Hello everyone,
First off I am rather new to the MorphOs scene so forgive me if I have a newbie problem. I tried to look through the internet for solutions or assistance on the issue I am having. To no avail help.

I have an issue booting the MorphOs cd (that I burnt using an iMac and disk utility) on my
Power Mac G5. (I tried actually 2x. I have burnt a v3.10 and a 3.11 the latter being just avail when I tried last night) It should be noted that I have booted and installed fine with the v3.10 onto a
mac mini G4 (1.2ghz I think with 512Mb)

The same disc (as well as v3.11 from last night) boots to a white screen when I try with my
Power Mac G5 (DP 2.3Ghz)

I have an ATI X800 XT (256Mb) video card inside.
I have 4.5 GB in it currently soon to be 8GB.
I currently have Mac OSX 10.4.11 (I think its x.x.11..just at work right now and think that is the latest for 10.4)

I have tried with the holding the "c" key down when I hear the chime.. which goes to the white screen.
I have also used the "option" key at the chime.. which it shows my HD and it does show the CD drive with a little butterfly.. so it seems to recognize the disc is there. It also mounts fine when I let Mac OSX boot up.

I don't consider myself totally useless around the computer.. usually a pretty technical guy. I am a bit new to the whole Modern Amiga OS alternatives.. but just wanted to see if anyone had any advice or knew what was going on.

I see that there is a way to attempt to run/install from USB using open firmware .. I could probably try that if it was the last resort.. or if that is the only way it works on Power Mac G5s.. but I somehow think this is just a one up rare occurrence. I would much rather be able to just boot from the cd like I did in my mac mini g4 .. (the reason I am trying my Power Mac G5 instead.. is cause of the more powerful computer it is.) Not sure if this matters but I have had a dvd movie and a music cd in the system playing.. and seems fine.. so I have heard that some superdrives can do one or the other.. I am not sure if this is a valid test.. but I have ran both formats fine. (its a Pioneer D511 if that matters) Just trying to be as thorough as possible for your guys

Well thank you for all that read this.. Thank you for your time and effort in advance. I am just really curious what is going on.. and how I can solve this problem.

Quote:
Sorry for the stupid question, but to make sure, did you also try to select the CD drive with the butterfly in the "option" key menu and boot it? :) Not just trying to boot with the C key, but also from this menu.

hey jPV,
yes sorry I was trying to be thorough and missed that.. I have indeed tried to boot by clicking on on the cd icon when I use the "option" key. It yields the same thing. The screen goes black for a moment and then goes and sits on the white screen.

Sorry i missed that detail that is vital to troubleshooting

I should also mention I have also done a few probably unnecessary things like change the resolution to 1024 x 768 and have even put my system back to its original RAM scenerio (to install osx 10.4 and get by the optimising pic portion at the end.. I had to remove the 4GB simms that I had in there. (I saw an article telling me to do that.. like I said I have done my fair share of surfing the net to see if others had this issue.. I have seen some mentions of having troubles with power mac g5... but its usually when they don't have a 7,3 supported hardware etc.



[ Edited by bonoedgey 17.07.2018 - 09:54 ]

The gfx card is a genuine Apple X800, right?

I'd go for the USB boot as well. It's quite straightforward, as soon as you know which USB port your flashdrive resides in. Aaand you do it via Open Firmware, so you can get (some degree of) information where it stops booting.

thanks koszer for the response

yes its a genuine apple X800 XT. I should mention that it did the same thing with my stock 9600. I just happen to be upgrading my video card from taking one out of another Mac.

Weird... it sounds like some compatibility issue, but if it does it on those two cards which both should be supported...

And CD is most likely booted correctly at least from that alt-menu, but you could try once more from the Open Firmware prompt too:
1) Boot into OF by pressing command-alt-o-f key combination
2) Check if you can see the contents of the CD by typing: dir cd:,\
3) Type this to boot the CD: boot cd:,\\:tbxi

When it goes to the white screen, does CD keep loading still something, do you hear access sound for a while after that?

One option is to try to boot into MorphOS boot menu:
1) In OF prompt type: boot cd:,\mac_ppc64\boot.img bm
2) If you don't see the menu after a while, try hitting the v key to swap screen resolution between native and something lower, or space to swap between possible multiple monitors if that could do some trick

You've basically done already everything you should to be able to boot the machine, so I guess it's just random things we can suggest and hope the best.

Have you tried to connect your monitor to other DVI port on your gfx card? Or tried with another monitor?


[ Edited by jPV 19.07.2018 - 16:32 ]

Quote:

Apple X800 has got only one DVI (and one ADC)...

thanks jPV

I will try those options on the wkend here coming up. I am keen on getting it working. Yah as koszer mentioned its got one DVI and ADC each.. but I can see about hooking to another monitor last resort. You have given me some more examples of things to try.. I will report back once I try them. All the help is greatly appreciated everyone

hello there jPV

I tried to get a screenshot on here to no avail..
but when I do that boot cd:,\mac_ppc64\boot.img bm

I get "Loading ELF" below that when it's sounding like its loading from the cd

then on a line below that

"DQ-Quiesce finished_ "

*sigh* I tried to use the alt\option key again to select the cd.. then went and tried tapping "v" and "spacebar" on the blank white screen to no avail..

Think I am for some reason running out of options..

I really appreciate you all trying to help me...

I didn't think you'd mentioned which PowerMac G5 you were trying to install MorphOS on, but I see you've stated that it's a 2.3 DP - so the specific model, and EMC (ElectroMagnetic Compatibility) number would be A1047, 2061 is that correct?

It was just to ensure you knew the 970MP chipped PowerMacs are not supported by MorphOS - The Dual and Quad Core G5s.

[ Edited by NewSense 01.08.2018 - 07:36 ]

Quote:

It must be Dual Processor as he's got an Apple Radeon X800XT (an AGP gfx card).

@bonoedgey: I might be stubborn, but what about USB boot?

Just put morphos.iso (for your convenience I'd rename it to morphos.iso) and boot.img (unpacked from the /mac_ppc64 folder on it) in the root directory of a FAT formatted USB stick and then:

1. plug the stick in
2. determine in OF which USB port it is by typing:

Code:

and so on until you'll see the OF lists the /disk@1

3. type:

Code:

of course if the disk@1 is in usb0 you type:

Code:

and so on. If that works then we could reject the optical drive hypothesis.

hey koszer, I will try that

Quote:
This means the boot.img (MorphOS kernel) has been succesfully loaded and the next step would be that OS itself should start loading from a disk. You should see a boot picture (or enter to the boot menu with that "bm" option) if MorphOS recognizes your graphics card. MorphOS takes the control from Open Firmware at this point.

CD works because you can get the boot.img file loaded from it, so one would think that MorphOS would also recognize other contents from it and boot the actual OS from there.... so would this be indication of display problem rather than anything else... that another monitor could be worth to try.


Quote:
Tapping of "v" and "spacebar" works only if you have booted into _MorphOS_ boot menu with that previously mentioned "bm" option, and try to hit them while in the menu. These don't work if you try to tap them in the Mac boot menu (alt/option key menu) or if booted CD from there. So please try again in the correct boot menu :)


[ Edited by jPV 01.08.2018 - 18:14 ]

hey koszer,

so I tried to boot from the usb.

I had a 1GB usb stick that I formatted to FAT32. I put the newly named "morphos.iso" and the boot.img (from the from the /mac_ppc64) on it.

Nothing more nothing less just those two files (worked out to be just under 300Mb I think)

so I went into OF

I ran the commands to find the usb:

I found that "dev usb2 ls" yielded me this:

ffa50d48: /disk@2 ok

(I went til there was no more USBs and didn't find a disk@1)

so I proceeded to put

" boot usb2/disk@2:,boot.img bi umsd0:morphos.iso "

I got the following

"Warning: sector size mismatch! can't OPEN: usb2/disk@2:,boot.img
Can't open device or file
ok "

soooooo two things this makes me wonder...

1. Does it have to be "disk@1" cause I couldn't find one... (when I did the "dev /aliases .properties" command I saw that there were a few variations of the USB like usb-2a,2b,2c none of which had disk@1... only usb2 has disk@2)

I noticed that the cd1 has disk@1 listed but that may be normal
wonder if there was a blotch up from me putting the boot.img file on .. I made sure it was from the correct directory and just outside on the root dir with the iso file.

2. wonder if that means my usb stick isn't really working properly.

I saw how my keyboard hooked up (also has a wireless usb mouse hooked to the power keyboard)


Also should note for jPV... I hooked up another monitor and same white screen..


so I wasn't yet successful booting from the usb.. and the monitors don't seem to matter.

*sigh* seems like square one again..

Sorry koszer for not being able to properly boot by usb..
I imagine I am doing something wrong

I'm sorry bonoedgey, my fault. I forgot about the backslash.

The boot line should be (in your case):

boot usb2/disk@2:,\boot.img bi umsd0:morphos.iso

EDIT: Strangest thing! When I use {code} tag to embed this line then the backslash is gone! So it wasn't my fault after all!

without code:

boot usb2/disk@2:,\boot.img bi umsd0:morphos.iso

with code:

Code:

[ Edited by koszer 06.08.2018 - 08:17 ]

Hey thanks Koszer for clarifying that.

I tried with the backslash and same thing happened

"Warning: sector size mismatch! can't OPEN: usb2/disk@2:,boot.img
Can't open device or file
ok "


not sure why that is showing up.

Quote:

I cant install MorphOS in my powermac g5 with usb. I get that error too so I finally had to do it burning a CD.

thanks for the response tolkien,

yah that is how I got started in the first place with this dilemma ...trying the cd..

as written above.. it appears to boot but then just has a white screen on the display (multiple displays infact)

@ bonoedgey

Do you have any USB devices (including external USB hubs) connected while booting? Did you try removing them before MorphOS starts to boot?

Do you use any other expansion cards in your PowerMac besides a graphics card?

Do you use more than one SSD or harddisk?

Do you know how many memory modules you use in your G5 machine? (You could try removing and switching modules just to see if this changes anything.)

hey ASiegel

to answer your questions..

I have a pro keyboard (model m7803) plugged into one of the usb at the back of the tower. My mouse has the wireless usb dongle of it's in the usb slot on the keyboard.

It would suck if that was what was also giving grief..

I am not sure if that is causing issues how I would be able to keyboard the commands to boot from cd or from usb..

As far as expansions go.. I have a pic.. I am not sure what the 27 pin and the other cards are.. :( I am thinking they are cards you speak of though..

r3zmyLm.jpg

***EDIT** The video card there with the dvi is the stock 9600 which did the same thing as the 800 xt

I just have one Harddisk.. that has Mac Osx tiger on it at the moment. I can go to leopard.. but I was thinking of just going to MorphOs straight away.

I have 8 GB made up of 8 memory modules.. I actually til yesterday had 4.5GB (2 256M and (4) 1G modules) I removed the 2 modules and put 2 1GB modules in their place and put 2 more 1G in the open slots. I have moved them around a bit. The memory was tested in Mac Osx .. reads 8GB but also I did a long memtest on it as well.. all checked fine.

Thank you for chiming in on this.. I am just wondering what is going on.. I haven't registered for MorphOs but would like this system for it.



[ Edited by bonoedgey 06.08.2018 - 12:03 ]

Quote:
If removing your additional expansion cards does not succeed, open the boot device manager by pressing ALT when you start your PowerMac. Wait for the CD icon to appear which will take a short while. Then click on the CD icon via mouse and click on the arrow button on the right to boot MorphOS from CD. As soon as MorphOS starts loading from CD, try to immediately / quickly unplug your keyboard and mouse. This should help to diagnose whether or not your USB input devices are causing issues or not.

Ok so I booted the CD via the boot manager.. as soon as I clicked on the arrow to boot the cd.. I unplugged from the back of the tower the USB for the keyboard/mouse..

I still got a white screen on the monitor

Quote:
Please remove all cards except for the graphics card. Then try to boot MorphOS again.

Quote:
At least we can rule out that this is the problem.

Please try to remove all expansion cards above your graphics card.