I’m having trouble booting/installing Haiku on an iMac8,1. Does anyone have tips for it?
I tried:
booting from dvd
leads to no boot partition kdl with no keyboard function
boot via thumb drive
leads to corrupted screen
boot via thumb drive and press space repeatedly
leads to seemingly nothing happening, mac boot graphics still shows
I’d apreciate any guidance 
Preconfigure your thumb drive kernel boot manager config settings for defaults:
Note: AMD Radeon 2D graphics driver still has a few bugs on some adapters.
How do I do that?
Update: #18174 (MacBook Late 2007, Intel GMA X3100 not working) – Haiku (haiku-os.org)
See: Boot Loader (haiku-os.org)
Usually for custom boots:
Provide/edit:
Everything else relies on what you’ll see in on-screen debugging.
Check with core devs on IRC and Haiku on Mac support.
Maybe logging some info like this article can help:
Article: Install Haiku on a Core Duo 2006 MacBook Pro (17-inch)
Let’s try to gather some facts and assumptions.
AFAIK this Mac has EFI 64bit and should be able to boot Haiku. I think it’s possible to boot in legacy mode but I don’t recommend you venturing in this space.
I assume that your Mac works well under MacOS, doesn’t it?
I haven’t used such a machine so I don’t have any clue why the DVD does not work but I can tell for sure that the keyboard will not work by default. The oldest model I have is a late 2008 MacBook Unibody which should be pretty close in terms of specs.
In order to have a fully functional keyboard in the boot menu you must install rEFInd which does some magic as long as you add spoof_osx_version=10.9 the config file (usually 10.9 is a safe version which forces the Mac to initialize the firmware correctly for non-MacOS operating systems).
iMacs and MacBooks default the resolution exposed by EFI which matches the LCD panel resolution (1680x1050 on the 20" model) unless the Haiku video driver supports the Radeon (2400 XT or 2600 PRO according to EveryMac) otherwise it will default to framebuffer so forcing the resolution via the VESA config file may not work.
I suspect that the settings suggested by @cocobean are not applied so I would try using rEFInd and entering the boot menu.
Another thing re: the keyboard, if you are using a Magic Keyboard (Bluetooth) you must boot MacOS at least once and let EFI configure it by using a special internal driver which enables the keyboard (and the Magic Mouse) like it was a wired USB model (up to the boot menu, past that point Haiku kernel takes control and there is no way on earth to get it work due the incomplete BT stack)
Do we have a ticket for that? I will try to chainload with rEFInd
I don’t think so. This a weird behaviour of Apple hardware and possibly of some models only, it has not to do with Haiku. Do we need one?
keyboard not working on a computer seems like a bug to me
I’ll report issues I encounter specfic to my hardware.
Seeing as apple dropped support for this computer and the last available version is el capitan which was only supported till 2018 Haiku could fill the gap as an OS on this system.
I think some parts of Haiku certainly could be improved for this usecase (for example I was quite pleased with the device automatically trying to connect bluetooth mice when none were present.)
I’ll see if darling could be ported
This is a specific well known Mac-specific behaviour.
Apple’s Universal EFI is not so universal and manages Mac internal components in a non-standard way (surprise!).
The EFI bootloader by Apple enables certain components depending on the MacOS version which is known at boot time via what is known as “blessing”.
A non-Apple bootloader doesn’t know how to do it and this is where rEFInd kicks in, especially with the flag aforementioned.
if rEFInd can do it we can probably do it too.
or alternatively figure out how to support the keyboard dispite this
edit: if that is really required it seems quite straightforward: apple_set_os.efi/apple_set_os.c at master · 0xbb/apple_set_os.efi · GitHub
Good spot! It looks pretty easy to implement.
Please let us know if you succeed.
I have always thought the (now) old Intel Macs could be a great home for Haiku but there are a number of things that we need to fix or implement:
I noticed a specific iMac8,1 model specified as working by apgreimann:
Computers compatible with Haiku (OLD - pre-Beta2 list) - Feedback / Hardware - Haiku Community (haiku-os.org)
#### Apple iMac (Early 2008; iMac8,1) - A1224 / MB323
Rating 4/4: Haiku works with all (or nearly all) components
Version/branch: Haiku R1 Beta 2 (in testing; upcoming stable release)
Architecture: 64-bit x86 (Intel x64/AMD64, etc.)
Share on GitHub: Yes
Startup media: Standard SSD, hybrid SSHD, or hard drive (imaged or installed)
Memory: 2 GB
CPU: Intel “Core 2 Duo” E8135 @ 2.4 GHz (64-bit/x64, 2 cores, 6 MB L2 cache)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT (128 MB VRAM)
Networking cards: AirPort Extreme (Broadcom BCM43xx); Gigabit Ethernet
Sound cards: Intel High Definition Audio
Graphics status: Graphics work by default or “out of the box”
Sound status: Sound works by default or “out of the box”
Networking status: Ethernet card(s) work
SD status: My computer does not have a SD drive
Restart status: Haiku restarts smoothly
Contributor: apgreimann
Contribution date: 5/15/2020 17:08:17
Additional notes: Use Ethernet with Haiku on this Mac
So what variant(s) do we have versus this one?
EveryMac reports a Radeon HS 2600 PRO and a GeForce 8800 on the high-end 27” model
I definetely have a radeon card. I can show the specs macos sees if anyone wants.
Still severall bugs as above, i assume the efi just doesn’t know about the keyboard. Pressing the space bar to bring up the boot mane seems to hang the machine.
If i let it boot through i get those graphical glitches
But it changes when I move the mouse, so that seems to be supported.
It’s kind of awkward that I cannot acced the efi loader settings to atleast try the failsafe graphics driver.
I saw you post this, but it is unrelated to this thread, why crospost it?
Sorry, but it seems to cover the iMac problem also…
Nope.
I did post above that my issue is after loading the efi loader, mainly at the end of the boot at app_server start. It has nothing to do with the efi beeing 32bit (it’s 64bit)