Intel iMac 6,1 install failure

D

DaveT

I have an old iMac no longer supported by Apple. iMac 6,1 late 2006 24" display. The Boot ROM version is iM61.0093.B07 which is the latest version for an iMac as old as mine. It is 32bit EFI for a 64bit processor.

I can install FreeBSD without problems but it will not boot into the new system. It can't find anything to boot from. FreeBSD will be the only OS.

After much searching I am fairly certain that I need a version of FreeBSD that can cope with UEFI boot. So I downloaded FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-uefi-bootonly.iso - except it won't boot from the CD.

I have tried a number of ISOs for many bsd BSD and Linux distributions. Most won't boot - I get a black screen that says:
Code: 
Select CD-ROM Boot Type:
but keyboard input is ignored.

The ordinary FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-bootonly.iso does not have this impediment, it just won't boot after the install.

The ISO that should possibly perhaps work won't even get as far as letting me do the install.

I have in my trawls of the interweb seen instructions for creating your own ISO - and for now I think that is what I have to do using the uefi.iso as my starting point.

If anybody has a nice set of instructions that work for installing FreeBSD on an old intel iMac I am all ears.
 
At the moment you are out of luck AFAICT; there is no 32 bit UEFI support for FreeBSD, only 64 bit.
 
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I would you tell you to access the EFI like accessing UEFI or BIOS, but Apple had made that impossible. You said you've tried Linux, which did you try?
In the mean time, try this link and if it works, you can go back and install FreeBSD to see if that works.
 
I won't bore you with the Linux distros that wouldn't boot from the install CD! Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander 64bit Mac (AMD64) server install image works. I did a minimal install, updated to 14.04 and then added all the desktop stuff.

Fedora 14 boots, I did the upgrade to Fedora 15, carried on reading and realised the upgrade to Fedora 17 would be difficult and gave up. Fedora 20 doesn't boot. If I was bored I might keep trying Fedora versions to see when it breaks.
TinyCoreLinux CorePlus works but runs unbelievably slowly!

Thanks for the link, I used some of the info there to get Ubuntu up and running.
Interestingly for both Ubuntu and Fedora I could only get a bootable system if I used Logical Volume Management LVM2 on the whole disk. GRUB would refuse to install if I partitioned the disk in the same way I have for the last 15 years.

update 2104-10-27: I didn't get bored, I got vexed and went investigating. Fedora 14 is the most recent Fedora version to boot on my iMac.
 
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I'm glad at least one distribution from the open source operating systems worked. I'm not trolling or anything but truth be told; Apple imposes too many restrictions (software and hardware) for the money you spend. I'd rather use two computers, one running Windows and the other shared with FreeBSD and Linux.
 
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youngunix said:
I'm glad at least one distribution from the open source operating systems worked. I'm not trolling or anything but truth be told; Apple imposes too many restrictions (software and hardware) for the money you spend. I'd rather use two computers, one running Windows and the other shared with FreeBSD and Linux.
Click to expand...

Why get an Apple computer at all if you're not going to run OS X on it? :confused: (Well unless you get one cheap/free as used).
 
kpa said:
Why get an Apple computer at all if you're not going to run OS X on it? :confused: (Well unless you get one cheap/free as used).
Click to expand...
I don't buy Apple.
He is trying to use other operating systems because he got boned by Apple (read the first line of his first post).
 
I have chosen to use Apple computers for 18 years now. They just work. The original bondi blue iMac I bought in 1999 is running debian stable as a web-server quite happily. My main computer is the 2006 iMac I am using to type this. It is still working, it doesn't need replacing, but Apple don't issue any security updates or anything for it - apart from iTunes and I hate iTunes. I won't buy another Apple computer because of the changes they have made to OSX. I will be building my own computer just like I did 30 years ago (sigh). Or perhaps I will a used iMac only a couple of years old and then install FreeBSD on it.

Meanwhile, web searches for anything to do with early intel iMacs like mine turn up very little useful information so for the benefit of others this will stray a bit from FreeBSD...

The only distro that plays nicely is Ubuntu, choose a light desktop version such as Lubuntu that uses the LXDE desktop or Xubuntu that uses the xfce desktop. Both Gnome and the Ubuntu Unity desktop run a bit too slow for my liking. Ubuntu Unity made the Nvidia graphics drivers crash regularly. I chose Xubuntu. When you do the download make sure you choose the mac specific iso for ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. Be brave and choose the server version!

When you do the install use an Ethernet connection because it doesn't have the b43 drivers for the Broadcom WiFi.
When it boots into your new system there will be no pretty windows no nothing. Just a big black 24" terminal with a flashing cursor.
type:-
sudo tasksel
A pinkish window with a list of options comes up.
Choose Lubuntu or Xubuntu and let it install.
When that has finished you can take it to the latest 14.10 if you want to. I did.

sudo lshw -C network
will tell you if you have the driver properly installed. UNCLAIMED means you need to install it.

Now you can install the b43 Broadcom drivers. The system should tell you what to do, if not :-
sudo install firmware-b43-installer

You might have to add the b43 driver into the list of modules to be installed at system start. I did. Make sure that the text editor called nano is installed, newbies should stay away from the vim text editor!
sudo nano /etc/modules
The file won't have much in it. Mine had some comments and a solitary line saying lp.
Add another line saying b43.
And save the file.

At boot up time it will be dog-slow because it will wait for your wireless network connection.
sudo nano /etc/init/failsafe.conf and change anywhere it says sleep 10 or sleep 40 or sleep 60 to say sleep 1 and save the file.

NOW you can install whatever software you want.
 
Back to FreeBSD discussion.

I know three other people with old Intel iMacs that work happily but like mine can't run later versions of OSX than 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. They are not sad techie geeks like us. They went out and bought new iMacs! I haven't acquired their old ones cheap because I have no possible use for them.

There are/will be a lot of cheap used iMacs or people wanting to change their existing iMac to BSD or Linux. Getting the needful things done to make FreeBSD work on these 'bastard' children of Apple will be a 'good thing'.
Most people, me included, would then install PC-BSD because it adds nice things to Free-BSD to make life easy for normal people.

Too many distros assume they will be installed onto new high power pcs. No. At some point the user finds they can't upgrade their existing software and makes the change to open source to keep their old hardware running. I always buy cheap Windows laptops and immediately trash them to Linux. Or I used to until systemd... But that is a different flame war for a different forum.

Oh, and as for Windows, I don't allow anything from Microsoft into my house and at work we use Debian for everything with a Windows desktop via rdesktop and Windows Terminal Server for those times when we need to check compatibility.

Give us a shout if/when FreeBSD is ready for me to give it another go!
 
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DaveT said:
I have an old iMac no longer supported by Apple. iMac 6,1 late 2006 24" display. The Boot ROM version is iM61.0093.B07 which is the latest version for an iMac as old as mine. It is 32bit EFI for a 64bit processor.

I can install FreeBSD without problems but it will not boot into the new system. It can't find anything to boot from. FreeBSD will be the only OS.

After much searching I am fairly certain that I need a version of FreeBSD that can cope with UEFI boot. So I downloaded FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-uefi-bootonly.iso - except it won't boot from the CD.

I have tried a number of ISOs for many bsd BSD and Linux distributions. Most won't boot - I get a black screen that says:
Code: 
Select CD-ROM Boot Type:
but keyboard input is ignored.

The ordinary FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-bootonly.iso does not have this impediment, it just won't boot after the install.

The ISO that should possibly perhaps work won't even get as far as letting me do the install.

I have in my trawls of the interweb seen instructions for creating your own ISO - and for now I think that is what I have to do using the uefi.iso as my starting point.

If anybody has a nice set of instructions that work for installing FreeBSD on an old intel iMac I am all ears.
Click to expand...
DaveT said:
I have an old iMac no longer supported by Apple. iMac 6,1 late 2006 24" display. The Boot ROM version is iM61.0093.B07 which is the latest version for an iMac as old as mine. It is 32bit EFI for a 64bit processor.

I can install FreeBSD without problems but it will not boot into the new system. It can't find anything to boot from. FreeBSD will be the only OS.

After much searching I am fairly certain that I need a version of FreeBSD that can cope with UEFI boot. So I downloaded FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-uefi-bootonly.iso - except it won't boot from the CD.

I have tried a number of ISOs for many bsd BSD and Linux distributions. Most won't boot - I get a black screen that says:
Code: 
Select CD-ROM Boot Type:
but keyboard input is ignored.

The ordinary FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-bootonly.iso does not have this impediment, it just won't boot after the install.

The ISO that should possibly perhaps work won't even get as far as letting me do the install.

I have in my trawls of the interweb seen instructions for creating your own ISO - and for now I think that is what I have to do using the uefi.iso as my starting point.

If anybody has a nice set of instructions that work for installing FreeBSD on an old intel iMac I am all ears.
Click to expand...

======================================

Sorry if this is off-topic. FYI, I have an Intel iMac6,1 24 inch, Late 2006, with 32bit EFI on which I recently installed OS X 10.10.1. The process is quite straightforward, and essentially involves two things:

1. Adding the board-id of the iMac6,1 to /System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist . The board-id for an Mac computer can be found by typing the following command in Terminal:
/usr/sbin/ioreg -l -d 3| egrep 'board-id|compatible'
2. Replace the existing file boot.efi (back up the original first of course) with a modified boot.efi in each of the two following directories:
/System/Library/CoreServices
/usr/standalone/i386

You will need to download the OS X Yosemite Install disc from the AppStore. There is a good instructional PDF available at the link below to create a bootable USB.

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=510797&d=1414894257

OS X 10.10 and subsequently 10.10.1 work well enough on the iMac6,1 with the notable lack of support for the nVidia 7600 GT graphics cards which shipped with my iMac6,1. The 7600 GT (and presumably also the 7300 GT) WILL work with Yosemite; to summarize, it's not optimum, but I can live with it (rather than throwing the machine out).

Here's how this was described by someone else--note this refers to the MacPro rather than the iMac, but you'll get the idea:

"Yosemite does not include 64-bit kernel extension device drivers for the original NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, ATI Radeon X1900 XT, and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 PCIe graphics cards that shipped with these Mac Pros, nor the ATI Radeon X1300 that shipped with the Xserve (Late 2006), so they do not work properly in Yosemite. These graphics cards display issues such as a very sluggish GUI with no QE/CI support, no framebuffer support (for DVD Player, Geekbench and other programs), graphics artifacts, mouse tearing, inability to change resolutions, bad refresh rates, and other system instabilities. If you need normal graphics support in Yosemite, you will need a newer PCIe graphics card, with popular options being the Apple ATI Radeon HD 5770 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro, SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, or many different options of stock and Mac-"flashed" PC cards."

I doubt it is possible to swap out the existing 7600 GT video card in the iMac6,1 for another that is supported by Yosemite. If anyone knows differently, please let me know.
 
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