Re: yaboot installation media

Hi,

I'm actually having more or less the same problem with my Powerbook G4 Aluminum.

I am using the image from https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2022-03-18/non-free/ , which I burnt on a USB stick with "dd if=./debian-11.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso of=/dev/sdg bs=1M"

When I boot the machine while holding "option", the USB stick is not found.

If I try to boot from Open Firmware, I try "boot usb1/disk@1:,\\grub.img" and the error after quite a long pause is "can't OPEN: usb1/disk@1:,\\grub.img Can't open device or file"

Of course I can't rule out the possibility that I'm using Open Firmware wrong, after some searches of this list and on the Internet I didn't specifically find a description of the boot line and I'm really not an OF wizard.

But there appears to be a drive at /usb@1b/disk@1 and usb1 seems to be aliased to that usb@1b so I think I did it right.

Any ideas that I could try next?

Thanks!

Sam

On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 4:04 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

Hello Ben!

On 3/25/22 21:48, Ben Westover wrote:
> A thank you goes out to all the people who have attempted to help me.
> In all the excitement of this endeavor, my G4's motherboard has died.

I'm not surprised.

> Based on previous discussion, I believe the culprit in its failure to
> load GRUB was the system's memory. Upon closer inspection of the machine
> during its autopsy, I found that the memory was mixed and matched with all
> four sticks having different capacities, speeds, and brands.

That's almost never a good idea.

> Seemingly the only PowerMac in the world that fails to boot GRUB has
> officially kicked the bucket.

I think you should be able to resurrect the machine. Either the capacitors
in the power supply hav gone bad or the ones on the mainboard. In both cases,
it should be possible to replace them [1].

Adrian

> [1] https://lowendmac.com/mail/07/0626.html

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
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