Re: Beige G3 webserver

[Michael Lorenz <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On May 2, 2008, at 03:50, Al - image hosting services wrote:

> Well, after alot of trial and mostly error, I have successfully  
> netbooted
> the Beige G3. This is yet another Beige G3. This one seems to be  
> working.
> On the other systems I was not able to load OSX 10.2.x, it would  
> either
> just not do it or start to boot, but never finish.

Yup, 10.3 boots and after a while it displays a message saying that  
this machine isn't supported. Nothing to worry about, if it gets that  
far ( or far enough to crash ) it's already way past installing the  
firmware patches which is all we care about.

> Infact, in the Beige G3 desktop, I had a cdrom failure and a hard  
> drive failure.

Ugh. When I got my beige G3 it had a broken CDROM and /two/ bad IDE  
cables. The onboard IDE controller is picky so if you have trouble  
with IDE devices check the cables first.

> After it reaches a certain place in its boot up it only seems to  
> use maybe
> the top couple of inches of monitor and what is there is pretty much
> scrambled.

Probably crashed there - occasionally 10.3 does the same on mine.

> I have a scsi card from a Beige G3 server, I have my drives plugged  
> into
> it, but when I run pdisk, pdisk will not create a Apple_HFS  
> partition, it
> says that it failed.

You don't need that. On the beige G3 the partition zero method should  
work and I doubt that OF 2 can read HFS anyway - you'd have to use a  
FAT filesystem. Just wipe the first few sectors of the disk to get  
rid of the apple partition table and run disklabel - don't bother  
with pdisk unless you want to share the disk with MacOS.

> The real-base seems to go back to default after a few boots or  
> maybe a few
> unsuccessful boots or if I change anything else in the firmware I  
> need to
> reput in setenv real-base F00000 before I type reset-all.

MacOS occasionally resets them, also your battery may be bad.

> I still have yet to successfully boot from a local drive.

type 'printenv' on the OF prompt. If it outputs a longish script  
(instead of just a list of variables )  you've got the patches you need.

> Also, I have a monitor adaptor for a PC, but when it is in open  
> firmware
> the screen is totally black. Is there anyway to fix this?

Does your monitor support sync on green? And, does the monitor just  
display a black picture or does it go into power saving? In the  
latter case OF probably used a video mode your monitor doesn't  
understand. OF should default to 640x480 at 60Hz or whatever MacOS  
used last. If your battery is bad the latter should be lost anyway  
though.

have fun
Michael

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