video problem with bootx on 7200
I installed debian sarge on a powermac 7200/120. When it boots with
bootx, the video doesn't work. The logo shows up briefly, then the
screen goes blank while it finishes booting, and stays blank. Everything
else seems to be working, so I can log in via ssh. I didn't install X,
so all I'm concerned about is having video work for the console. (The
video did work fine with bootx and the installer.)
I've tried checking and unchecking both the no video driver and force
video settings, and I've tried using various kernel arguments to match
the display settings like:
video=platinumfb:vmode:12,cmode:2
The video works when I boot with quik, but I'd like to get it to work
with bootx because I'm eventually going to give the machine away and
bootx seems like it would be easier for a novice to use to switch
between OS 9 and linux. One strange thing happens when I boot with quik,
after the logo appears, it looks like the boot messages might be
appearing in a tiny square about the same size as the logo right under
the logo. It looks like tiny white lines are flashing by. Then when it
finishes, the screen resets and the login message appears.
Here are some details about the installation. The 7200 has 64mb ram, and
two 1gb internal hard drives. It's an installation from the sarge
installer. uname -a shows:
Linux debian7200 2.6.8-powerpc #1 Thu Nov 24 00:17:15 UTC 2005 ppc GNU/Linux
I tried to install with floppies, but my floppies are all old recycled
ones and I'm not confident the floppy drive is in good working order.
After 3 or 4 tries at making different floppy images I gave up. I ended
up using the debian-31r2-powerpc-netinst.iso with bootx on OS 9.1 which
I installed on one of the 1gb scsi drives. I used the vmlinux installer
kernel (referenced as linux.bin in the powerpc docs) and initrd.gz
ramdisk (referenced as ramdisk.image.gz in docs) in /install/powerpc/ to
start the installer with bootx by selecting the ramdisk option. The
video works with the installer, and I installed debian on the other 1gb
internal, including quik (I changed the default ext3 fs to ext2 so quik
would work without making a separate boot partition), and I was able to
boot into linux with quik, and as I mentioned, the video worked.
I mounted the hfsplus mac partition and copied the vmlinux-2.6.8-powerpc
kernel and initrd.img-2.6.8-powerpc ramdisk from the /boot directory to
the Linux Kernels directory on the hfs+ partition, then rebooted into
mac os. I eventually figured out that it would boot from bootx without
any kernel arguments if I selected the 2.6.8 kernel and 2.6.8 ramdisk,
but the video wouldn't work with any combination of checking video
options or entering kernel arguments for the video.
I tried rebooting into mac os and setting the monitor resolution to
various combinations of 640x480, 800x600, 832x624 and various color
depths, but the screen would always go blank shortly after the logo
appeared, except with 8 bit monitor settings. Strangely, when I set the
color to 256 colors and tried to reboot, the logo would appear and the
machine would hang, eventually auto-rebooting back into mac os.
Here are a few lines from the syslog from a quik boot, where the video
worked, then a few lines from a bootx boot, where the video doesn't
work:
quik, video works:
Aug 30 22:36:16 localhost kernel: platinumfb: Found Apple Platinum
video hardware
Aug 30 22:36:16 localhost kernel: platinumfb: Total VRAM = 2MB (0011)
Aug 30 22:36:16 localhost kernel: platinumfb: DACula type 0x84
Aug 30 22:36:16 localhost kernel: platinumfb: Monitor sense value =
0x717, platinumfb: Using video mode 5 and color mode 1.
Aug 30 22:36:16 localhost kernel: fb0: Apple Platinum frame buffer device
bootx, video does not work:
Sep 3 01:41:53 localhost kernel: MacOS display is /platinum
Sep 3 01:41:53 localhost kernel: Using unsupported 800x600 platinum
at f1001020, depth=16, pitch=1632
Sep 3 01:41:53 localhost kernel: fb0: Open Firmware frame buffer
device on /platinum
Sep 3 01:41:53 localhost kernel: Thermal assist unit not available
Sep 3 01:41:53 localhost kernel: platinumfb: Found Apple Platinum
video hardware
Sep 3 01:41:53 localhost kernel: platinumfb: probe of platinum
failed with error -6
When I connect to the machine with ssh after booting with bootx, no
matter what I've set the monitor's resolution to in mac os and given as
kernel args, fbset shows:
mode "800x600-186"
# D: 100.000 MHz, H: 119.048 kHz, V: 186.012 Hz
geometry 800 600 800 600 32
timings 10000 16 16 16 16 8 8
rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,8/24
endmode
When I try to use fbset to change the mode, I get no error message, but
the mode doesn't really change.
My monitor is a Sony multiscan17sf with a VGA adapter to work with the
mac. I was going to try connecting an old 14" apple monitor and see if
that might make a difference, but I haven't tried that yet.
Reply to: