Hi Cedar, On 9/1/25 6:58 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
...My drive appears to already be essentially formatted the same, except you have additional partitions for your various other OS's
My Wallstreet drive was initialized in Mac OS X (Panther), so it has additional Apple driver partitions.
and I have an additional partition for GRUB (to prevent the Debian installer from complaining, but maybe I should try again without this).
I think you should not have a GRUB partition on a Wallstreet. Not only does GRUB not work on the Wallstreet, but GRUB doesn't work on any PowerPC system that also needs to boot Mac OS or Mac OS X. I use yaboot on any PowerMac system that also boot Mac OS or Mac OS X. I use GRUB for testing on one Pismo that boots only Debian or Gentoo.
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.
Using Mac OS 9's Drive Setup to initialize the disk should work. As I understand it, you need Apple's drivers to be able to access and use the disk in Mac OS 9.
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've seen something similar on several PowerPC systems; it seems to happen whenever the Debian installer makes changes to the partition table (that's a guess, and I haven't been able to duplicate the error).
Your Mac OS 9 installation should still be ok. Try booting from a Mac OS 9 installation CD, run Drive Setup, select the disk where Mac OS 9 is already installed, then select "Update Driver" under "Functions".
...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.
NetBSD's pdisk can partition a drive that is booted in Mac OS 9, though if you change the Mac OS 9 partition, you may need to reinstall OS 9. There's no risk in using pdisk to modify or create other partitions once your OS 9 partition is stable (parted and mac-fdisk in GNU/Linux don't allow editing the partition table of an active disk). If I also need to create or change the OS 9 or OS X partitions, I usually boot OS 9 from a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter and run pdisk from there (almost any CF card larger than about 32 MB is good for that, though it's a little slow, but what isn't slow on a Wallstreet?).
NetBSD's installer will boot on the Wallstreet if you copy the installation kernel to the disk and select it using "NetBSD Booter" in Mac OS 9. After installation, "NetBSD Booter" can boot NetBSD directly from your NetBSD volume (though I think the kernel must exist within the first 1 GiB of the NetBSD disk, but that's a different problem).
...What "video=atyfb..." option are you passing to the kernel from BootX?video=atyfb:vmode:14,cmode:32 , but I tried vmode:10, cmode:24, etc., every combination since all I got after that was a black screen. My model is the 266MHz, which came with ATI Rage Pro, 14.1" display, 1024x768, etc. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/specs/powerbook_g3_266.html <https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/specs/powerbook_g3_266.html>
I'm fairly certain that there's a bug in the latest xorg-server that has broken X11 graphics in the Wallstreet (and other PowerBook G3 systems). I just updated Gentoo on a PowerBook Pismo, and the update failed with a different error, though I think the Xorg X11 server had already been updated, and X11 on that Pismo didn't work. So I restored my previous Gentoo installation and I'll have to try to track down exactly where X11 broke. It may be easier to test that with Debian SID, which I haven't updated yet on the Pismo (X11 currently works there after a Janusry 22, 2025 update).
... 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.There appears to be a more modern replacement developed: https://github.com/andreiw/iQUIK <https://github.com/andreiw/iQUIK>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?
I've tried to get QUIK working before but I have never been successful. If you figure out a way to install QUIK, please let me know. In defense of Mac OS 9, it makes a pretty good bootloader, and there are tools in Mac OS 9 that can help diagnose other problems, format old SCSI disks, etc.
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.
No experience, though I would like to rebuild all my PowerBook G3 batteries. I used to see batteries for sale on macsales.com (OWC), but I don't think they sell them any longer.