From: Pastor Mac <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 19:27:03 -0400 I know, I know...
Just downloaded XPostFacto 3.0b8 (the current one on the OWC page) for the new trusty S900. Had the drives (all on the internal SCSI bus) formatted with OS 9.1's Drive Setup. OS 9.1 happily running and drives functioning just ducky. No external drives or other attachments. Keyboard and mouse are USB as I am sharing via Belkin USB switch. I have the ATI 8MB Rage Pro PCI card & a combo firewire/USB in the top slots with an Asante 10bT network card in 3. Like I said, all has been merriment & mirth thus far.
So...while in 9.1 under normal operating conditions (booted off the hard drive) I launch XPostFacto, choose a partition on another drive and watch the magic happen. In XPost Facto I made no alterations or adjustments--all the defaults were used. I am using the Jaguar install disk for X. Voila! The CD starts humming, the screen goes blank, and life looks wonderful.
Alas, no. Once the pixie dust settled, the screen lit up and had a big X in OS X grey which strongly suggested no disk was found. So I simply tried to reboot hoping the CD would be found and continue the install process. Nada. Should I try an ADB keyboard with the SODA shortcut to see if that will make the box boot off the CD? Or is the firmware somehow corrupted requiring the happy dance?
Pax,
Pastor Mac On OS X
Your setup looks like it should be ok. Installing OSX can be a bit of a Voodoo dance. Sometimes people try a bunch of different things and all at once it installs and works. So they write down what worked for them and spread the word. They don't realize that sometimes it just takes several tries to get it to work. The chicken they sacrificed had nothing to do with it ;-)
Having said that there are a few things that may well help. I am surprised at the number of people who are using USB keyboards & mice with their old world Macs. Your use of them for sharing is about the only reason I can see for doing so. As ADB are cheap and available and let you use all sorts of key combos and has the startup button as well! (my cpu startup button has been broken for years)
Things to try:
Click on XPfacto to open it. click on options.
Top right under openfirmware make sure auto boot is checked. Choose keyboard as input( I don't know if USAB keyboard will be seen or if it will make a difference) Choose your ATI Video card as the output(usually ATI card shows up as aty... something for some reason)
Do not check the box for enable L2/L3 cache (not needed for the install and can cause problems with many CPU upgrades)
Throttle setting since your having problems set to 24 the highest setting. Many hard drives take too long to startup and so the install or startup fails. This slows down the cpu only until the hard drive starts up . It then goes back to normal speed. You can experiment with it after you get your install done. I used to use the 8 setting but my new IDE drive works best at 0 setting. Every drive can be different but best to have on if having install issues. As it can't be set too high( will only add a couple of seconds at most to startup)
Mode: Verbose check box will give you a text read out of what is installing so you can see where the install stops if having problems.
Video: Jaguar has drivers for nearly all ATI cards including the Rage Pro. So don't use any of these settings. They are needed for Panther (10.3) as Apple removed all the old Video card drivers.
Debugger: I check show panic text most of the other boxes are too advanced to be of much use to most of us. If you get a message that the NVRAM doesn't have enough room it means you have more boxes checked then will fit in NVRAM for startup . So I'd uncheck the last item.
CDROM drives work differently in OSX. I've found that most drives if you can get them to work in OS 9 with one driver or the other they will work fine with the Apple OSX drivers. This includes the original stock Umax CD drives. Which is good news as I've not heard of any third party CD drivers for OSX. I've been known to hold down the C key for luck sometimes seems to help. The old 4 key hold down for OS 8/9 booting doesn't seem to do anything at least for installing. You will know if the firmware is corrupted as you will have the famous black screen of death.
A trick that many people have found to work when installing OSX on SCSI drives. Moving the SCSI drives to the slower external bus. It's easy to do. There is an external SCSI bus plug on the motherboard just inside of the one on the outside of the case. It's just under the case fan. Just move the cable over from the internal plug. The external bus is only 5 mb/sec while the internal bus is 10 mb/sec. The good news is after getting an install to work you can move back to the faster bus. The throttle setting in XPFacto may make this trick no longer needed. Not sure so thought I may as well add it to the list. Hope some of this helps and best of luck . Will S
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