Re: Problems with install on Power Mac G3 minitower
>
> BootX version is 1.2.2. As for PCI cards, yes, I have three:
>
> 1. Atto "Express PCI" SCSI card. Has a SYM53c875 chip. No other markings.
>
> 2. Apple iX 3D video board. iXMICRO chip set. TI TVP3030 chip and
> iXMICRO Twin Turbo 9135-388.
>
> 3. Apple Fast Ethernet 10/100Base-T Card.
Yes, well... the problem with BootX is that it takes over MacOS,
which means that MacOS already initialized those cards and have
drivers using them. Those cards may be bus-mastering to memory
(that is writing to memory locations that the MacOS driver has
previously allocated for that).
When Linux takes over via BootX, it doesn't (cannot) know what
the MacOS driver was doing, it starts using the whole memory for
itself, but if a piece of hardware is still writing to that memory,
it will possibly damage some information or code that linux is
putting in that same place, thus leading to all sorts of strange
crashes.
BootX contains a bunch of hacks to "stop" a list of well known
PCI cards from writing to memory, afaik, the Atto symbios card
is part of that (provided it's the one Apple bundled in std.
with the G3 back them, if not, it may be the culprit we are
looking for). The ethernet card may be the cause too.
Ben.
Reply to: