Hello again,

Well I've now managed to source another MDD, this time one that works. It seems pretty decent too: FW800; 1.25GHz dual processors; 1.5GB RAM; 250GB HD. But the best thing is it works! At last I've got MorphOS running! So here I am on OWB 1.16

So I now know what the 'chimes' is (never heard it before this), and lordy it's loud. And with having to reboot every 30 minutes, I'm half expecting to get something hurled at me at night out of the bedroom door. I've been searching to find a way to alter the volume but so far I can only find utilities that will do the job under OSX but nothing that's independant of the OS. So does anyone know a way to do this under MOS? I tried lowering the system volume but that didn't seem to survive a reboot.

Thanks again.

If you have a dual boot setup, try lowering the volume while running MacOSX before you turn the computer off, or restart it. Also try lowering the volume before you restart while running MorphOS, each time you need to reboot.

I am not sure this will solve your problem, as I have not used my MDD PowerMac in a couple of months, but I do know what you are writing about when you say loud chime and having something thrown at you from the other room, as the chime is very loud on my MDD as well, but I am fairly certain that I had found a way to quiet it in the past, but don't remember if doing what I suggested above is the solution, or if there was another method of making the chime less loud.

There are two ways to get rid of chime.

1. Boot MacOS X, set volume to zero, shutdown. This has to be made only once.
2. Disconnect internal speaker. This has to be made only once as well .

The first way has an advantage of ability to make chime silent without disabling it.

Open the case and detach the speaker connector from the mobo... simply & durable

Thanks all. I overwrote the OSX installation when I installed MOS, so I can't go with the OSX volume option (and I can't imagine there's an easy way to boot OSX without re-installing or swapping out drives) so it looks like I'll be unplugging the internal speaker. At least it is simple and quick

I wonder.... If OSX can lower the volume and have that retained after shutdown, it must store it somewhere - PRAM? Can Open Firmware update PRAM settings?

Ah, seems it is stored in PRAM - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1242

Is there some trick to getting into the Open Firmware? I've tried holding the keys down, pressing once, pressing repeatedly, and all after the chimes, before the chimes, before pressing the power button.... Each time I still get the blue butterfly and MOS boots up as normal.

press cmd-opt-O-F

Thanks for the reply Tom, those were the keys I was trying in various ways but I still got a normal boot up instead of an Open Firmware screen (whatever that looks like, haven't seen it yet).

I cannot get into of when I'm using logitech wireless keyboard. With some usuall usbwire keyboard it's fine. What keyboard do you use?

Ah, that might be it then - I've got a wireless keyboard. Everything so far has worked fine with it including the installation, but maybe Open Firmware doesn't like them. I'll have to try and find someone with a USB wired keyboard that I can borrow as I've only got wireless and PS2 keyboards. Thanks pampers.

I managed to borrow a USB wired keyboard and got into OF without any problems, so it was the wireless keyboard it didn't like before. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any variables in OF that can be set relating to the volume of the speaker, so wherever OSX stores this, it isn't where a user can get to it. And I've discovered that the boot-volume variable is nothing to do with the speaker loudness at boot up