I'm having difficulty upgrading my registered MOS 2.5 installation to 2.6. Mac Mini just won't boot off the CD. When I hold the "C" key on powerup the CD is ejected each time. If I use "Alt/Option" key to get into Open Firmware boot menu, there is no option to boot from CD.

Also, in Open Firmware prompt "boot /pci/cd boot.img" will result in error message "can't OPEN: /pci/cd"
and "boot cd boot.img" will append "load-size=0 adler32 = 1" to the command and than report "LOAD-SIZE is too small".

Note that I don't have Mac OS X on Mini (only MOS 2.5 is installed).

The CD is definitely valid as I have successfully installed from it on PowerMac FW800 (to be registered when I complete installing all the applications).

Also tried in OF prompt:
boot cd:,boot.img
then "load-size=202c17 adler32=2213173e" is appended to the line
and error message "unrecognized Client Program format" is reported.

The boot.img in the CD root is for Peg2, not for Mac.
If the CD is not recognized by you mini, maybe it has not been 'finished' correctly, which device has burned the iso on the CD?

At the OF prompt, just try "boot cd".
If not works be sure that your CD can be read elsewhere than just the powermac. Or you mini cd drive is broken! (I hope not)

bigfoot via irc says to unplug your mouse.

Thanks for all suggestions but still no resolution to the problem.

@Yomgui
"boot cd" in OF prompts gets appended with "load-size=0 adler32=1" and returns "LOAD-SIZE is too small".
I'll try another bootable CD but the drive works i.e. CD gets mounted in MOS 2.5 and I can read all the contents.

From what I understand the boot image for Mac Mini is "boot.img" and other two - "bootefika.img" and "bootpeg1.img" - are for EFIKA and Pegasos. No?

@Ruud & @bigfoot
Unplugging mouse makes no difference.

The annoying thing is that Mini always spits out CD on startup and I can't remember that it is a normal behaviour.

Booting from MOS 2.5 CD worked fine.

I did more search and found another Mac Mini user reporting the same problem here, but for previous version:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7131&forum=3#73598

Followed the instructions and it worked out fine. It turns out the syntax I used to boot from OF was incorrect. It should read:

boot cd:,\\boot.img

Thanks again for everyone's help... and the lesson is....
do your search first, then shoot from the hip

BTW, the update worked perfectly.

The Boot.img for the mini and all other Mac Systems is stored inside a drawer named macboot or something like that.

The auto eject behavior is strange. Normally the cd stays in there forever until you press left mouse button during startup or ejecting it by using an open firmware command. That's also the reason why bigfoot told you to unplug the mouse, as sometimes OF has problems with a device what may result in a all/some buttons pressed result.

Press the alt key until you get into this ugly graphical menu. Now insert the cd. If it appears, try booting. No clue if the menu supports inserting a disk at that sate, but its worth a try.

I would personally burn the cd again, using another media. It still my be a media problem, even if the cd appears on desktop with 2.5. The open firmware is less tolerant in rereads and the drives are known to be failing.

EDIT: nice you got it to boot. Still strange why it didn't by default.

Geit

[ Edited by geit on 2010/10/19 12:41 ]

I struggled some time with this, my error was I used the wrong boot.img file (i used the one on the root of the cd first, the peg2 img ). After using the right one, its updated nicely.. All looks fine !! Thx !!

Used the command:

boot hd:\boot26.img (i renamed it this and copied it to the boot: partition) bi dh2:boot.iso (renamed it boot.iso for easy spelling). Then it booted and it got installed, nice!

Hi Geit,

From my experience the Mac-mini and MDD Powermac (I have not tested others) do support 'hot-insertion' of bootable media into the optical drive whilst at the graphical boot menu.
In my experience, there is around a 10 second delay between insertion and the CD icon appearing on the menu.

FWIW - I've also found reports of this error from Linux/Mac users. Their workaround solutions have included replacing the NVram battery and RAM modules, and disconnecting an attached USB keyboard, in addition to the solutions listed above.

Regards


Rich