Re: Debian 12 on iMac G5

[Federico Vaga <federico.vaga@vaga.pv.it>]

Hi Claudia,

perhaps there is a misunderstanding. I'm trying Debian 12 ppc64 
Big-Endian.
My suggestion to you is to try the proposed fix from the fienixppc team.
I report here what is mentioned in their article (I copy only what is of
interest to you).

```
[...]

 the system shows only a black screen, a black screen with a cursor, or 
a garbled image:
These issues are caused by driver configuration issues. Try entering the 
below boot parameters when you see the yaboot prompt (when booting up 
your system).
Radeon GPU

[...]

If you have a Radeon GPU, try entering the following boot parameters 
(one at a time, must be entered EXACTLY as listed):

    "Linux radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off nomodeset"
    "Linux radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off nomodeset"
```

In other words, using grub, try to add to the command line paramenters
"radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off nomodeset" or
"radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off nomodeset"

In my particular case, my iMac has an Nvidia card, therefore I tried
another set of parameters. For me, it did not help. But you are using
a different card with a different driver. It might be of help.

On 2024-01-23 15:53, Claudia Neumann wrote:
> Hi Federico,
> if it didn't work for you, I would rather try with Debian.
> CU
> Claudia
> Am Dienstag, 23. Januar 2024, 15:05:06 CET schrieb Federico Vaga:
>
> > Hi Claudia and all,
>
> >
>
> > this is a very interesting coincidence. I've started trying a couple
> of
>
> > days
>
> > a go to install Debian 12 on the same iMac.
>
> >
>
> > In my case, I'm booting the netinst image from USB but the kernel
>
> > crashes
>
> > somewhere. The screen is not refreshed after a few kernel messages,
> so I
>
> > was
>
> > not able to debug any further.
>
> >
>
> > On the web I've found this project https://fienixppc.blogspot.com/
> and I
>
> > their
>
> > suggestion about a video driver misconfiguration and a possible
>
> > solution.
>
> >
>
> > See https://fienixppc.blogspot.com/p/troubleshooting-of.html
>
> >
>
> > None of the options, helped me. But I did not try to investigate
> more
>
> > since
>
> > then. Perhaps you will have better luck :)
>
> >
>
> > On 2024-01-23 14:54, Claudia Neumann wrote:
>
> > > Hi all,
>
> > > I have an iMac G5, PowerMac 12,1 PPC970FX, Platform: PowerMac 12,1
>
>
> > > MacRISC4 Power Macinstosh, Memory 1GB+384MB.
>
> > > I had installed Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS and it was running fine. Now I
> need
>
> > > newer libc and so on. So I wanted to install Debian 12 or even
> Debian
>
> > > 13 on this iMac.
>
> > > Is that possible? I tried
>
> > >
>
> > > debian-12.4.0-ppc64el-netinst.iso
>
> > > but the iMac does not start from the DVD.
>
> > > What can I do?
>
> > > CU
>
> > > Claudia
>
> >
>
> > --
>
> > Federico Vaga

--
Federico Vaga
http://www.federicovaga.it/