Hi guys,

I'm trying to install MorphOS3.20 on a Mac Mini (PowerMac 10,1) - PPC G4, 1.2MHz, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB RAM. I set up a pendrive, booting up from it. After I see "do-quiesce finished", there is a few seconds pause, then the screen becomes black and nothing happens. Could you help me with any tips what to check / modify, or anything? Actually, MacOSX still works on it well.

Thanks,
Jeno

Can you check the source of "boot.img"?
Can you check filename of the iso you are using to boot?
Maybe try another pendrive, or go via cd-rom

do-quiesce finished means the boot.img was loaded. If it doesn't proceed after this, MorphOS appears to be unable to find the ISO. Double-check how it's named on usb - I highly recommend just using mos.iso for brevity. The command to boot is then

boot ud:,\boot.img bi umsd0:mos.iso

Thank you for your replies!

The file names are alright - I've changed morphos' iso name to m.iso.
I use the following command: "boot usb1/disk@1:,\boot.img bi umsd0:m.iso" - I've tried "boot ud:,\boot.img bi umsd0:m.iso", but after executing it, there was a gray screen with a slashed O at the middle, like this Ø. I've also tried to clear the nvram, it's the same result after it.

Cheers,
Jeno

If you have an installed MorphOS somewhere check if MorphOS can actually read the USB stick.


Also since you are on a Mini, did you plug the stick into one of the 2 ports on the back or a hub of some sort?

Kinda worst thing you can do is to plug into the extra ports of an Apple KBD as it does some tricky stuff of acting like a powered hub while not really being a powered hub.

[ Edited by Kronos 02.06.2026 - 16:18 ]

Thank you for the reply!

I don't have any computer with MorphOS, this Mini would be the 1st one :) The pendrive is plugged into one of the USB ports directly - the other USB got a Logitech keyboard receiver plugged in. I've tried both USB ports, no luck.

Cheers,
Jeno

Well the issue is that there are so many variations of "FAT" and some just don't play nice with MorphOS (and sometimes even the HW causes issues).

I don't know the details, but I do remember that wiping a drive and setting it up as FAT???? under OSX tends to not work with MorphOS.

So if you setup the drive in OSX it might help if you post a screenshot to let us see the details. You could also set it up as HFS (not HFS+) or just use another drive.

Thank you for the suggestions! It's a 16GB pendrive. I started formatting it with Windows 11, using the whole available space. Formatted to FAT32, 1st using the default 4096 byte sector size - I got a warning message during boot - "sector size mismatch" or something like that. After checking around, I read I should use 512 byte as a sector size, so then I created a 512MB partition and used that sector size - it was unsuccessful. Then I tried to partition / format the pendrive to MBR/FAT32 with Kubuntu (using Kubuntu Partition manager) - there was no warning message anymore and I reached to the point I described in the very 1st post. I will buy a pendrive with smaller capacity and try that.

Cheers,
Jeno

If it doesn't find the ISO file, it should stay in the gray screen with the "do-quiesce finished" text, but in this case it goes to black screen, which might indicate that it starts loading the OS... after the black screen it should display the boot picture soonish.

But why it gets stuck there... do you think it's not monitor going out of sync or anything like that? Try swap from dvi to vga or something like that?

Maybe try to add bm at the end of the boot line to get it into boot menu (minimal boot). There you can also press the v key to swap to a standard resolution.

One option is to try with an older MorphOS if there's something slipped in the latest one. For example https://morphos-team.net/morphos-3.19.iso

The optical drive isn't working on your Mac mini if you'd try to boot from CD?

I have never experienced issues that MorphOS itself wouldn't read the USB pendrive (ISO loading), but OF has been picky about the filesystem/device (boot.img loading). So not sure if it's about that either...

Thank you for everyone!

I've tried a simple DVI-VGA converter, it's working now!
Thank you for your time again!

Cheers,
Jeno

Nice! These 32MB minis are bit bad on the gfx side if you have a modern monitor on it. DVI and FullHD is a bit hopeless, for example. Going analog may help indeed.

Yeah, true that. So, last weekend I managed to get a iMac G5 with ATI Radeon X600 XT (128 MB) - it's something else :)