Hi, I’m trying to get Haiku on a 6 years old PC (motherboard MSI A68HM-E33 V2) to run. For now all looks good, except the current graphic card (PCI/Nvidia) isn’t supported, and VESA mode only delivers 1280x1024. Any recommendations for halfway modern graphic cards (HDMI is must have) that are fairly cheap, where widespread used in the past and therefore easy to get (eBay etc.)?
Thanks,
Oliver
When you boot Haiku, try to enter boot menu. Here you can select the vesa mode. With a bit of luck, you will find here what you’re looking for.
Otherwise, in /system/var/log there’s a syslog file where you can find some infos. For example, you will find what are EDID infos given by your monitor and so supported modes. If you scroll up from this point you will find infos reported by the VESA BIOS of your graphic card also with a list of supported mode.
Then, if your graphic card and monitor are supporting it, it is possible to add an additional mode in vesa file located in /home/config/settings/kernel/drivers.
Aside of that, a lot of “old” Nvidia cards are supported, it’s surprising.
Could you provide more infos about the card? You can use listdev command for example.
Try booting in UEFI mode with CSM disabled.
Thanks for the hints! I’m running in VESA (configured in /home/config/settings/kernel/drivers) and 1280x1024 is what my HW is able with the drivers supported. I checked syslog and no info about the monitor/EDID.
My graphic card is an Nvidia N210-MD1GD3H/LP.
listdev tells me: device 0a65 / GT 218 (GeForce 210) and I can’t find the device ID in Nvidia drivers.c 
Again, any idea which graphic card I should look for that works better?
I didn’t really find any CSM config in my EFI setup.
The option can also be Boot mode - Legacy+UEFI. You want to try UEFI only.
Your card isn’t old enough, that’s probably why it isn’t listed in the nvidia driver.
This driver was written by @rudolfc in BeOS days, adapted to Haiku and only received few improvements since then. Major problems are that technical specs are difficult to get from nVidia and Rudolf doesn’t have time anymore. See here for more infos.
Actually, as 2D acceleration is disabled and 3D acceleration doesn’t even exist, benefits of using a specific driver are small. If you had better resolution with that hardware in other OS, better try to make it work.
In the vesa file, you can specify a mode that isn’t listed so higher than 1280x1024.
For example, my Intel integrated card is using vesa driver at 1680x1050 resolution. A wrong mode can be dangerous for CRT monitors, that’s why devs played safe and the driver is only displaying what will sure work.
UEFI mode use a framebuffer driver that is nearly the same than vesa driver but as it is initialized differently, it is also worth testing.
Now that you mention frame buffer…this is what is currently working for me, not even VESA. Doesn’t look like it will be easy to get a supported graphics card.
Funny enough the thread about supported computers pops to the top today, and it seems that buying some old iMac from 2008 might be a better option. I saw a couple of cheap offers close by and I should be able to test it with the USB stick I’m currently using for Haiku.
So for now I’m going to abandon the “old PC” approach, and check if the “old iMac” one will work better.
Thanks for all the help!
I have a Navi 5600 in my home PC that gets 3840x2160 (efi, framebuffer) only, while my work pc has Vega56, and it allows both 3840x2160 (efi) and 1920x1080 (vesa, legacy) on same monitor. On my MacBookPro laptop, I get either 2880x1800@32 only (framebuffer with native UEFI boot), or many vesa reolutions (2880x1800@16, 1600x1200@32, 1280x1024, 1280x800, 800x600, 640x480) when I boot in legacy mode. You’re at the mercy of video card firmware + BIOS manufacturer as to what you get.
Haiku screams on all 
Did you find Boot mode option in UEFI?
yes but didn’t make a difference for me.