From what I understand, this PowerMac G4 I have here should be able to run MorphOS. However, it continues to hang during the copying phase of the installation. I thought it might be the DVD drive so I tried a known-good device. The machine is running an ATI Rage 128 Pro, has been upgraded to 512MB RAM and I have tried both on a 40GB hard drive and a 120GB SSD.

I have no experience with Mac hardware so I am stuck here. I was hoping to sell this system with a working install of MorphOS. It came with a working installation of MacOS9 so I am certain the hardware is good.

Anyone have any pointers to help?

1st of all - what's the model of the Power Mac G4?
2. Is the CD a tried and tested installation disc? Not faulty/incomplete writing of all necessary data to disc.
3. If the Power Mac G4 is a supported model then I'd consider checking the RAM as I've had incompatible "pairs" that caused issues in some systems, and of course they need to be fitted in the correct order for their pairing, and seated well/contacts clean.
4. As it's a G4 then using an SSD might be an issue unless it's got supported SATA or IDE interface/hardware for MorphOS.

See if that fixes what is not completing for now, and if I or others can offer any further insight once you supply the hardware model details.

If it only had Mac OS9 on it who knows how long it has been since it was last seriously used/cleaned/upgraded/serviced.

Quote:

1. This one https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_server_g4/specs/macserver_g4_400.html
2. I forgot to mention, yes, I have used the same media on two MacMinis.
3. I have tried other known-good RAM.
4. Using the on-board IDE, and I get the same results with a real hard drive.

Follow-up, I found that after the hang, I let it sit until the "MorphOS is about to time out" notice pops up. The installation is not continuing, though very, very slowly.

This is interesting. The install hung up completely and the computer went to a black screen. I restarted a new installation and found that when the copy hangs, clicking on the menu gadget results in the copy starting up, again. I left the menu open and since the copy has not hung up. Leaving the menu open prevents the file/byte count from updating, but I am not certain if that is significant.

The installation appears to have completed. It stopped copying and would not start up at all. The installer window became more responsive but never showed the completion dialog. It did, however, show "MorphOS" on the far-right of the drive. I removed the CD and restarted and it does appear to have completed. Very strange, but it works and I've run all applications on the system with no problems.

@ LoadWB - Well, from your point of view the seemingly completed installation has got to be a good thing.

As far as I am aware the Mac Server G4 - AGP - M7609LL/A - PowerMac3,1 - M5183 - 1843 seems to be a supported model, but I have never owned that model, so I cannot say definitively one way or the other, but from what you've said, it's completed the installation, so it does seem to be compatible.

Are you getting audio out of it as well?

Maybe worthy of mention from Everymac is that originally that Power Mac 3.1 was shipped by default with either an 18 GB Ultra2 SCSI drive (and corresponding PCI card) or a 20 GB Ultra ATA/66 hard drive. Though it could be configured with up to three Ultra2 SCSI drives at the time of purchase as a build-to-order option.

So maybe it is the capacity or interface type for the HDD that you are using that could be an issue as well.

> As it's a G4 then using an SSD might be an issue unless it's
> got supported SATA or IDE interface/hardware for MorphOS.

How could this have been the issue at hand seeing that the SSD is obviously recognized by the G4 Mac's storage controller and MorphOS, else the copying couldn't have started in the first place? But maybe I'm completely misunderstanding what you're referring to here.

> Mac Server G4 - AGP - M7609LL/A - PowerMac3,1 - M5183 - 1843 seems to be a supported
> model, […] from what you've said, it's completed the installation,
> so it does seem to be compatible.

"Each model in the Macintosh Server G4 series architecturally is identical to a model in the Power Macintosh G4 series, but the configurations are different and the servers shipped with pre-installed Apple server software."
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_server_g4/index-mac-server-g4.html

So indeed, going by this, each Mac Server G4 model corresponds to a MorphOS-compatible PowerMac G4 model, just with larger hard drive and more RAM (beside the irrelevant-for-MorphOS software side), which means that the whitelist mechanism incorporated into MorphOS cannot tell a PowerMac G4 model from its corresponding Mac Server G4 model.

> maybe it is the capacity or interface type for the HDD
> that you are using that could be an issue as well.

Regarding capacity, the limit with pre-LBA48 machines such as the PowerMac3,1 is 128 GiB, so both his 40 GB HDD and 120 GB SSD should be fine. Regarding interface type, I don't see how that could be the issue when MorphOS recognizes the drive (using "on-board IDE", see comment #3) and starts copying to it.

I think it is just that installation takes too long on this slow machine, and the demo timeout hits before it completes the installation. You probably should try to start installation as quick as possible after the boot and hope the best. I guess it should still complete the installation while demo timeout slowdown is in place, but maybe it becomes unbearable slow and might even be considered a bug if it stalls everything in this machine.

Yeah, I started the installation as soon as the system booted. The hang started well before the timeout hit and I was able to get the copy to start back up by clicking on the drop-down menu gadget.

I actually have not checked to see if sound works. I do not recall hearing the same music playing after booting to the installation CD that I heard on the MacMinis, so I assume the sound is not working.

Everything else seems to be working just fine, though I cannot set the screen resolution above 640x480.

PMac Sawtooth G4 AGP (3.1) is my daily MorphOS computer since almost a decade so far. It's one of the most compatible and expandable systems to experiment on. Mine is equipped with a FastMac 1.6Ghz G4 7451 CPU, 2GB Ram (max), Radeon 9800XT 256MB VRAM (flashed), Digitus ide-sata with ADATA 256GB SSD (maxes at 16Mb/s from RAM to Partition copying and about 11-12 Mb/s from SFS to SFS partition), NEC USB 2.0 and dual audio with SBLive PCI and Avantree Leaf Bluetooth, let alone the peripherals like USB to DB9 (4x), skrilex mouse, custom CoolerMaster keyboard, dual ips monitors 5:4, herculers MKII dj console, motorola bt headset, some expensive 2.1 edifier audio and much more. The onboard ethernet is compatible (maxes at 6Mb/s my local network) but the airport wifi is not so you must either use a wifi pci or an ethernet to wifi dongle. Depending on your budget it's surely worthwhile to expand it but the cpu modules are insanely expensive over the last 2-3 yrs I have been regularly checking them on ebay. Installing/updating the system with MorphOS takes about 120 secs or less (it's the sole OS on the system). Now, I am thinking to expand with a 2nd digitus and SSD combo because my main hd is now full with Amiga stuff ;)

[ Edited by Cool_amigaN 01.08.2021 - 11:54 ]