Re: Installing 8.1 on a Beige G3

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

Hello,

On Sun, 28 Jul 2019 13:55:42 +0200
fixerb@national.shitposting.agency wrote:

> On 2019-07-23 19:17, Michael wrote:
> > As I said, the thing is PICKY.
> > IIRC bad cables caused all sorts of DMA errors on mine while MacOS
> > didn't have any trouble at all ( probably doesn't use DMA... )[...]
> > I think this is still very much the same problem.  
> Yeah, it probably is. I spent the last few days swapping disks and 
> cables and while I still get those timeout errors, a few select
> cables throw in some read errors as well. Also i have this one disk
> that sometimes makes the kernel panic for some reason.
> Well, I ordered some new cables, we'll see how this goes.

I hope it helps.

> > That is not how things should go.
> > Did the kernel complain about DMA errors or read/write errors?
> > If there are read errors and the block numbers are random then you
> > likely have DMA errors.  
> With the best results I had it only says stuff about lost interrupts and
> device timeouts. Example:
> wdc0:0:0: lost interrupt
>                        type: ata tc_bcount: 16896 tc_skip: 0
> wdc0:0:0: intr with DRQ (st=0x58)
> wd0c: device timeout reading fsbn 0 of 0-32 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0), 
> retry
> And after a few of those sometimes this gets added:
> wd0: soft error (corrected)

I get one of these while booting, and no further errors after that.

> Also about that:
> > Things I'd try:
> > - make sure the master and slave devices are jumpered correctly ( some
> >   drives have a 'slave present' jumper )  
> So you're saying to make every drive a master?
> > - try with only the boot drive present on the 1st IDE bus  
> I've read a bit of the service manual and it says that that would be the
> connector closest to the IO shield, right?

I *think* so, IIRC they shipped with a harddisk on the 1st port and the
CDROM on the 2nd.

> Also I don't know if this is relevant to the problem, but the system is
> reportedly overclocked. It says 266mhz on the label, but the guy I got 
> this from said that it was pushed up to 333mhz. I'm saying
> reportedly, cause apparently to overclock this thing you have to do
> some fiddling with the jumpers on the motherboard. I've looked there
> and it's equipped with the white short-all-things mega jumper shown
> in the manual. I'll reimage the disk to get Mac OS back and check it
> with the System Profiler, but yeah, does this change anything?

Mine's a 1st generation G3, the CPU sits in a small circuit board which
is plugged into the CPU socket, reportedly runs at 333MHz. Doesn't seem
to cause any problems.
And contrary to the manual, 256MB DIMMs work as well.

> Also thanks for all your help Michael, really appreciate it.

No problem

have fun
Michael