Re: OldWorld ROM Macintoshes
On Tue, 2025-08-26 at 11:14 -0600, Stan Johnson wrote:
On 8/26/25 8:15 AM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
... Could you confirm how exactly your partitioning looks like?
I've gotten the kernel and initrd copied over and recognized by
BootX, but never gotten the system to actually boot into Linux.
I understand that the partitoning has to be done particularly for OS 9,
and in turn, Linux to boot correctly.
That sounds right.
I have this disk partitioning (edited slightly for readability):
# mac-fdisk -l
/dev/sda
# type name length base ( size )
/dev/sda1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k)
/dev/sda2 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 64 ( 28.0k)
/dev/sda3 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 120 ( 28.0k)
/dev/sda4 Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 176 ( 28.0k)
/dev/sda5 Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 232 ( 28.0k)
/dev/sda6 Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288 (256.0k)
/dev/sda7 Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800 (256.0k)
/dev/sda8 Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312 (256.0k)
/dev/sda9 Apple_HFS MacOSX 16775392 @ 1824 ( 8.0G)
/dev/sda10 Apple_HFS MacOS 4194304 @ 16777216 ( 2.0G)
/dev/sda11 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Debian_7 16777216 @ 20971520 ( 8.0G)
/dev/sda12 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Debian_sid 16777216 @ 37748736 ( 8.0G)
/dev/sda13 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Gentoo 33554432 @ 54525952 ( 16.0G)
/dev/sda14 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 1048576 @ 88080384 (512.0M)
/dev/sda15 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 data 106242608 @ 89128960 ( 50.7G)
Block size=512, Number of Blocks=195371568
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 23, type=0x1
2: @ 120 for 36, type=0xffff
3: @ 176 for 21, type=0x701
4: @ 232 for 34, type=0xf8ff
My drive appears to already be essentially formatted the same, except you have additional partitions for your various other OS's and I have an additional partition for GRUB (to prevent the Debian installer from complaining, but maybe I should try again without this). But since we aren't using GRUB this shouldn't affect anything adversely. You have a few additional Macintosh related partitions, but I wasn't sure if or how I should create these as the OS 9 drive setup only created what is shown below.
I tried re-installing everything with the latest 08-29 image, but now the installation of Debian renders the drive unbootable (into Mac OS 9). Maybe something has changed with Linux/Debian, or I'm missing a step, but I don't see why it's ruining my OS 9 install since I made sure the Debian disk partitioner shouldn't be touching any partitions related to OS 9. The partitions still appear just fine on my host OS.
I also tried without a partition for GRUB and just skipped that part in the Debian installer. Still: Mac OS 9 booted just fine before, then after the Debian install I get the floppy with question mark.
Since I can't even get it to boot, my first thought is I partitioned my
drive wrong. I just copied what that guy did in that article, which I
can't verify is correct.
The article may be correct; I just didn't use Apple's tools to partition
the drive. I used NetBSD's pdisk in MacOS 9 (look for pdisk in the
"installation/misc" directory of a NetBSD ISO. Either the ppc or the
mac68k version will work (oddly, the mac68k version works better in some
cases).
If you're comfortable using mac-fdisk or parted in Linux, those will
also work. You'll need to initialize the disk first in Mac OS 9 or Mac
OS X to install the Apple drivers. If you only plan to run Mac OS 9 and
Linux, you can use Drive Setup from Mac OS 9 to initialize the disk. If
you are also planning to run Mac OS X, then you should use Drive Setup
from Mac OS X (Jaguar, Panther or Tiger).
How did you use NetBSD's pdisk IN Mac OS 9 to partition a drive? Are you saying you did this on a running system? I couldn't get the NetBSD installer to boot on real hardware nor in QEMU, and the documentation, although comprehensive, appears to be dated.
In any case, my partitioning done with OS 9's Drive Setup appears to already roughly match yours, so I didn't spend much more time with this.
How did you create a custom kernel based on your hardware? Could you
share yours?
I cross-compiled a kernel on an i86_64 system (you should be able to use
whatever system you are using as your QEMU host). I can send the
commands I use to cross-compile kernels if that would help.
I don't mind sharing my .config file, though I don't want to spam the
mailing list. And your hardware may be different, especially if you have
a 800x600 display; I have these ATI graphics options on two Wallstreets
(both 1024x768):
Wallstreet-1:
# dmesg | grep fb0:
[ 0.336988] fb0: Open Firmware frame buffer device on /pci/ATY,264LT-G
Wallstreet-2:
# dmesg | grep fb0:
[ 0.178132] atyfb: fb0: ATY Mach64 frame buffer device on PCI
What "video=atyfb..." option are you passing to the kernel from BootX?
However, as mentioned above, now that I can't even get Debian installed without it ruining my OS 9 install, I will have to wait until I figure that out until I can test any suggestions related to the BootX prompt.
It might make sense to install an older Debian from the ISO that Adrian
mentioned. That way, you can use dmesg to examine your system's hardware
(graphics, scsi, serial, network, etc.) and pick those same options
while configuring a custom 6.x kernel. If you pick only the options that
you need, it doesn't take all that long to build a kernel natively on a
Wallstreet.
I tried a few really old ones from 2019 that should theoretically predate the removal of QUIK (although they appeared to use yaboot), but those still didn't boot on actual hardware, and in QEMU they complained that no kernel was available to be installed. I tried an installer from 2023 with kernel 6.1 and that worked fine, but it still ruined my OS 9 install. Again, the partitions still appears just fine on my host system, but it won't boot in QEMU or on the Wallstreet. I don't remember what I did differently last time (maybe a year ago) to prevent this from happening. This is the first issue I need someone to advise me on...
I don't have a faster G3 with SCSI, I had been taking the drive out and
plugging it into my modern PC and doing the installation with QEMU. I
do have 512MB of RAM though in my WallStreet :-
...
That's interesting. I currently use QEMU only for m68k Macs but not for
powerpc.
From what I can garner from the mailing list history, this whole exercise wasn't necessary until about 5 years ago when the QUIK bootloader was removed from Debian, making booting directly on OldWorld impossible.
Is there a way to manually install QUIK (or iQUIK) instead of BootX to eliminate the need for Mac OS, so that I can simplify the entire approach?
Although the latest release is 2016, the author (CC'd) made commits as recently as last year. Perhaps he can provide some insight.
P.S. Stan: Any experience rebuilding batteries on Wallstreets? I can't find replacement cells (17670) or even smaller ones (17650), and from what I read 18650s won't fit.
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