# RELEASE 13.0 Install on Mac Mini (Intel) from USB Memory Stick



## smdb01us (Jul 28, 2021)

Howdy,

More than a question, I wanted to document this behavior just in case someone else runs into this problem and maybe someone can explain why this happens. I have a a few Mac Minis (Intel CPU, late 2014) that were sitting around collecting dust so I installed R13.0 on one and made it my firewall (using ps), another one my Python development station and today, I installed R13.0 on my last one to make it my NAS server.

I have been using "FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img" successfully using "dd" into an old Patriot 32GB USB memory stick. For this last installation, I remembered I had a small portable HDMI monitor so I connected it to the "new" Mac Mini, plugged the USB and an Apple USB keyboard and turned on the machine, pressing the "option" key. I was surprised that I did not see the usual orange USB bootble icon (I can't remember the legend under this icon, sorry), just the internal HDD boot and a "Windows boot" option. I assumed I had imaged the USB stick incorrectly so I imaged it again but had the same result. After verifying that the memory stick was correctly imaged and having the same result when booting the machine, I had to stop and think what I was doing differently. With my first two machines, I connected my Apple Cinema Thunderbolt monitor port to the one of Thunderbolt ports on the machine and since I daisy-chain the same Apple USB keyboard to the monitor, I was all set for the installation. I thought that connecting the HDMI monitor and keyboard directly vs the TB monitor could not make that difference but sure enough, after booting with the machine with the TB monitor, the orange USB bootable icon for FreeBSD appeared and I was able to install FreeBSD.

Could using the HDMI port cause some sort of incompatibility with the USB port? This really left me scratching my head. Again, if someone has a theory or fact of what would cause this, please go ahead and if not, hopefully someone doing a similar install would see this and save him/her some time. Also, after the installation was done, I removed the TB monitor, connected the HDMI mini monitor and USB keyboard and they both worked correctly so this is something specific to the boot process it seems.

Cheers.


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## trev (Jul 29, 2021)

No idea 

I have installed FreeBSD on Mac minis from 2007 to 2011, but I don't have a 2014 model and so haven't tried that one.

I also maintain the FreeBSD Wiki Intel Mac mini page and to this end would you be interested in testing a patch for the asmc(4) kernel loadable module for the 2012 model? It'll be a few days before I get to it as I'm currently QAing the next Lazarus IDE release for macOS aarch64.

I'll also incorporate your findings on that page for the 2014 model.


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## smdb01us (Jul 29, 2021)

Hey trev, I would absolutely like to help as much as I can, I unicasted you directly.


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## grahamperrin@ (Jul 29, 2021)

smdb01us said:


> … Could using the HDMI port cause some sort of incompatibility with the USB port? …



I'm inclined to say, _expect the unexpected_ with USB. 

Off-topic: if I try to boot an HP ZBook 17 G2 with a USB ZFS cache device directly connected, USB is unusable – at the GELI password prompt, the HP USB keyboard attached to the HP dock is not recognised by the system; and so on.


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## smdb01us (Aug 2, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> I'm inclined to say, _expect the unexpected_ with USB.
> 
> Off-topic: if I try to boot an HP ZBook 17 G2 with a USB ZFS cache device directly connected, USB is unusable – at the GELI password prompt, the HP USB keyboard attached to the HP dock is not recognised by the system; and so on.


Ha, interesting... something must be conflictling, obviously... I have gone through the logs and I have not found anything in the logs.


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