Hi all,

After some time (and a lot of use of my A4000/030), I decided to give MorphOS a chance. So I got a Powermac G4 MDD 1,25 GHz, 1,75 GB of ram and a Radeon card.
I boots up fine, works fine, and installs fine. Well, at least it seems to. When I reboot, the display gets brown, black, brown, black and stays black. And then nothing....
Tried reinstalling and other disk partitioning, but the result was the same.

I'm probably doing something really basic wrong, but I can't figure it out...

Help?

Struisvogel.

Try pressing CTRL during boot, this will force MorphOS to use a resolution of 1024x786, which most displays can handle.

Once you have done that, go to System Preferences and Screens, choose a fitting resolution and save your settings. In the unlikely case that the same issue happens again, repeat the process until you have found a resolution that survives a reboot.

I did try that. But it did the same. Perhaps my timing was wrong though. I'll try a couple more times at different moments in the boot process...

To be safe, you could try to enter your Mac's firmware boot menu first. Select your MorphOS system disk and boot from it. After the boot menu disappears, MorphOS will begin to boot and it will be time to press the CTRL key.

If this still fails, you might want to try another keyboard or booting into the MorphOS early boot menu which will allow to choose a resolution as well.

Okay, 15 attempts, 1 succes. No idea why it worked then though. But that setting didn't work, and I haven't been able to boot into the forced mode again. And I don't think that actually happened. It seemed to have booted up in 1280x1024 (the default) that time, while all other times failed.. Strange..
Oh, I use a Packard Hell 14" 4:3 display that does display 1280x1024 8x8x8 no problem, as that's what the CD boots up with as well..
So why does the CD boot every time into the desktop, and the harddisk boot doesn't remains a mystery..

Perhaps a timing issue that results in a slight miscommunication between your PowerMac and monitor.

Booting from CD is a lot slower compared to booting from harddisk or SSD.

Do you use VGA or DVI? Switching cables can sometimes have an effect.

Wow, imagine that. Change the original G4 Apple keyboard for my Ducky One USB, and it boots up without an issue... That's really weird!

If your Radeon has two DVI ports, try the other one.

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There's a known boot time race condition in 3.12 that is addressed in upcoming 3.13. It could be that you fell its victim.

Well, there is a bug in MorphOS 3.12 that sometimes causes a black screen after boot. This issue was broadly related to timing problems and will be fixed in MorphOS 3.13.

Switching USB devices can affect the timing during boot so this is why it solved the problem by accident for you.

Hmm, well, it's more that it rarely boots in anything BUT the black screen. But not when booting from the install CD, which is weird. Still with the same Apple keyboard..
Then again, using a more modern keyboard is much better anyway, so, all in all, pretty good I'd say :)

Now lets see what MorphOS is like compared to AmigaOS on my A4000 :)

Quote:
I had that same problem on couple of setups... it stops to the black screen and the boot image doesn't appear. One setup didn't boot practically ever, one booted sometimes and sometimes didn't. And both booted if I changed something in the USB setup. So it does sound pretty similar in your case, and this is the bug that will be fixed in 3.13. Meanwhile you can use 3.11 or change the hw combination so that it works. When booted from the CD it boots much slower and timings are totally different than booted from the HD.

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Remember to check all the system settings etc, and tune them for your liking. The default setup is far from what I like, and not quite Amiga way either. Check for example the Getting Started article to notice few points. In any case you can get it to work pretty much like the old systems, but when you learn few more modernized things, you might not want to get it that much to the "oldskool" state, but start utilizing the new things... and then it's hard to get back to the A4000 in productivity use ;)

Brilliant, thank you all! I thought: if the timing of the USB is what it is, what if I just add a USB hub to the chain? A bit of delay. En indeed, everything works immediately! With the Apple keyboard and all.
Now looking at the Getting Started part. Cooool!