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mac mini 2018 cannot boot to startup manager

trying to boot into startup manager for booting from other disks via usb and thunderbolt using new mac mini 2018 running Catalina. If I hold the alt | Option key as stated the mac never boots up, stays on black screen. Booting to recovery mode works fine with cmd-R but option key just halts boot even releasing the key boot wont continue unless I hit the return key several times but then just boots into normal mode finally once I do that. I have a USB keyboard plugged in to bypass blutooth keyboard issues at bootup, moshi for apple and have disabled secure boot and all that in T2 chip as required. WHy does option key halt booting ?? screen stays blank can see no messages until apple logo appears with thunderbolt monitor.

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 2, 2020 10:21 AM

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Posted on Jul 2, 2020 11:07 AM

Actually I just got it working. I thought about the usb keyboard being in the Caldigit Thunderbolt 3 docking station and moved directly into the mac-mini usb port. But... going into settings->keyboard and changing the repeat frequency when holding a key down to "Off" allowed it to boot into startup-manager the first time. No issues, ESXi usb drive seen immediately without doing option rom keyboard cmd for downloading of ROM each time.

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Jul 2, 2020 11:07 AM in response to dgenton

Actually I just got it working. I thought about the usb keyboard being in the Caldigit Thunderbolt 3 docking station and moved directly into the mac-mini usb port. But... going into settings->keyboard and changing the repeat frequency when holding a key down to "Off" allowed it to boot into startup-manager the first time. No issues, ESXi usb drive seen immediately without doing option rom keyboard cmd for downloading of ROM each time.

mac mini 2018 cannot boot to startup manager

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