Re: Installing onto PowerCenter 120
> Howdy all,
>
> I've been fighting for a few months now to get Debian PowerPC (Potato)
> onto a donated PowerComputing PowerCenter 120.
>
> I've managed to have the install disks boot and run all the way through
> the install menus, putting the system on the hard drive. However, on
> reboot the system won't boot up to Debian, giving only the
> "questionmark-mac" display, which I presume means it doesn't know what
> it should be booting.
>
> Many references I've read talk about changing OpenFirmware settings, but
> I am unable to access the OpenFirmware -- hotkey sequences have resulted
> in either no effect, or a black screen, and the Debian rescue disk
> doesn't give me anything in /proc/devicetree (I think that was the
> path), which surprised some people I spoke to on #debian.
>
> Others have told me I need to fool around in MacOS, but that no longer
> exists on this machine; and I'd like to be proud of the fact that I can
> use the machine with Debian alone, if possible.
>
> Any pointers, or requests for more info, would be appreciated.
I am running Debian on a PowerCenter 120 as well. I posted to this
mailing list a few days ago but never got replies from the list. I did
however get some replies directly. This mailing list seems to be broken;
even the archives haven't been updated.
If you go to www.netbsd.org and go to the website for netbsd/macppc,
you'll find a link to a tool written by Apple to patch OF and set some
input and output settings so that you can access OF on startup. Since
video is broken, I connect a printer cable to my other Mac and start
ZModem on it. Input device I set to ttyb; this lets me type commands on
my other Mac which gets sent to the PowerCenter through the printer
cable. I set output device to /bandit/ATY,XCLAIM3DPro since I have an
XClaim3D video card. This lets me see OF full screen when the monitor
cable is connected to the PowerCenter. You will probably have different
output device settings. There are several hints on NetBSD/macppc website.
This is about as far as I've gone. I've compiled the kernel and made an
XCOFF and saved it to a floppy. I've tried 3 floppies so far and none
have worked whe I typed boot fd in OF. Even typing boot fd in OF won't
boot a MacOS boot floppy that works perfectly fine otherwise.
All I can say is that I still need to do some hunting in this and other
mailing lists for an answer to how to tell OF too boot from a floppy.
-- Taro
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