Re: Lombard booting Debian Ports 2020-04-19 (was Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2020-04-19)

[userm57@yahoo.com]

On 4/23/20 1:47 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> Hi Stan!
> 
> On 4/23/20 9:32 PM, userm57@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>>> DEFAULT CATCH!, code=fffffff6 at %SRR0: ff80aac50 %SPR1: 000b030 method
>>>>>> <draw-rectangle> not found; ihandle=ff9d2740 phandle=ff86a4c8
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> To me, the "draw-rectangle" message suggests that Open Firmware on the
>>> Lombard is too old for whatever Forth commands GRUB is trying to use.
>>>
>>> I haven't used GRUB in quite a while except on PCs.  Doesn't GRUB draw a
>>> nice rectangle around the edge of the screen as part of its process to
>>> present the boot menu?  If yes, then this could be the cause of the OF
>>> problem on the Lombard, if Lombard OF doesn't have a "draw-rectangle"
>>> command.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to run GRUB in "text-only" mode, or equivalent?
>>> ...
>> Open Firmware is 4.1.0f5 on the Pismo, compared to 1.0f1 on the Lombard.
>>  So perhaps not surprising, the Debian SID CD boots on the Pismo.  And
>> sure enough, it does draw a rectangle around the options (but's it's an
>> ASCII art rectangle, so I'm not sure it's important, but I think it
>> tried to open a graphical screen first).
> 
> Yes, I agree, the OpenFirmware version on the Lombard is probably simply
> too old.
> 
> I don't think GRUB has a pure text-only mode, so I think you cannot disable
> the calls to draw-rectangle. However, I know that Forth itself is an extensible
> language, so in theory, you could probably pre-load a little Forth program
> which adds the missing draw-rectangle command.

ok, thanks

> 
>> I'll do more checking today on whether Debian SID installs, and I'll post a message
>> to the Debian PPC list.  But the NIC is detected and it appears that the
>> installation will succeed.
> 
> Are you talking about the Lombard or the Pismo?

The NIC on the Pismo was detected.  The Lombard and Wallstreet NICs are
not detected (more accurately, the installer hangs while detecting
network hardware for those systems).  I haven't tried any other system yet.

thanks

-Stan