Greetings!
Please bear with me as this is my first post the powerpc group, but I am
pretty sure I am in the right place for this. :)
After recently purchasing a NOS Sparc Ultra 5 and having great success
getting Sid running on it after much work and reading on
linux.debian.ports.sparc I decided to try and get Debian running on the
RS/6000 43p-150 machine I have in my collection. I originally purchased
the machine from a hospital back in 2008 or 09 for $20 and after a great
deal of sweat and tears I managed to get openSUSE 10.3 ppc running on
it. It has been like that since 2010 and I haven't use it since about
2012, but if I could get Debian running on it I might have a use for it.
So, after doing the usual Googling and reading everything I could find
about this machine and why I had such trouble getting anything other
than AIX and openSUSE running on it I find myself here asking for any
assistance or guidance. So let me start with what I have tried to date
and what the results were (some are virtually identical to posts I found
from the early 2000's but I hoped some things had changed since then...)
1) Debian 30r6-powerpc-binary iso does nothing at all on the machine.
The boot process hits the floppy, then the CD and jumps right to the
SUSE install on the Hard Drive.
2) Debian 40r9-powerpc-netinst iso bombs after reading the CD with the
error: "Firmware Error: DEFAULT CATCH!"
3) Debian 6.0.10-powerpc-netinst iso hangs the system completely (Bus
Locks) as soon as the CD reads and requires a power-cycle to bring the
machine back.
4) Debian 7.11.0-powerpc-netinst and 8.11.0-powerpc-netinst isos get the
machine into a reboot loop showing nothing on the console. If you eject
the CD during a reboot it will come up fine into SUSE from the HDD.
5) Debian 9.0-powerpc-NETINST-1 iso comes up to yaboot 1.3.17 and the
boot prompt works allowing you to see all boot options, however choosing
any option attempts to load and the machine just hangs but is NOT Bus
Locked.
6) Debian 12.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1 iso GRUB boots with the following output:
/pci@80000000/scsi@10/sd@1,0
Warning: attempt to claim over our own code!
Welcome to GRUB!
error: unrecognized number.
error: no such partition.
grub rescue> ls
(ieee1275/floppy) (ieee1275/disk) (ieee1275/cdrom)
grub rescue> ls (ieee1275/cdrom)
(ieee1275/cdrom): Filesystem is unknown.
After trying all of the incantations I could find to attempt at both the
yaboot and grub prompts to no avail I also tried NetBSD 9.0 just for
kicks and it bus locks the system just like some of my Debian attempts.
From my ancient notes from 2010 when I installed SUSE on this machine I
had to do some weirdness using literal floppy images for boot and root
like the old days to get the installer running. So that makes me think
it is a kernel or module problem I am running into. If I am
understanding the reading I did when you look at the grub output from my
attempt #6 above, it appears to me that the system can boot off the CD
just fine but it can't read the actual filesystem on the disk. I have no
idea if that is remotely correct but that is my wild guess after
spending all week last week getting things working on the SPARC. :)
I have seen past posts in here where folks were having issues with other
43 models of the RS/6000 but those machines were PReP machines and not
CHRP like this critter. So, since all these RS/6000 fan sites keep
talking about how this specific model is one of the most popular for the
era due to its size and cost I am hoping _somebody_ might have tried
this before and have some pointers. I would try banging my head on
another PPC machine to ensure that my burns actually work, but alas they
are all in a storage facility about 150 miles away, so they are not
readily available and they are all PowerMac's anyways.
So apologies for the long-winded message and I do thank you in advance
for even reading this far. :)
Cheers!
Bill
