, which of course I don’t have. So I’m stuck.

Does anyone have any ideas??

See if you are presented with an installer in Internet Recovery—

How to reinstall macOS

Recovery (both M1 and Intel) — How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support