Today I can't get MOS to boot, it hangs at the loading screen (with the blue butterfly). That has always happened occasionally (maybe one in twenty times) but now happens every time.

This is odd because it was working yesterday and I haven't changed anything, so presumably it is bad hardware. Also it is saying there is only 476Mb RAM, so presumably 32Mb of it is bad.

Is there some kind of diagnostic program I can run to test eg. the RAM, without booting MOS? I read that holding Ctrl-Windows-O-F at boot would bring up the OpenFirmware menu but that doesn't seem to work.

Oops, duplicate post removed...

[ Edited by Minuous 04.02.2014 - 15:07 ]

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Something similar happened to me today. In fact it happened twice, but after a third try it finally booted up. I don't know why this is happening, but I didn't see this before in previous versions of MorphOS.

Same error here with my Power Mac G4/Radeon 9000. It happen quite often so I need to reboot. Perhaps is due to a USB (I have an USB HD always attached) or network faulty setup?

[ Edited by Daff 04.02.2014 - 06:43 ]

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That's normal. Underlying Quark takes some memory and all isn't shown to MorphOS itself.

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It's Alt-Windows-o-f, but AFAIK it doesn't have diagnostic tools. But if you have original OSX installation media, there's a disc with HW test program.

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Is USB HD led flashing constantly on those situations? Have you waited long enough if it would continue to boot? I've had some slowdowns on boot with USB HD sometimes and usually don't have it powered all the time.

Sometimes when I connect my USB HD when system is already up, it doesn't mount and its led keeps flashing. If you wait long enough it'll mount and start working normally, but most times I just unplug it and after reconnect it shows up immediately. I don't know if those things have some internal filesystem checks or something like that which pop up occasionally? Anyway it does the same on PCs too, not just on MorphOS machines...

> I read that holding Ctrl-Windows-O-F at boot would bring up the OpenFirmware menu

It's a prompt, not a menu.

It is a really bizarre issue, it will boot from the MOS 3.1 CD. So I installed MOS 3.1 from the CD, but it still won't boot from the hard disk. The only difference is that it says 475Mb RAM now, perhaps 3.1 takes an extra megabyte.
The only hard disk is the internal built-in one. It happens even with no USB devices connected.
Can anyone suggest a good diagnostic program for MOS? (I don't have an OSX CD for this machine. I could borrow one from a PowerBook, would that work?) Does MOS generate a logfile of some kind when booting?

Sometimes there's a strange behaviour when poseidon.prefs went corrupt. In this case booting is interrupted at bootlogo, no matter if there is a USB-device or not....
Try to delete prefs/env-archive/sys/poseidon.prefs and reboot. Maybe that solves your problem.....

OK, I deleted that file, however it doesn't make any difference.

If it hangs on boot screen it seems that one of the startup-commands is the reason for. But if you have'nt changed anything before, discstructure may be corrupt. My next suggestion is to check partition with SFS-Doctor or format partition and reinstall MOS.

There have been cases where a dying backup-battery has corrupted settings in NVRAM.

Taking it out should reset the Mac to default, which should be enough to boot an installed MorphOS from the boot-menu (press "Alt" on powerup), actually this info might even be stored elsewhere, so that it would still boot on it's on.

Other options:
- go to OF (Ctrl-Windows-O-F) and than boot with BootMenu enabeled (see MorphOS.de for details). When in BootMenu boot without startup-sequence

- try running another OS to rule out HW issues

- looking into env(arc): is also a good idea, as some stuff in there can make a boot fail when corrupted (noticed that when I tried to clone my setup over several types of Macs by just copying the whole sys: partition....)

I gave up and did a full reinstall, that seems to have solved the problem for now...I don't know how often that will be required though

Next I would have done some tests by removing user-startup, wbstartup etc from use (by renaming them temporarily), if there's some change afterall. And maybe listing all files which have been changed since it started to act to inspect if there's some nasty change (from shell for example: List System: ALL FILES SINCE Yesterday LFORMAT="%P%N"). Then renaming suspicious ones away from use or digging old version from .recycled directory. And so on... there must be some logical reason if it just stopped working and will still work when booted from the CD.

Keeping backup from working system is a good idea too, you can get changed files for sure from it or make a full restore of the system. But anyway it shouldn't go like that normally... I've had same installation on one mini since 2009 and just updated every version over it without ever needing to do full reinstall.

[ Edited by jPV 05.02.2014 - 08:05 ]

I have these problems also with my Mac Mini, I put one SSD drive to get more speed and sometimes instead of boot the MorphOS, only it show the grey screen, in this case again I put the original mechanical hard disk and the problem is resolved, but as the problem is very often, now the Mac Mini has the original hard disk and touching wood at moment the grey screen doesn't show, I have 1GB the memory and it doesn't problem, the problem is with the hard disk and some problem perhaps with the MBR from Apple.

> some problem perhaps with the MBR from Apple.

Mac OpenFirmware doesn't use MBR but APM.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=9158&forum=3&start=5

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Doesn't reboot/poweroff help in this case? Is it really stuck until you switch the HD?

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No, it is impossible only the Mac shows me the gray screen, I removed the battery to delete the PRAM, and nothing, I put the original memory dimm and when I put the original hard disk the mac boot with MorphOS, it is strange because in the case of crash (I'll touch wood) this mechanical hard disk, I'll have the mac Mini without box or buy other mac to get an original hard disk.

The reboot and poweroof or the key combination no work even I bough a Mac keyboard for the special Apple key and neither. Also apple manufacture
garbage, beauty and expensive.

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No, the LED of the USB HD isn't flashing (and I also remember having this problem without an USB HD attached).

I think it's more a problem with the main HD. I will perhaps change it.