Tried XPostFacto4 now CD not recognized.

[paullt]

Hi,

Been a long time since I posted but here goes. I tried to use XPostFacto4 to upgrade my Beige G3 desktop w/Rev2 ROM from 10.2.8 (which ran fine) to 10.3. Well when I got the installer started I found out I didn't have enough disk space on the old internal ATA 4GB so I decided not to install it. I further decided to go all the way back to OS 9.2.2. I had originally planned to install Yellow Dog 3 on an external SCSI Barracuda 36GB (I had actually installed YDL on a partition on the internal 4GB once before and it worked quite well). Well, I was able to boot from the CD drive and reinstall OS 9 onto the internal 4GB and see the external 36GB but after I rebooted into OS 9 on the internal 4GB the CD drive no longer shows up in Drive Setup & I can't mount CDs anymore. It isn't even recognized by ASP anymore. It doesn't show the 2nd ATA Bus at all. Only when I boot from the CD drive does it show up. Did XPostFacto4 screw up my Firmware on the ROM somehow? I've tried pulling the battery and unhooking the drive. When the screen comes up it displays "can't OPEN:" a couple of dozen times and then proceeds to boot from the internal 4GB which is on the Primary ATA Bus. Is there a way I can reverse the changes XPostFacto4 made? I'd post on the XPostFacto4 forums but I can't afford the registration fee right now.

TIA.....Paul

[paullt]

Well, it appears I fixed it myself. I opened XPostFacto4 and specified the OS 9 Primary ATA 4GB drive as the startup drive and the all is back to normal. PHEW! This is going to be my Web server and I was worried as I couldn't get my YDL disks to show up. While I'm at it, does anybody here know if Fedora Core 4 for PPC will run on a Beige G3 266 Rev2 desktop with 512MB RAM(Macgurus RAM BTW). The external SCSI drive is 36GB so I know that's big enough. I have the ISOs but haven't burned them yet.

Thanks.....Paul

[M.Brane]

When you install XPF you can no longer use the startup disk in X or 9. XPF patches the NVRAM, and using the OS startup disk causes conflicts at boot. You have to use XPF as your new startup disk control panel.

I had big problems when installing Panther on my Beige (same as yours) with the stock CD-ROM. After replacing it with a DVR-109 there's no problems, and it's much faster as well. I don't think those old CD-ROMs like XPF/Panther very much.

Sorry, but I don't have a clue about Fedora Core 4 for PPC.

[Nicolas]

When you install XPF you can no longer use the startup disk in X or 9. XPF patches the NVRAM, and using the OS startup disk causes conflicts at boot. You have to use XPF as your new startup disk control panel.

I had big problems when installing Panther on my Beige (same as yours) with the stock CD-ROM. After replacing it with a DVR-109 there's no problems, and it's much faster as well. I don't think those old CD-ROMs like XPF/Panther very much.

Sorry, but I don't have a clue about Fedora Core 4 for PPC.

I was trying to get 10.2 to work on my 8600 (ATTO PSC, 2x 36GB 10K Cheetah, ATI Radeon ME, Asante Fast RevB, 512MB RAM, stock CD) but no go. It started the installation but always froze on "installing base system part1". I don't have a PCI>IDE/ATA card so SCSI CD only.

I never tried YDL4 or Mandrake 10 (now Mandriva) but GenToo is running fine, with Gnome or KDE. I prefer KDE because of some great Aqua themes

Best regards

Nicolas

[paullt]

YDL 3 installs fine and will work fine for my purposes as I won't add Apache from the YDL install. I'll install the newer 2.2.0 version as a separate package . Terrasoft says YDL 4 will install on Old World ROMs using BootX in OS 9 but I can't get past a certain boot point. FDC 4 can install only on New World ROMs as they allow bootup from the CD as YDL 4 appears to require also.

Is there a way to reset the NVRAM in OS 9?

Thanks.....Paul

[M.Brane]

Is there a way to reset the NVRAM in OS 9?

Thanks.....Paul

You need to boot into open firmware (command+option+O+F) to reset NVRAM. At the prompt:

init-nvram return
set-defaults return
reset-all return

It's not always as effective as removing the battery, and discharging the power supply caps but it's a lot more convienient. Works 9 times out of 10.

[Nicolas]

It seems there is a way with a "shiner" kernel made for the Apple Network Servers:

http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?t=381

Best regards

Nicolas

[TZ]

It's not always as effective as removing the battery, and discharging the power supply caps but it's a lot more convienient. Works 9 times out of 10.

Have seen Beige need init-nvram before it would work to allow installing OS X, even Jaguar; along with cuda reset. What isn't that great is the 'zap the pram 5 times.'

Can't comment on how good removing a battery is to do fix a problem, but there, booting with the battery out, and PMU reset, after unplugging from the main, has cured a Mac that refuses to boot.

Not only the contents of pram and nvram are being cleared, but the device tree is being rebuilt, and sometimes a mac 'remembers' what it WAS and not what it IS.

[paullt]

Thanks everyone.

Nicolas, the link worked. Turns out that besides needing the different boot kernel, YDL 4 didn't like my Rage Orion video card. When I removed the card and used the onboard Mach64 with the new boot kernel the install proceeded fine with BootX. I also had to set BootX to start without video drivers. This didn't work when I had the Rage card in. The screen would pinch to half width and was unreadable. After the install the onboard video looks good. I may try to reinstall the Rage card post install and see if it is recognized by Linux correctly. The GUI isn't going to be that important as once the Apache is up and running I will run Linux in text mode as I prefer to create my web pages on my G4 using Taco HTML Edit and upload with Cyberduck.

Paul

[Nicolas]

Yep, no go if you try to get X.org running on a 9500 with the buildin ATI 2 or 4MB video card installed because of a bug on the IBM RAMDAC used on the card. I was running YDL3 on my 8600 for 2 years, than I did an "update" to GenToo. Was hard work getting GenToo to work but it is alot faster.

Best regards

Nicolas

[paullt]

Now my problem is the NIC is not recognized by YDL 4. I imagine the driver wasn't included because it wasn't designed for Old World machines. Where can I find out what the NIC controller is in this machine? There are quite a few drivers available by YDL 4. I'm going back to install YDL 3. I see it recognizes the NIC as a BMAC. Answered my own question. Maybe I'll see if I can upgrade to 4 after I install 3. The NIC may still be recognized.

[Nicolas]

Now my problem is the NIC is not recognized by YDL 4. I imagine the driver wasn't included because it wasn't designed for Old World machines. Where can I find out what the NIC controller is in this machine? There are quite a few drivers available by YDL 4. I'm going back to install YDL 3. I see it recognizes the NIC as a BMAC. Answered my own question. Maybe I'll see if I can upgrade to 4 after I install 3. The NIC may still be recognized.

Hello,

if you have a PCI left, just buy a Realtek RTL8139 based card, will work with OSX and Linux and cost around $5 only.

Best regards

Nicolas

[paullt]

Got it to work Nicolas. Ran a Google search and came up with a fix. Added the line <strong><em>modprobe bmac</em></strong> to the <strong><em>/etc/rc.local</em></strong> file and all is well.