Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup
This section will walk you through pre-installation hardware setup, if
any, that you will need to do prior to installing Debian. Generally,
this involves checking and possibly changing firmware settings for
your system. The firmware
is the core software used by the
hardware; it is most critically invoked during the bootstrap process
(after power-up). Known hardware issues affecting the reliability of
&debian; on your system are also highlighted.
&bios-setup-i386.xml;
&bios-setup-powerpc.xml;
&bios-setup-sparc.xml;
&bios-setup-s390.xml;
Hardware Issues to Watch Out For
USB BIOS support and keyboards
If you have no AT-style keyboard and only a USB model, you may need
to enable legacy AT keyboard emulation in your BIOS setup. Only do this if
the installation system fails to use your keyboard in USB mode. Conversely,
for some systems (especially laptops) you may need to disable legacy USB
support if your keyboard does not respond.
Consult your main board manual and look in the BIOS for Legacy
keyboard emulation
or USB keyboard support
options.
Display-visibility on OldWorld Powermacs
Some OldWorld Powermacs, most notably those with the control
display driver, may not reliably produce a colormap under Linux when the
display is configured for more than 256 colors. If you are experiencing such
issues with your display after rebooting (you can sometimes see data on
the monitor, but on other occasions cannot see anything) or, if the screen
turns black after booting the installer instead of showing you the user
interface, try changing your display settings under MacOS to use 256
colors instead of thousands
or millions
.