Mac Os 9 booting on: G4 Tower MDD FW800 (Detailed Posts)

[Jakl]

As you can see the version it's the original DVD for the fw400 which has 10.2.6 and macos9.2.2

And yes I have taken out the HD out of fw800 and put it back into the fw400 and it all worked again
beautifully.

By the way 10.2.6 version was called Jaguar I think.

[supernova777]

yeah see they've purposefully just unhooked it and made it work this way.. its the rom chip itself.. i bet if u could physically find the chip on the board..
and desolder each chip and swap them (obviously your not goign to do that) but if u could i bet it would boot right up.
to fix it u would have to reprogram the chip somehow.. its the only way it would make it work.. i think we should probably just give up on this;)

u should try out installing ubuntu tho! it works amazing.. i was really impressed.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/13.10/release/lubuntu-13.10-desktop-powerpc.iso (v13)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/daily-live/pending/trusty-desktop-powerpc.iso (v14)
these are the latest images.. i havent tried them yet but 10 worked great on a powermac g3 + 12 booted fine aswell
download the cd + try it out! im going to check out 14.04

oops these are Lubuntu not ubuntu.. different distro.

update: i was ablet o get v5 to boot by specifying a different image (they are listed if u press TAB at the yaboot prompt (black screen))

[Jakl]

Okay Chris this now is a different reading when I started the fw800 mdd on an external HD with 10.4.11 off a seritek sata card.

Here is what "bless -info /" got.

finderinfo[0]:   569847 => Blessed System Folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]:            0 => No Blessed System File
finderinfo[2]:            0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:   664541 => OS 9 blessed folder is <missing>
finderinfo[4]:            0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:   569847 => OS X blessed folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
64-bit VSDB volume id: 0xEF98368E5548CB79

While it says <missing> I think because there isn't
a macos9 system folder on the boot disk - it just has 10.4.11 installed -
However there are 2 different disks with os9 installed one external and one internal
that the computer is not recognizing at all.

[supernova777]

well the "/" means whatever drive u booted with
and the fact that it says the first line is what it is, means that this drive is selected as the default to boot from
(thats why the osx one is there twice..)

u might try experimenting with giving it different paths to try to get it to check another drive
maybe u have to map thru the /Volumes mount point

[Jakl]

I mean as startup disks when I go into start up disks.

[supernova777]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/YabootConfigurationForMacintoshPowerPCsDualBoot

in case u guys missed it..
this page claims yaboot *CAN* boot mac os 9.

2:12,\\:tbxi
the : colon character delimits between object/property, for disk it delimits partition
for filename it delimits type, the \\:tbxi means find the file with the type "tbxi"
(which are the only files that "bless -info /" shows..) so this would mean, 'on disk 2, on partition 12, find the file of tbxi type'

i was asking earlier in the thread if anyones tried to MANUALLY SPECIFY the actual filename of the mac os rom file by typing \System Folder\Mac OS ROM:tbxi
not sure if thats correct syntax, but the comma seems to delimit between disk + filename and im pretty sure the two slashes mean "look for file of type tbxi in any root level or one level down folder" because there is only 1 file per os installation with this type

anyways it seems u guys are giving up on this..
so i will too.

[lokki]

i have not given up for one... but time does not permit me to "work" on it right now. but i will definitely get back to it.

[blitter]

Created an account here just to pop in and say that I have just solved this problem on my own retail MDD G4 FW800. My G4 now dual-boots between OS X Tiger and Mac OS 9.2.2, and both systems are recognized by the Startup Disk control panel. I had formatted its internal drive by using a surrogate iBook + USB enclosure and OS X Jaguar, allocating 1GB at the beginning of the drive for an OS 9 partition, leaving the rest for OS X. I also checked the "Install OS 9 drivers" box in Disk Utility so that the drive could be booted later on. I then installed OS X Tiger first as an escape hatch in case of OS 9 instability, though so far with the exception of a third-party SCSI card preventing it from booting, it has been running without any problems.

Essentially what locks native OS 9 support out of these machines, as has been suggested above, is that Open Firmware does not recognize "Mac OS ROM" as a valid tbxi file as of at least version 4.6.0, which is what the FW800 ships with. Since the FW800 and the earlier FW400 are so close in spec, I suspected that an earlier version of Open Firmware from the FW400 model would be close enough to at least boot the FW800 into OS X. Fortunately a firmware update is available from Apple for the FW400 models to fix a fan issue, bringing their firmware to version 4.4.8f2. However, Apple's firmware updaters refuse to flash the Boot ROM unless the current version is older than the desired upgrade. So, I worked around that by forcing an upgrade through Open Firmware itself. Here's how to do it on a FW800 with OS X already installed on a second partition:

- Download and install the 4.4.8f2 updater from https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10773/apple-g4-firmware-updater-x
- Open the bundle by right-clicking (or control-clicking) on the PMG4FirmwareUpdate.app file inside /Applications/Utilities and choosing "Show Package Contents."
- Navigate to Contents/Resources and drag the "Firmware" file to the root of your startup disk.
- Make note of the partition number of your startup disk-- this is important for the next steps. On a freshly-formatted drive with OS 9 drivers, the first visible partition is 9, which in my case meant my second visible partition with OS X installed was partition number 10.
- Reboot the Mac and hold down Command-Option-O-F to boot to Open Firmware.
- Enter the following two commands, substituting your partition number after the "hd:"
    load hd:10,Firmware
    go
- With luck, the white Open Firmware prompt will disappear and you'll soon see an OS 9-style progress bar at the bottom of the screen as the Boot ROM is being flashed.
- After the Mac automatically restarts, install OS 9 using the special version for the MDD FW400 (OS9General.dmg). The OS 9 System Folder should be visible and selectable using the Startup Disk preference pane.
- Enjoy.

[lokki]

very good news! will try this and report back!

thanks for sharing!

[MacTron]

Thank You blitter for sharing this... and welcome to Mac Os 9 Lives! Despite we are Mac Os 9 Digital Audio centric, We hope you'll stay around here...

[blitter]

One more thing: I have no idea how to restore the original 4.6.0 firmware, as it's not available for download as an updater or anything else that I can find. So if you try this and something goes wrong... you're a little stuck. Caveat emptor.

[lokki]

the benefit is more available machines to run os9 on :-)

[DieHard]

Blitter... Awesome job !

2 Quick Questions...

1) Does the FW800 Port work at all under OS 9 ?

2) Did the FW800 port suffer any quirks in OS X ?

I would assume that the FW800 port is dead in OS9 and that the forced burnt Boot ROM did not effect it in OS X... but I am curious since the "alt" boot option to boot to FW (Both 400 and 800) is burnt into the Boot ROM... so I was wondering if it will still boot to a FW800 external HD with "alt" key selected since the FW400 updated Boot ROM had no code for the 800 port.

[blitter]

1) I don't have any FW800 equipment to test.
2) See #1.

[lokki]

in response to the question of re-updating the firmware. i think osx will do this when it installs automatically, at least that's what i read somewhere. or maybe osx now also thinks it's a fw400 mdd and does not update.

[SnakeCoils]

It does not worked in my FW800 with firmware 4.6.0f1 and OSX 10.5.6 installed. I have followed carefully the described procedure and in response to the command

load:hd (x),Firmware

the Mac reply with

load-size=fbc70 adler 32=c6c28472

then at command

go

the Mac reply with

evaluating Forth source

then CD tray is opened, the Mac reboots with black screen but no progress bar is displayed, instead the grey Apple logo appears and OSX starts to load. In the meantime the CD tray closed.
At System Information panel the firmware is still 4.6.0f1 so no success here.
Maybe we are close as never before to reflash a FW800 to have OS9 bootability but the feel is that some steps are missing... blitter, how your G4 were configured when you do the downgrade? OSX, graphic card, memory, PCI cards installed... every parameter could be important.

[lokki]

i would first try to install tiger on it. osx can install firmware when installed so maybe it does not work with the "leopard" version.

[SnakeCoils]

I have done the same procedure on a MDD FW400 also where 10.4 and 10.5 (and OS 9.2 too) are installed, in this case a reflash (of the same firmware) should be happened but again, no luck. I suspect that OS is not important, at worse a blank HD with only the Firmware file could serve the task because if this procedure is running entirely on Open Firmware it does not need to boot from a volume to be succesful but only a place where the Firmware file can be loaded.
My thoughts are that if the procedure worked then some parameters are missing (like a script or a specific sequence of commands to prepare the machine to flash) that are (maybe) performed by the Apple Installer after the machine check.
A thing I have noticed is that partitions numbers are not consecutive (as blitter said in his example) but jumps by 2, in my system I have "10" for the blank partition where OS9 will be installed and "12" where resides OSX 10.5 (I am speaking about the FW800 machine with only 2 partitions, the first blank and the second with OS 10.5 installed, both of them formatted in HFS+ Journaled but I have alse tried with a non-journaling partition with same results)

Update: I noticed that just before the screen goes blank and Mac reboot there were some text strings in output, but they apperared and disappeared too much quickly so I have made a movie with my camera and noted the lines that were:

erasing fff04000 of Micron B1 part
 flashing fff04000 of Micron B1 part

then screen goes black and reboot. So some flashing is happened but seems that changes are discarded...

[blitter]

I had prepped an 80GB hard drive with a 1GB partition at the beginning, and the rest allocated for OS X Tiger 10.4.11, with OS 9 drivers also installed on the drive. I have a GeForce 4 Ti, I believe my MDD has 1GB of RAM installed, the DVD/CDRW combo drive, and the only other thing I had in the machine when doing the upgrade was a third-party PCI SCSI card (Advansys?) that prevented OS 9 from booting until I took it out.

BTW the command is not "load:hd (x),Firmware" it's "load hd:(x),Firmware"
Might want to try it a second time. It took me a couple of tries before it finally decided it wanted to work.

[SnakeCoils]

Prepared the machine as you described: not working again but... googling around I have found that instead of

load hd:xx,Firmware
go

you can type

boot hd:xx,Firmware

with the same results. Again I believe that some steps, maybe a command line parameter, is missing. Lokki, have you tried on your machine?