Paul--

When I have tried this with YellowDog 3.0 and 4.0 -- I will get one of two results on multiple tries. Either a pci@80000 error and the installer cannot find a linux kernel to boot from so I get just a boot: prompt -- or everything boots fine -- I can do the partitioning step and package selection -- However after package selection when it actually tries to write the partition table to the HD and format then write packages to the HD it locks down -- no error message -- in fact everything appears to work normal and I can switch to other consoles just fine -- again no obvious error messages...just no activity either. Now with the Fedora Core 4 or 5 installers for ppc -- the machine always boots and finds a kernel... no pci@80000 error ever -- and I can do partitioning and package selection just fine -- but at the end of that when it normally writes and formats the partitions everything locks down. Please understand that by mentioning YellowDog 3.0 and 4.0 and Fedora Core 4 and 5 -- I have all of those discs burned and have actually tried each one.

The Intech ATA patch I mentioned is part of a package they make called SpeedTools. The full SpeedTools package is expensive -- but they have a High- Capacity ATA patch that was only $25 -- I think it is a MacOSX kernel patch but really am not sure. As to what OF patch level this machine is actually at I could not tell you -- I am currently running MacOS 10.4 and for some reason the Apple System Profiler from 10.4 crashes every time I run it. I do have a Firewire port on this B&W G3 and have heard there is some issue with that and Apple System Profiler. I have not tried booting the Fedora installers with the nodmraid option you mentioned -- so I may try that ....If I format this machine entirely over to linux and had the option of doing MacOSX through Mac-on-Linux if that still works I would do that. Prior to the advent of MacOSX I have had some form of PPC Linux running on a PowerMac 6100 - a 7100- and a Umax J700 Mac clone with MacOS 7.5.3 - 9.2 -- I also have run every version of RedHat and Fedora Core on regular PC's going back to Redhat 5.0 -- I am not bragging -- just pointing out that the Linux part of things I pretty much understand but there may be some interaction between Linux and MacOSX or OF in the install process that I do not have a clue about. I also have an older G3 Imac that runs Fedora Core 4 with no problem whatsoever.

I would strongly prefer to have Linux on this box - but need some access to MacOSX for Dreamweaver and Photoshop which I use quite a bit for work. I know that the 137gb thing is something to do with OF -- so there may be enough problems there that I just really need to get an ATA controller card and skip the whole issue...but it will be a bit yet before I have the funds for that.

Anyway sorry to be longwinded and thanks for the help!! I may try the -nodmraid option and see if that changes anything.

James Rooker-

On Nov 2, 2006, at 6:10 AM, Paul Nasrat wrote:

...

What sort of patches are you talking about - Open Firmware/FCode patches or OS X kernel patches?

Also are you running the most recent firmware patches from Apple for the B&W?

...

I would like to set this machine up dual boot -- MacOSX and Fedora ppc linux. However with both Fedora Core 4 and Fedora Core 5 ppc installers -- I can boot the machine just fine and run the installer to the partitioning stage -- but it never actually writes any linux packages to the HD at all the installer locks up when I try to write partitions to either drive ...

Can you give more details on the lock - is it just a lock or is it a traceback/error message. Can you switch ttys to tty3 and tty4? If so are there any messages there?

Paul

Mike and any others interested in what works with this problem--

Here is what I did that worked:

Remember I have a smaller drive that had MacOSX installed on it with a HighATA patch that enabled MacOS 10.4 to read larger drives past the 137gb barrier -- it worked fine with only MacOSX but played hell with Linux installers.

small drive: 20gb large drive: 300gb

Using the MacOS 10.4 disk utilities from the smaller drive I was able to make a partition on the large drive that was the same size as the small drive boot partition -- and then use Apple Disk Utility to do a backup and restore of the small drive to that partition on the large drive that was still bootable in the end and still had the HighATA patch...

Once I verified that MacOS would boot from the restored image on the large drive -- then and only then I could have other larger data partitions on the large drive and I could format the smaller drive for linux and the linux install actually worked to the smaller drive.

So now I have the small 20gb WD drive booting linux with yaboot and the large drive boots MacOSX Tiger. Had tried this once before without luck but 10.4.8 upgrade in MacOSX did something to Disk Utilities and it worked. When I first asked the question I had been trying to use the large drive for linux and keep the smaller drive as MacOSX -- that did not and does not work.

The Problem with my approach is I have to keep an 8.5gb first MacOSX partition on the large drive to boot from or reinstall MacOSX to...and patch that with the HighATA software patch so that it will read the other larger partitions on that drive properly...Otherwise it reads a 300gb drive as if it were just a 137gb drive.

If I ran the entire G3 as just a linux box then as of FC5 there are openfirmware patches in the kernel that will handle large drives properly.

Anyway sorry for the long reply but figured the list might need this info for someone else later on...Thanks Mike for your interest and reply I appreciate that you responded even so long after I made the initial plea for help.

James Rooker --- Mike Hammill mike@kth.se wrote:

Dear James,

I have four B&W G3 running, two on Gentoo, one on FC6, and one on Ubuntu. I took a quick check around and see that they are all running with small (< 80 GB) disks. Some B&W Macs had bad IDE controllers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_and_white_Power_Macintosh_G3

and there are some sites out there that help you tell if your machine falls into this category:

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g3c.shtml

(look for "402" on the controller). I remember trying to install SuSE on a B&W with a large new hard drive and it just about drove me insane. Everything _seemed_ to be going fine, then suddenly just hung up (and various, unpredictable places). I think I always got "time out" errors though.

My suggestion would be to get the ATA controller your leaning toward, but without funds it might be tempting to seek out some old, smaller hard drive for a Linux/Mac boot and use an external Firewire drive for storing larger files/apps.

Just my 2 cents. /Mike

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