Mac OS 9 Lives
Mac OS 9 Discussion => Mac OS 9, Hacks & Upgrades => Mac OS 9 on Unsupported Hardware => Topic started by: macdougy on October 28, 2022, 10:53:56 AM
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Anybody doing a MacOS9Lives installation on unsupported hardware and too large of a harddrive knows the pain. Manage to get MacOS9Lives to boot off of the CD, but Drive Setup cannot see any partitions. OS X disk utility doesn't offer option because unsupported hardware. Attempt to drive face through brick to pacify.
I've seen whispers around the internet about "using scary terminal commands" to do this, and I wondered if anybody knows the sauce? If not, what might be some directions to start figuring that out?
And no, I don't have a natively OS9 compatible PPC mac to format the drive on, thanks for asking. :-[
EDIT FOR CLARITY:
I am trying to install MacOS9Lives on a FW800 Dual 1.25GHz PowerMac MDD with a 400GB HDD. I can boot MacOS9Lives CD and it can see the HDD, but not the partitions, since the Mac OS 9 drivers haven't been installed. OS X (10.4.6) installer disc (nor disc utility in installed copy of OS X) doesn't show me option to install the drivers when I use it since Mac OS 9 is not natively supported on that machine.
I don't have another PPC mac that natively supports Mac OS 9 at the moment, so I cannot easily reformat the disc / install the drivers that way. I've read online that one might be able to use terminal commands (I assume involving diskutil) to manually do this, but I haven't found what they might be yet, and I am wondering if anybody has the knowledge of how to do that?
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Manage to get MacOS9Lives to boot off of the CD, but Drive Setup cannot see any partitions. OS X disk utility doesn't offer option because unsupported hardware. Attempt to drive face through brick to pacify.
I've seen whispers around the internet about "using scary terminal commands" to do this, and I wondered if anybody knows the sauce? If not, what might be some directions to start figuring that out?
And no, I don't have a natively OS9 compatible PPC mac to format the drive on, thanks for asking. :-[
I am so sorry, but I have read this about 3 times and I am totally unclear what you are asking...
Do you have a PPC mac that is NOT OS 9 compatible ? If so, what machine ?
Terminal commands... Are you talking about QEMU on a modern mac...
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6042.0.html
Do you mean open firmware commands ?
We are very helpful here, but you are going to have to get a little more specific
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Manage to get MacOS9Lives to boot off of the CD, but Drive Setup cannot see any partitions. OS X disk utility doesn't offer option because unsupported hardware. Attempt to drive face through brick to pacify.
I've seen whispers around the internet about "using scary terminal commands" to do this, and I wondered if anybody knows the sauce? If not, what might be some directions to start figuring that out?
And no, I don't have a natively OS9 compatible PPC mac to format the drive on, thanks for asking. :-[
I am so sorry, but I have read this about 3 times and I am totally unclear what you are asking...
Do you have a PPC mac that is NOT OS 9 compatible ? If so, what machine ?
Terminal commands... Are you talking about QEMU on a modern mac...
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6042.0.html
Do you mean open firmware commands ?
We are very helpful here, but you are going to have to get a little more specific
I've updated the original post with all the details. Cheers!
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I am trying to install MacOS9Lives on a FW800 Dual 1.25GHz PowerMac MDD with a 400GB HDD. I can boot MacOS9Lives CD and it can see the HDD, but not the partitions, since the Mac OS 9 drivers haven't been installed. OS X (10.4.6) installer disc (nor disc utility in installed copy of OS X) doesn't show me option to install the drivers when I use it since Mac OS 9 is not natively supported on that machine.
That is not correct. If you can delete/re-partition then... Try to setup OS9 First
1. Start up the computer from a Mac OS 9 CD
2. Open Drive Setup, which is normally located at in the Utilities folder in the "Applications (Mac OS 9)" folder.
3. Select the disk that you wish to make available.
4. Choose Update Driver from the Functions menu This message appears:
"The new driver will not be available until you restart the computer."
or...
Use a Leopard Disk (if you have one), from another member...
This also multiplied the work involved as I had to use a Leopard installer disc for the formatting as apparently Tiger's would not allow me to select "install OS 9 drivers", but Leopard's did.
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if you have a fw-800 or if your computer only has 10.5.x (where disc util started lacking te OS9 driver support), you can do it by deleting at least one of the volumes on the disk using -w
- find out which volume has which name
- unmount the chosen volume you want to delete using disc util
- then reformat using sudo newfs_hfs -w -J -b 512 -v name /dev/diskxxx
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if you have a fw-800 or if your computer only has 10.5.x (where disc util started lacking te OS9 driver support), you can do it by deleting at least one of the volumes on the disk using -w
- find out which volume has which name
- unmount the chosen volume you want to delete using disc util
- then reformat using sudo newfs_hfs -w -J -b 512 -v name /dev/diskxxx
This is more in the vein of what I was going for. :)
However, it appears this doesn't make the partition readable for MacOS9Lives :(
It was the first partition out of 4, all smaller than 180 GB's.
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the OS9 "harddisk driver" should make the whole drive available to OS9.
i can not really help from a remote and there are people here who know much more about this kind of thing.
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I'm not sure I have enough coffee in the house to make perfect sense of what's going on here BUT, maybe this will be helpful:
You cannot install OS9 disk drivers into a single partition. They must be installed at the disk root.
That means they have to be put there first before any partitions/volumes are created on the disk.
THAT means they are installed during the process when the disk is first initialized.
Does that help?
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rumor has it that you can not install OS9 drivers at all without creating partitions,
to do it before erasing should be impossible.
but he should indeed try next to create only one partiion / erase the whole drive.
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rumor has it that you can not install OS9 drivers at all without creating partitions,
Don't know where you heard that one, but not true.
Disk initialization and partitioning are separate processes.
You init a disk first, installing drivers if desired, then partition it afterward but you are not required to.
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Alright, Mac OS 9 has been installed! But now I am stuck in _only_ Mac OS 9. Startup disc control panel doesn't do anything when I select leopard except make the system unbootable (fixable by PRAM reset, CMD+OPTION+P+R).
But for posterity: the magic sauce was the Leopard install disc after all. Disk Utility still hid the "install mac os 9 drivers" option when partitioning, but after some googling, I relied on some trusty Terminal commands (found here http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=5345.0):
diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 40G JHFS+ tiger 100G JHFS+ leopard 50G JHFS+ sorbet_leopard 50G JHFS+ shared 100G
Note, this do not work under the Tiger install medium (at least, as is).
Now the problem of being stuck in Mac OS 9! I used the bootscript trick described here: http://mac-classic.com/articles/mac-os-9-on-unsupported-systems/
Whenever I try to change startup discs (OS9 control panel), boot from startup manager (hold ALT/OPTION at boot), boot from disc (hold c) etc etc it never triggers the display. In fact, if I try and to boot from another method, nothing works until I reset the PRAM.
Thoughts?
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But for posterity: the magic sauce was the Leopard install disc after all. Disk Utility still hid the "install mac os 9 drivers" option when partitioning, but after some googling, I relied on some trusty Terminal commands
Thoughts?
My thoughts are: WyTF do people ask questions then not read the answers?
I wrote: "Disk initialization and partitioning are separate processes.
You init a disk first, installing drivers if desired, then partition it afterward but you are not required to."
Disk Util did not "hide" the OS9 drivers option while partitioning - it didn't allow it because it has to be done first.
Again, it has to be done first. it has to be done first. it has to be done first.
Otherwise, you eff up the disk and get unpredictable results exactly like you have now.
If you get a kick out of using Terminal, then learn it first. Otherwise, you're a monkey with a chainsaw.
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But for posterity: the magic sauce was the Leopard install disc after all. Disk Utility still hid the "install mac os 9 drivers" option when partitioning, but after some googling, I relied on some trusty Terminal commands
Thoughts?
My thoughts are: WyTF do people ask questions then not read the answers?
I wrote: "Disk initialization and partitioning are separate processes.
You init a disk first, installing drivers if desired, then partition it afterward but you are not required to."
Disk Util did not "hide" the OS9 drivers option while partitioning - it didn't allow it because it has to be done first.
Again, it has to be done first. it has to be done first. it has to be done first.
Otherwise, you eff up the disk and get unpredictable results exactly like you have now.
If you get a kick out of using Terminal, then learn it first. Otherwise, you're a monkey with a chainsaw.
I did read your post, and even took action based on it! At worst, I misinterpreted your words, but I honestly don't think I did.
You confirmed my suspicion that erasing a single partition wasn't going to solve it, since it didn't make sense to me that one partition could contain the information for how to read the other partitions.
After I read your post, I started to search for man pages that explained how diskutil works, since I had a hunch that it is what powers Disk Utility. I came across this: https://ss64.com/osx/diskutil.html and https://www.unix.com/man-page/osx/8/diskutil/, which sparingly use that word. But I did read them, and learned that diskutil once provided options for enabling the disk to be used by OS9.
That was confirmed by the tutorial linked here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=5345.0
Put simply, diskutil's partitionDisk verb partitions the whole disk (the last partition soaks up any excess you didn't account for).
It wasn't clear to me from your original reply at the time, but if you intended for me to initialize the disk using the tool in the OS9 installer, my concern was regarding my harddrive size: 400GB is bigger than what OS9 can apparently instantiate on a MDD FW800. (http://macos9lives.com/mac%20os%209%20lives_003.htm). So I booted up my Leopard installer and used diskutil partitionDisk, and installed Leopard, then finally successfully had the MacOS9Lives installer work, followed the instructions, and rebooted. Now I am here, where I can only boot into OS9.
Where do you feel I ignored your suggestions? I am gathering you wanted me to use the OS9 tool to initialize the disk first, but again, that wasn't clear to me.
(I really did not appreciate the tone of your post btw. I've read a lot and am piecing this together. I know I'll probably get stuff wrong, but thats the whole point of learning this stuff and documenting as I go along!)
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OK… I don't know for certain exactly is causing your current issue, where suddenly you can only boot OS9 BUT,
I'm certain it has something to do with throwing Terminal commands around and that they have upset the delicate balance of code at the disk root that allow booting both the old or the new systems.
This thread is titled "Installing MacOS9 HDD drivers using terminal in OS X"
There's no good reason for this. Why? Because you have the Leopard installer DVD.
All you have to do is:
1) Initialize the disk using the Diskutility app on the DVD, checking the checkbox labeled "Install OS9 Drivers"
2) Still in the Diskutility app, now partition the disk however you like.
3) If you want it, install Leopard now on whichever partition you want.
4) Now eject the DVD, and restart Leopard to make sure it works. Assuming it does…
…This is the time to install the Leopard Combo Update. It will update 10.5.0 to 10.5.8 It's here: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL866?locale=en_US
5) NOW Reboot from the OS9 Installer disc and Install OS9 on its partition.
6) Enjoy your dual-booting MMD.
Note that all of the above is accomplished without once using Terminal. This is the way Macs are supposed to "just work."
Finally, and this is important:
Reboot into Leopard and go to "System Preferences / Spotlight." Under "Privacy", lock your OS9 partition out so Spotlight does not index it. If allowed to do so, Spotlight will write stuff in the OS9 Volume header that has a very good chance of eventually causing a serious conflict with OS9. There are threads here on the Forum explaining this.
* If you're going to use Time Machine for OSX, do the same thing with it. It won't make a good backup of OS9 anyway and will also corrupt the OS9 Volume Header. You need a different backup app for OS9. I suggest the app "Personal Backup"
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(I really did not appreciate the tone of your post btw. I've read a lot and am piecing this together. I know I'll probably get stuff wrong, but thats the whole point of learning this stuff and documenting as I go along!)
Please don't take things personal here, yes, we understand the learning process and it makes sense you will make mistakes; the only reason responses may seem a little curt at times is that often...
1) we are asked a vague question (for instance, I still did not know if you had previous important data on the drive or were able to wipe it and start over), then
2) we respond with a procedure list that is often modified or altered by the member that asked the original question
So, our frustration gets the best of us when members use our steps as kind of suggestion list and then throw other unnecessary steps in the mix. It is certainly not your fault or ours that ancient OS software may be initially challenging. I feel your pain, since I personally also like to analyze and understand what I am doing, rather than blindly following a bunch of steps without really understanding them. That being said, you must understand that we always try our best here to give a concise and workable solution, and when that solution does not "work" because a member does some things suggested, but goes off into other directions/tangents and then re-posts that things are not working as expected, we kinda get upset more for the user, not for us :)
The main take-away here is...
Note that all of the above is accomplished without once using Terminal. This is the way Macs are supposed to "just work."
You see, many other people will find this topic, and they will read all these terminal commands and think "Wow, OS9 is a real pain in the ass" Our site has become an important reference tool over the years since a ton of OS9 resource material is gone from the Web so it is crucial that we are accurate and provide simple roadmaps for the people new to OS9.
It wasn't clear to me from your original reply at the time, but if you intended for me to initialize the disk using the tool in the OS9 installer, my concern was regarding my harddrive size: 400GB is bigger than what OS9 can apparently instantiate on a MDD FW800
Again, we are not correcting you to berate you, but we have to keep the info. correct and this statement is wrong. You can use a 400GB, 1000 GB or even a 2TB drive as long as you keep the OS9 boot-able partition less than 200GB.
From our site:
As far as the Mac OS revision, you will be stuck with Mac OS 9.2.2 only, as it contains Apple Drive Setup V2.1 that will be needed to format and partition drives greater than 128GB. We also recommend that you keep your partitions to sizes of 190GB or less or OS 9 will not boot and Norton Speed Disk V6.03 will not be able to defrag it. To clarify, if you are putting a 500GB in you Mac, simply break it into 3 partitions of 120GB for the OS, 190GB, and 190GB (format all volumes Mac OS Extended).
From Gary:
Finally, and this is important:
Reboot into Leopard and go to "System Preferences / Spotlight." Under "Privacy", lock your OS9 partition out so Spotlight does not index it. If allowed to do so, Spotlight will write stuff in the OS9 Volume header that has a very good chance of eventually causing a serious conflict with OS9
If you search our forum, you will find references that will help you avoid the headaches that come with a dual-boot system, as stated here, OS X does NOT play nicely with the OS9 file system and can lead to "betree" errors and other anomalies if one is not careful (see below)
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,5366.msg39372.html#msg39372
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2830.msg44116.html#msg44116
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Again, we are not correcting you to berate you, but we have to keep the info. correct and this statement is wrong. You can use a 400GB, 1000 GB or even a 2TB drive as long as you keep the OS9 boot-able partition less than 200GB.
Thanx DH. I forgot to mention that.
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Note that all of the above is accomplished without once using Terminal. This is the way Macs are supposed to "just work."
i am sure if that would really work on an unsupported machine and/or with 10.5, people would not ask how to do it in the terminal and we would not call them "unsupported machines".
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i am sure if that would really work on an unsupported machine and/or with 10.5, people would not ask how to do it in the terminal and we would not call them "unsupported machines".
Well, it does… and still they do.
Some folks come to the Mac platform and are temporarily confused by the basic simplicity of it all.
Apparently, some others remain that way.
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It's taken me a few days to get back around to this, but I am going to try to do everything exactly as you tell me. I've got a fresh slate to work with.
I will quickly note that managed to get the system out of the hell it was stuck in by unplugging the IDE cable from the HDD and wiping the pram (CMD+OPT+P+R for two chimes), then using a terminal on Mac OS X installation media (I have tested both 10.4 and 10.5, with both working) and ran
nvram auto-boot?=false
which reboots into open firmware, then entering
multi-boot
to allow me to select installation media or any installed os attached to the machine.
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So my old factory Leopard installation DVD got smashed, literally last night - partner fell and crunched it in the process. I tried using a burned DL disc that my 2012 MB Pro can read no problem and it won't read on the FW800. I instead created a bootable USB with Leopard on it, and booted from that. Neither the Erase nor the Partition panes offered me the "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" option, as seen in these photos:
https://postimg.cc/HrmjNrX9
https://postimg.cc/sBvzHz6J
https://postimg.cc/3y4MCBNS
So I rebooted into the MacOS9Lives CD to try to do DieHard's suggestion in the Disk Setup. It did not recognize the whole harddrive (only ~130GB), and did not offer me the option to install the necessary driver:
https://postimg.cc/SXMSNq6x
DieHard, to answer your early question, nothing on the disk is important to me. There is nothing to save.
I will note that I had to clear the PRAM again after booting MacOS9Lives. Otherwise the display never wakes up. This is weird, since it seems to overwrite the PRAM options I had previously setup. Same behaviour I observed when I installed MacOS9Lives and tried to change startup disk back to Leopard.
In summary, could the fact that I had to boot from a usb thumb drive have made the driver install option disappear?
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So I rebooted into the MacOS9Lives CD to try to do DieHard's suggestion in the Disk Setup. It did not recognize the whole harddrive (only ~130GB), and did not offer me the option to install the necessary driver:
OS9 drivers were built into and a part of the OS9-based Installer. They weren't optional then.
So my old factory Leopard installation DVD got smashed, literally last night - partner fell and crunched it in the process. I tried using a burned DL disc that my 2012 MB Pro can read no problem and it won't read on the FW800. I instead created a bootable USB with Leopard on it, and booted from that. Neither the Erase nor the Partition panes offered me the "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" option, as seen in these photos:
This is more interesting… I'm going to guess that the drivers option doesn't appear because the Leopard Disk Utility "knows" you're trying to format a disk in a FW800 machine and that's not allowed - which is why there's a special OS9 System and Installer for it in the first place.
I think you'll have to:
A – Add another drive of 200Gb or less so that you can simply boot from the OS9Lives Installer and install OS9 to it directly. This would be the simple way
The only other way might be to:
B – Boot from the Leopard Installer stick Terminal app and first install the firmware patch that allows the FW800 to boot OS9, then attempt to format the HDD with the Disk Utility app. I'll note that:
1) I don't personally know exactly how the patch is written so someone else will have to provide it, and
2) It might not work to "fool" Disk Utility without a reboot in between and even then
3) It still might not work anyway so
I seriously recommend method "A"
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So I rebooted into the MacOS9Lives CD to try to do DieHard's suggestion in the Disk Setup. It did not recognize the whole harddrive (only ~130GB), and did not offer me the option to install the necessary driver:
https://postimg.cc/SXMSNq6x
I am so sorry, apparently the "boot" part of out install has the older drive setup 1.92 (even though our 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version), so don't use the one on the root of the CD when you boot, instead double click our drive image and navigate to the drive setup 2.1, that one will see the whole hard drive past 128GB...
Another alternative is to Burn and boot this:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html
and run the drive setup 2.1 to partition
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I am so sorry, apparently the "boot" part of out install has the older drive setup 1.92 (even though our 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version), so don't use the one on the root of the CD when you boot, instead double click our drive image and navigate to the drive setup 2.1, that one will see the whole hard drive past 128GB...
Well……… D-OH!
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So I rebooted into the MacOS9Lives CD to try to do DieHard's suggestion in the Disk Setup. It did not recognize the whole harddrive (only ~130GB), and did not offer me the option to install the necessary driver:
https://postimg.cc/SXMSNq6x
I am so sorry, apparently the "boot" part of out install has the older drive setup 1.92 (even though our 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version), so don't use the one on the root of the CD when you boot, instead double click our drive image and navigate to the drive setup 2.1, that one will see the whole hard drive past 128GB...
Another alternative is to Burn and boot this:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html
and run the drive setup 2.1 to partition
So this worked for getting OS 9 to see all the partitions. Thank you for that tip!
Unfortunately, I'm still arriving in boot hell when I boot into OS 9 after installing.
I've tried replacing the PRAM battery. It didn't help.
I'm wondering if placing the OS9 partition first is causing an issue? Does it matter which order I install OS 9 or OS X first? Anything else I can try?
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You "boot hell" happens when you have only OS9 installed or after you have OS9 and OSX installed?
If you have both, try to reboot into OSX after installing OS9 and go into system preferences > startup to select the OS9 partition and then trigger a reboot.
If you have only OS9 installed at this stage and it does not boot, it would be interesting to share details about what happens and what does not (that could point us out to what is missing as a step. I.e.: have you removed the muliprocessing extension from the system folder before rebooting (as it is a known offender on single-CPU systems ?
Stay strong, the success is drawing closer ;)
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I have a Quad G5 running Leopard. The Partition tab in Disk Utility.app doesn't show the Install OS 9 Drivers checkbox for internal SATA disks but does show the option when the SATA disk is in a FireWire enclosure. I partitioned a new SATA SSD this way. I probably want to compare the OS 9 drivers on the new SATA SSD with the OS 9 drivers I have on the SCSI/ATA disks in my 8600 and B&W G3, and also maybe parse the OS 9 partitions using the info from https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn/tn1189.html to see what's included.
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I have a Quad G5 running Leopard. The Partition tab in Disk Utility.app doesn't show the Install OS 9 Drivers checkbox for internal SATA disks but does show the option when the SATA disk is in a FireWire enclosure.
I think this confirms what I guessed before:
This is more interesting… I'm going to guess that the drivers option doesn't appear because the Leopard Disk Utility "knows" you're trying to format a disk in a FW800 machine and that's not allowed - which is why there's a special OS9 System and Installer for it in the first place.
Just as you don't see the OS9 option on a FW800 MDD, you also don't see it on a G5 for the same reason. HOWEVER:
joevt has shown that by getting the drive out of the machine, the OS9 option reappears. So that's another way.
I'm still not sure that you're getting the fact that you absolutely MUST add the OS9 drivers during the initialization before partitioning!
You cannot add drivers to just one partition. They go on first and affect the entire disk.
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The OS 9 drivers are a set of partitions in an Apple Partition Map formatted disk. I suppose it would be possible to add these to an existing disk. If they need to be the first partitions, then you may need to shrink and move the first partition. Maybe iPartition.app on modern MacOS can do that. Otherwise it could be done with some commands.
In the attached output, I examine the partition table of my newly created SATA SSD in the FireWire enclosure and I copied the drivers to a file for examining/comparing later. I'll try booting from it tonight in my Power Mac 8600.
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I have a Quad G5 running Leopard. The Partition tab in Disk Utility.app doesn't show the Install OS 9 Drivers checkbox for internal SATA disks but does show the option when the SATA disk is in a FireWire enclosure.
I think this confirms what I guessed before:
This is more interesting… I'm going to guess that the drivers option doesn't appear because the Leopard Disk Utility "knows" you're trying to format a disk in a FW800 machine and that's not allowed - which is why there's a special OS9 System and Installer for it in the first place.
Just as you don't see the OS9 option on a FW800 MDD, you also don't see it on a G5 for the same reason. HOWEVER:
joevt has shown that by getting the drive out of the machine, the OS9 option reappears. So that's another way.
I'm still not sure that you're getting the fact that you absolutely MUST add the OS9 drivers during the initialization before partitioning!
You cannot add drivers to just one partition. They go on first and affect the entire disk.
I don't think you've read what I wrote.
I followed the instructions DieHard gave and did in fact install the OS9 drivers during initialization (completed from the MacOS9Lives disk setup 2.1) and OS9 did see the partition.
I can boot OS9, just as before... It just can't boot into anything else without resetting the PRAM, disconnecting the hard drive, and using an OS X install disc to set autoboot to false and force open firmware to open at boot. 🤷
I will try some of these other suggestions tomorrow!
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I don't think you've read what I wrote.
I absolutely DID read what you wrote. It was: "So this worked for getting OS 9 to see all the partitions. Thank you for that tip!"………period.
I'm ready to throw in the towel. This has become a shell game of Drive setups, Firmware commands, unidentified drives and partitions.
I think we need some input from those who have successfully installed Leopard and OS9 on a FW800. Perhaps they can describe what they did exactly and you can try following that.
Additionally, I have questions about the OF commands to be stored in NVRAM described by the venerable Greystash. I'll preface this by noting that his "being correct percentage" is probably considerably better than mine. Anyway:
I always thought that the trick to booting unsupported machines was to locate and alter a "list" of allowed models in NVRAM, adding the unsupported one to the list. The OF commands shown in the mac-classic article describe "altering" the CPU-version property to something different than what's in the machine. While this may work just fine to get OS9 to boot, is it possibly causing macdoughy's issue where Leopard is no longer "seen" at the next boot after running OS9? * Jeez, that was difficult to simply express in a sentence let alone understand…
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I always thought that the trick to booting unsupported machines was to locate and alter a "list" of allowed models in NVRAM, adding the unsupported one to the list. The OF commands shown in the mac-classic article describe "altering" the CPU-version property to something different than what's in the machine. While this may work just fine to get OS9 to boot, is it possibly causing macdoughy's issue where Leopard is no longer "seen" at the next boot after running OS9? * Jeez, that was difficult to simply express in a sentence let alone understand…
Very well-stated Gary.
I do wonder if macdougy is using the old alt/option-key boot (upon restart from OS 9) to then choose the Leopard partition (unseen?) as the boot drive… as many do on Mac Minis (and others) now dual booting OS 9 on multi-partitioned drives / machines?
And unfortunately, I no longer maintain ANY FW800 MDDs (still have many remaining carcasses) and I never attempted any dual-boot OS 9 + OS X etc. setups when I did. *The loss of the FW400 ports under OS 9 was more than I could accept. SO I opted instead to rob their PSUs, CPUs and heatsinks… moving them into original FW 400 MDDs / mobos. (The loss of the MDD single FW800 port was much more palatable.)
Also. Have endured many previous problems here successfully installing Leopard, period. Until I got an actual Apple, Leopard install disc. *Maybe 3-partition macdougy’s drive and install OS 9 and Tiger… leaving the 3rd partition for attempted Leopard - AFTER successful testing / booting with Tiger?
I think we need some input from those who have successfully installed Leopard and OS9 on a FW800.
Sorry. Hopefully someone meeting the above requirement will chime in? IF not, I may painfully “reconstruct” a FW800 MDD after this week* and give it all a go. (Oooooh, BLACK FRIDAY!)
*Somebody please stop me beforehand. ::)
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Sorry. Hopefully someone meeting the above requirement will chime in? IF not, I may painfully “reconstruct” a FW800 MDD after this week* and give it all a go. (Oooooh, BLACK FRIDAY!)
*Somebody please stop me beforehand. ::)
Yeah, I'll stop ya... At this point, and many topics ago, we have discussed for over 10 years that the best "Dual Boot" scenario is a "Dual Drive" scenario, the whole partition and load both Mac OS 9 and OS X on a single drive approach is NOT for the squeamish or the Newbie and there are variables that have to be addressed to avoid problems. With storage being cheaper that a meal for 3 at McDonalds, I think we have to put this to bed already :)
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I don't think you've read what I wrote.
I absolutely DID read what you wrote. It was: "So this worked for getting OS 9 to see all the partitions. Thank you for that tip!"………period.
I'm ready to throw in the towel. This has become a shell game of Drive setups, Firmware commands, unidentified drives and partitions.
I think we need some input from those who have successfully installed Leopard and OS9 on a FW800. Perhaps they can describe what they did exactly and you can try following that.
Additionally, I have questions about the OF commands to be stored in NVRAM described by the venerable Greystash. I'll preface this by noting that his "being correct percentage" is probably considerably better than mine. Anyway:
I always thought that the trick to booting unsupported machines was to locate and alter a "list" of allowed models in NVRAM, adding the unsupported one to the list. The OF commands shown in the mac-classic article describe "altering" the CPU-version property to something different than what's in the machine. While this may work just fine to get OS9 to boot, is it possibly causing macdoughy's issue where Leopard is no longer "seen" at the next boot after running OS9? * Jeez, that was difficult to simply express in a sentence let alone understand…
Thats some awesome history you've brought up!
You are also confirming my thought process here, which I really appreciate. There is something other than the partition drivers holding me back from booting into different OS's freely - I just don't know what yet!
You "boot hell" happens when you have only OS9 installed or after you have OS9 and OSX installed?
If you have both, try to reboot into OSX after installing OS9 and go into system preferences > startup to select the OS9 partition and then trigger a reboot.
If you have only OS9 installed at this stage and it does not boot, it would be interesting to share details about what happens and what does not (that could point us out to what is missing as a step. I.e.: have you removed the muliprocessing extension from the system folder before rebooting (as it is a known offender on single-CPU systems ?
Stay strong, the success is drawing closer ;)
Both OS9 and Tiger installed. When I reinitialized the drive according to DieHard's suggestion ^, I installed Tiger instead of Leopard (just snappier). No option in Tiger's Startup Disk section of System Preferences to choose OS9 disk.
My boot hell only occurs after I boot into OS9. Even if I have auto-boot? set to false, after booting into OS9, it just always boots into OS9, ignoring holding OPTION/ALT at chime, C, CMD+OPT+O+F, etc. etc. I can only reset the NVRAM with CMD-OPT-P-R and either set auto-boot? to false with an OS X install disc in Terminal or CMD-OPT-O-F at boot once cleared. It's like OS9 is overwriting the NVRAM / Open Firmware options when it boots.
Another interesting artifact is that once I boot into OS9, video takes longer to intialize at boot for all subsequent boots. I believe the video card is an ATI 9000 [Pro?].
Sorry. Hopefully someone meeting the above requirement will chime in? IF not, I may painfully “reconstruct” a FW800 MDD after this week* and give it all a go. (Oooooh, BLACK FRIDAY!)
*Somebody please stop me beforehand. ::)
Yeah, I'll stop ya... At this point, and many topics ago, we have discussed for over 10 years that the best "Dual Boot" scenario is a "Dual Drive" scenario, the whole partition and load both Mac OS 9 and OS X on a single drive approach is NOT for the squeamish or the Newbie and there are variables that have to be addressed to avoid problems. With storage being cheaper that a meal for 3 at McDonalds, I think we have to put this to bed already :)
Might just.
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I am getting ready to give up. :(
Over the last few weeks I have:
- Bought an external IDE HDD enclosure with FW400 connection.
- Bought another HDD, 80GB.
- Using the Tiger install DVD's DiskUtility, ERASED each drive to one partition w/ installed OS9 drivers
- (When I ERASED the smaller drive, I used HFS Extended)
- (Partitioned the 400GB drive w/ partitions of 120GB for Tiger, 100GB for TBA and 153GB for shared data)
- Got both HDD installed and recognized
- Followed the instructions from https://mac-classic.com/articles/mac-os-9-on-unsupported-systems/ for setting up NVRAMRC in OpenFirmware
- Installed Tiger
- Installed from MacOS9Lives for Unsupported to the smaller drive
- Even tried DiskWarrior rebuild on OS9 HDD from Tiger.
And.... I still need to reset the PRAM to get back into Tiger.
I can boot into OS 9 no problem, both the install live disc for unsupported hardware and the resulting installation on the computer. But in either case, it renders the system as unbootable UNLESS I set the startup disk using the control panel to the OS9 drive. Setting the Tiger install as the system startup disk from the OS9 control panel renders it unbootable.
I've also tried the drag and drop method w/ DiskWarrior followup from OS X (suggested by a member in a PM).
I am this close to ordering a FW400 motherboard and moving on with life. I am tired of fighting with this thing.
I really appreciate all the helpful advice everyone has tried to give me here. I feel bad that I haven't left a trail to an answer, at least yet. Anybody got anything else?
I really feel like the key is in this clue... that even merely booting off of the MacOS9Lives CD without touching a hard drive renders the thing unbootable without a PRAM reset.
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After some further messing around, one new clue that helps a little:
If I boot into OS9, I can get the system to consistently boot into OS9 by setting the startup disk to the OS9 partition. (Without doing that, the display never wakes up, even when trying to boot back into OS9).
So in summary: If I clear the PRAM, I can boot into anything (OS X, OS9, Open Firmware, multi-boot / disk selector screen w/ OPTION at chime, etc). If I reboot from OS X, I can likewise boot into anything. If I boot into OS9 and set the startup disk to OS9, I can reboot into only that OS9 partition - attempting anything else, whether holding OPTION or CMD+OPTION+O+F or setting the startup disk to OS X from the OS9 control panel, the display never wakes up on boot, and the system is rendered unbootable with the only way to fix it is to reset the PRAM (CMD+OPTION+P+R at boot for two chimes).
It seems like booting into OS9 changes my Open Firmware configuration - if I had auto-boot set to false, OS9 changes it to true again. It also seems to mess with my display being able to wake up, unless you boot into OS 9. Please tell me somebody has a thought on that?
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A CRT normally is better to troubleshoot.
(Almost) Any resolution works.
It seems to me that something corrupts PRAM and the boot order you say is needed.
Have you tested the PRAM battery. Those kind of erratic behaviour is what I find in my G3 B&W Rev.1 without the battery+PRam reset
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A CRT normally is better to troubleshoot.
(Almost) Any resolution works.
It seems to me that something corrupts PRAM and the boot order you say is needed.
Have you tested the PRAM battery. Those kind of erratic behaviour is what I find in my G3 B&W Rev.1 without the battery+PRam reset
I replaced the PRAM battery a few weeks ago. Only briefly disconnected from the wall since, to remove the hard drives. No power disruptions in my area.
... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...
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... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...
Are they white? They may be for Airport. I'm presuming the little fan is plugged in right next to the battery?
I don't blame you for wanting to chuck the motherboard. If I was an Apple tech servicing this issue, I would have already tried exchanging the mother with a known-to-be-good one.
Your symptom "It also seems to mess with my display being able to wake up, unless you boot into OS 9" might not be a symptom at all. When my MDD boots into OSX, the screen doesn't light until OSX has been recognized and started loading, as evidenced by the big apple appearing simultaneously in the screen center. With OS9 (and earlier) you typically see the screen light up first and then see the Mac happy face / OS9.2 box as the boot System is located.
Distilling everything described so far, it appears the issue now boils down to OS9 being unable to successfully reset the boot to anything in the startup Control Panel even though it may appear to do so. Note the pic below of my OS9 Startup panel. The left-hand "Name" column shows all the drives/volumes. The right-hand "Version" one shows the bootable Systems on those Volumes. Note that I could easily have a drive named "OSX" and select it without actually having a bootable System on it.
If OS9 doesn't "see" an actual System as evidenced by the text in the Version column, selecting that OSX-named volume is the same as selecting no other boot System at all and the computer simply boots back into OS9 again just as you describe. So, you should be able to see "OSX 10.4 build xxxx". If you do, I just typed all of this for nothing. If you don't, I don't know why that is exactly but it does indicate something about why you can't get back to OSX without resetting the PRAM thereby starting over from scratch.
Note that the other thing I would try as an Apple tech would be to install something other than Tiger… i.e. Leopard 10.5 just to see if it works.
By now it should be obvious that a LOT of computer troubleshooting is typically done by substitution and that's easy to do "at the factory" so to speak. At home, not so much.
Note also that the other thing I probably would have tried by now in your situation would be a shock treatment achieved by dropping the whole damn thing out of a second story window.
But hey, that's just me…
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... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...
On a FW800, there will be three sets of wires:
1 for the modem (typically black)
1 for the airport express card (typically white)
2 for the bluetooth card (typically blue, but ive also seen them in white as well)
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EXACTLY which Mac OS 9.2.2 install disk was downloaded? [The link provided on
Mac Classic ( https://mac-classic.com/articles/mac-os-9-on-unsupported-systems/ )
is for the Mac mini.]
Download successfully used here on a 1.42 GHz DP MDD previously…
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2143.0.html
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6570.0;attach=11125;image)
*Addendum:
Yes, other downloads ARE also available via that Mac-Classic.com link (one needs only
to scroll down for the FW800 MDD iso) BUT before I reassemble a 1.25 GHZ DP FW800
machine here for testing… there was this question concerning which file was downloaded.
Easy enough to check via downloaded iso file sizes.
Ross's Mac mini OS 9 CD v9.iso / 678.4 MB
Mac OS 9.2.2 Unsupported G4s.iso / 556.1 MB
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*Addendum:
Yes, other downloads ARE also available via that Mac-Classic.com link (one needs only
to scroll down for the FW800 MDD iso) BUT before I reassemble a 1.25 GHZ DP FW800
machine here for testing… there was this question concerning which file was downloaded.
Easy enough to check via downloaded iso file sizes.
Ross's Mac mini OS 9 CD v9.iso / 678.4 MB
Mac OS 9.2.2 Unsupported G4s.iso / 556.1 MB
I downloaded the one for Unsupported G4s. It is 556.1MB. :( Was really hoping for a dumb mistake on my end!
But I have some interesting news after messing around with stuff again tonight. If I change the startup disk in OS9 to Tiger, it does actually boot into Tiger. I know this because I got the idea to test to some shortcuts to see if I could turn it off. CONTROL-COMMAND-<POWER BUTTON> actually WOKE UP the display and showed Tiger all booted up! The system.log in Console says a USB device woke ip the display. Just hitting any old keys on the keyboard does not wake it up, nor does just the power buttn, I don't think.
Rebooting keeps it booting in Tiger, and still doesn't wake the display properly.
This gives me an idea: run a custom script on startup that sets whatever is messed up in the nvram every time I boot OS X. This feels like a viable path, with some research. :D
... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...
Are they white? They may be for Airport. I'm presuming the little fan is plugged in right next to the battery?
I don't blame you for wanting to chuck the motherboard. If I was an Apple tech servicing this issue, I would have already tried exchanging the mother with a known-to-be-good one.
Your symptom "It also seems to mess with my display being able to wake up, unless you boot into OS 9" might not be a symptom at all. When my MDD boots into OSX, the screen doesn't light until OSX has been recognized and started loading, as evidenced by the big apple appearing simultaneously in the screen center. With OS9 (and earlier) you typically see the screen light up first and then see the Mac happy face / OS9.2 box as the boot System is located.
Distilling everything described so far, it appears the issue now boils down to OS9 being unable to successfully reset the boot to anything in the startup Control Panel even though it may appear to do so. Note the pic below of my OS9 Startup panel. The left-hand "Name" column shows all the drives/volumes. The right-hand "Version" one shows the bootable Systems on those Volumes. Note that I could easily have a drive named "OSX" and select it without actually having a bootable System on it.
If OS9 doesn't "see" an actual System as evidenced by the text in the Version column, selecting that OSX-named volume is the same as selecting no other boot System at all and the computer simply boots back into OS9 again just as you describe. So, you should be able to see "OSX 10.4 build xxxx". If you do, I just typed all of this for nothing. If you don't, I don't know why that is exactly but it does indicate something about why you can't get back to OSX without resetting the PRAM thereby starting over from scratch.
Note that the other thing I would try as an Apple tech would be to install something other than Tiger… i.e. Leopard 10.5 just to see if it works.
By now it should be obvious that a LOT of computer troubleshooting is typically done by substitution and that's easy to do "at the factory" so to speak. At home, not so much.
Note also that the other thing I probably would have tried by now in your situation would be a shock treatment achieved by dropping the whole damn thing out of a second story window.
But hey, that's just me…
Thank you for all of this! Build is present besides the Tiger partition. I'll perhaps try Leopard per your suggestion, its a good one. And your description of what you see during OS X and OS 9 booting matches my experience I think exactly! This further confirms its a display awakening issue.
I finally feel like there might be light at the end of this tunnel. All these suggestions are all super helpful!! =)
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Without going into my usual amount of detail here… the best and easiest approach to this is likely as Greystash explained over on Mac-Classic.com. Two drives (HDDs or SSDs - or a mix of both) segregated with ONE on the ATA-66 and the OTHER ONE on the ATA-100. If I were to keep this FW800 assembled in this manner, I’d put the “OS 9 loaded” drive on the ATA-100 and OS X drive(s) on the ATA-66… giving the “Unsupported” OS 9 the benefit of the better connection.
I cheated a little on my OS 9 install here, using two optical drives installed on a reconstructed 1.42 GHz DP FW800 machine - one with the Unsupported installer and the other with MacTron’s OS 9 Rescue & Install disc. [ http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html ] With that, after booting with the Unsupported disc (instead of using Drive Setup 1.9.2) I used Drive Setup 2.1 from MacTron’s disc to partition a 500 GB Hitachi HDD into 3 partitions of 155.25 GB each. Thinking that I could later install Tiger & Leopard on those 2 remaining partitions. (Nope.)
Anyway… likely that a simple copy of Drive Setup 2.1 on a USB stick or maybe even a mountable external drive, could enable this partitioning of a larger (500 GB or even larger) drive?
After partitioning, installation and booting of the Unsupported OS 9 on the Hitachi, I was then unable to install Tiger or Leopard on either of the remaining 2 partitions. (No matter how many times or ways that I tried). Considered removing the drive and then attempting the T&L installs within a FW 400 MDD - and then moved back into the FW800 afterwards?
Instead, I already had an SSD with OS 9 and Tiger pre-installed. So, moved that into the FW800. (Even though it did not have a version of the Unsupported OS 9 present.) This booted immediately into Tiger.
I then added the 500 GB Hitachi drive (w/ the Unsupported OS 9 present) to the same ATA-100 ribbon cable, and again… it would boot into Tiger BUT NOT the Unsupported OS 9 present on it OR the SSD. THEN, moved the SSD to the ATA-66 and I could then boot from the Unsupported OS 9 on the Hitachi - AND also the Tiger install on the SSD (on the ATA-66 cable).
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6570.0;attach=11156;image)
Note that the 2nd partition on the Hitachi HDD (above) is named Jaguar. Figured that as the FW800 originally shipped with OS 10.2.3 - that I’d try Jaguar. BUT that didn’t / wouldn’t install either! ALSO, neither of the OS 9.2 “flavors” on the Inland SSD would boot.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACH
Sure, I spent MORE time on this. Removed the Hitachi from the FW800 MDD and placed it in a 1.0 GHz Quicksilver. (Likely that other, non-FW800 G4s could also be used.)
Then installed both Tiger 10.4.6 and Leopard 10.5 with Apple retail discs. At the beginning of each install, opened Disk Utility and reformatted the target install partitions for these OS’es as: Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Something that was not possible with the Hitachi during previous attempts with the drive in the FW800 MDD.
Then the 500 GB Hitachi went back into the FW800 MDD.
Booted into OS 9 on the FW800, both new OS installs appear as viable choices in OS 9’s StartUp Disk control panel AND can be selected for reboot (which both did / do). However, once booted into either Tiger or Leopard, getting back to OS 9 requires a cold boot while holding down the option key at Startup and then selecting OS 9 from the boot picker. The OS 9 partition does not appear as a choice for a Startup Disk under either OS X version.
This approach does not require a 2nd drive on the ATA-66 and will even allow larger drives (if you first use Drive SetUp 2.1 when initially formatting the single drive on the ATA-100 for the Unsupported OS 9 install).
One other thing…
Seems that booting between flavors of OS X - back to OS 9, corrupts the Date / Time and requires a reset. Booting between OS X’s however, does not. I’ve a similar problem booting between OS 9 and OS X on the G4 Mac mini.
So, there’s my two cents.
And I thought this wasn't going to be wordy. ::)
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Wow, thanks for all the work you did, FBz!
When you say you could not not into OS X, I am curious if it was due to your display not walking up?
Cheers.
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"When you say you could not boot into OS X, I am curious if it was due to your display not waking up?"
Short answer, NO. Never.
IF I formatted, multi-partitioned and then installed (US) OS 9 on the HDD or SSD first [within the MDD FW800] it would not even allow any install or any version of OS X afterwards… on any of the remaining partitions. *Well, maybe once.
Always do clean, fresh OS installs here… never any drag & drop, etc. when setting up any machine for testing or use. It did allow (once) an install of Tiger in this manner but upon reboot afterwards, the old circle-with-line-through-it appeared onscreen. Then, attempted my usual practice of erasing the target partition and formatting as Extended (Journaled) from whichever OS X install disk I was using - and the machine would freeze upon any attempted opening of Disk Utility. Maybe… some Terminal command(s) or Open Firmware ritual could get around all of this? (And if you’re ever successful, you’ll share?)
Greystash’s two-drive scenario still seems best practice for those without another non-FW800 machine, to “build” a single drive to be placed into the FW800 MDD. So build your OS X based drive first in the FW800 MDD and remove it. Then insert another drive to install Unsupported OS 9 on. Then determine which drive to attach to ATA-100 and which to attach to ATA-66. Of course these can be moved back and forth per specific need(s).
Tried Another Route
Yesterday, also attempted the *reverse-sequence install approach (OS X Leopard first) within the FW800 MDD (*Leopard - Tiger and then the Unsupported OS 9) using the FW800 MDD to format and partition a single drive AND Leopard DID install successfully BUT did not provide the option of using / installing OS 9 drivers. AND did not allow install of Tiger on a 2nd partition after the Leopard install.
FW800 MDD then did allow booting from the Unsupported OS 9 install disc but as it would have been necessary to reformat and partition the entire drive again (with Drive Setup 1.9.2 or 2.1) which would have erased the already successfully installed Leopard partition… I did not install (US) OS 9.
So, back to the Quicksilver again… where booting from the Leopard install disc (first) DID ALLOW installation of OS 9 driver(s) when erasing & multi-partitioning. Then installed Tiger successfully and didn’t need to use Drive Setup 1.9.2 or 2.1 before installing Unsupported OS 9.
In essence, again “building” a single (three partitioned) multi-boot drive in the Quicksilver, then to be placed back into the MDD FW800. However, this approach yielded a machine that does not maintain correct Date & Time settings in any OS after shutdown or after any subsequent reboot(s). And yes, there’s a fresh & tested battery installed. Machine now seems less stable.
SO after all of this, any wonder that I don’t maintain a FW800 MDD here and have swapped out all of their PSUs and CPUs into FW400 MDDs? I won't / don't miss the use of the FW800's solitary FW800 port. [My hat is off to Greystash.]
Do please let us know which approach you finally have success with (or settle upon) and your process.
This PSU and CPU are going back into a FW400 MDD.
Cheers. ;)
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Thanks again FBZ, that is some heroic work! I can totally understand basically only using FW400s, official support for OS9 is lovely. :D
I am pretty sure I've narrowed down the problem to the NVRAM parameters. When I boot into OS X and use CMD+CTRL+<POWER BUTTON> to get the screen to wake (after having booted into OS 9 and not reset the NVRAM) I get three different NVRAM parameters that are different: boot-device (understandably), prev-lang:kbd (set to en:0 only after booting into OS 9), and aapl,pci, which is long and complicated. It seems very likely to me that its this third parameter that is causing the display to not wake up.
In particular, after booting into OS9, it starts with a string of text looking like /offscreen-display%00gprf and continues in a long and complicated fashion from there. I actually think it's effectively the same string as when I reset the NVRAM, just with more at the front.
I have some tests I can run to see whether it's specifically that value that is breaking things, but I would effectively have a solution if I could write an nvramrc that sets this value. I've spent hours looking for such arcane knowledge, anybody here have any suggestions?
Another thought I've had is that the 9000 Pro might have the two display connectors in one thing the 9200 had going on, and whether some sort of adapter that forces it to display through the same single connector as OS9 does might also be a fix?
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What kind of display are you using? A multisync CRT would be best because it supports many resolutions.
aapl,pci is where nvram properties for devices are stored on New World Macs.
I suppose it's like the AAPL,PathProperties nvram variable on an Intel Mac. Each property has a device path, a name for the property (gprf for graphics preferences of a GPU) and a value. I wrote a script called gfxutil.sh to read that on Intel Macs (it uses gfxutil to parse the info). People use the OpenCore or Clover bootloader on Hackintoshes to add or modify device-properties for many devices instead of using AAPL,PathProperties.
Old World Macs had limits on the property length (only 8 bytes!). I wrote a hack to allow unlimited property length so newer GPUs on Old World Macs could store the full size of their NVRAM property. The Power Mac would read the entire thing during startup and the GPU would use the information to set the resolution during startup so it matches the resolution that you were using in Mac OS X. It worked in Mac OS 9 with an extension I made.
In Open Firmware, you can print the aapl,pci properties using PRINT-AAPL,PCI
In Mac OS X, you should be able to see the properties using the ioreg command or IORegistryExplorer.app. The info stored in the property depends on the GPU driver.
In Mac OS 9, you can use Apple's "Display Name Registry" app or maybe "PCCard DispNameRegistry" from the PCCard SDKs. I made my own utility called DumpNameRegistry. It can dump the entire nvram to see if any changes are made. It can do other stuff like clear nvram.
The code for reading and writing the Old World (Type 0) and New World (Type 1) NVRAM properties is at https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1228.15.4/iokit/Kernel/IONVRAM.cpp. The code is for the nvram kext but I think you can use it to learn about both formats of NVRAM properties.
Open Firmware has words for reading and writing NVRAM. If you do it wrong though, you could brick your Mac. You can find the words for reading and writing bytes to nvram in my Open Firmware listings. I don't know if there's any higher level words for writing an entire nvram property. Maybe PRINT-AAPL,PCI will show how to read nvram properties. I haven't checked.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya5gfv67eqvrwil/ROMDumps.zip?dl=0
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The rather painful saga continues here too (and no, have not yet returned CPU to a FW 400 machine). Still working on the FW800 MDD multi-boot with OS 9 / Tiger and Leopard… on a single drive. Have had some success with disabling Spotlight and Time Machine and will cover all that later, over on this other thread: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6641.0.html
Out of curiosity, when you can boot into OS 9 - have you run Disk First Aid / and if so… what does it report? AND have you re-initialized and multi-partitioned your drive with Drive Setup 2.1 (instead of installing OS 9 drivers via some other method)?
Maybe a return to the basic OS 9 (only) FW800 install to check “square one” performance (without Tiger or Leopard) to see if you still must use those keystrokes to “wake” your monitor. Re-initialize and multi-partition(?) your drive and then re-install OS 9 on the first partition.
NOBODY enjoys repeated re-installs of any OS (believe me). If things change after the solo OS 9 install and you no longer need your wake-up keystrokes, then move to installing Tiger (and maybe Leopard?). IF you’ve re-initialized and multi-partitoned your drive before installing OS 9. NOT forgetting to also turn-off, disable (or totally eradicate) Spotlight & Time Machine in Tiger and then Leopard - as you install each one - as you go. BIG FUN. Of course you may then need to Erase and re-install OS 9 again from the mounted & Unsupported OS 9, Apple Software Restore.
Important Note: Even if the solo OS 9 install works and you’ve no wake-up problems, you’ll need to initialize and re-partition your drive AND then NOT re-install OS 9… before installing Tiger & Leopard. See: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6641.msg49796.html#msg49796
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6570.0;attach=11296;image)
joevt has provided some very good NVRAM & monitor-related info (post above) but before delving into any of that (and perhaps further complicating matters) I’d start over with the basic Unsupported OS 9 installation just to determine if your monitor wake-up problem persists. If not, then proceed from there. But, your choice.
My suspicion(s) in your case are that via Open Firmware and possibly Terminal, that you may have inadvertently “adjusted” something, best left alone. Thus, begin again with a clean OS 9 re-install slate? Everything works then? THEN see the Important Note and link above.
Again, what monitor ARE you using? AND no attemped installs / re-installs with anything other than the bare necessities of: one monitor, keyboard & mouse connected. Remove all other expansion cards, external drives, network connections and peripherals… beforehand. And as far as the ATI Radeon 9000 Pro goes… again never any problems here. The Radeon Pro 9000 was the standard video card on the dual 1.0 and 1.25 GHz FW400 and the FW800 PM G4 and 1.25 GHz MDDs.
Tally-ho! ;)
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My saga has ended, in multiple ways.
After months of trying random things, I finally got it to stick the landing. All it took was an apple studio display (the LCD one of that period)!
I can freely switch between OS's without a hint of trouble with the display waking up.
All it took was buying a FW400 that came with the display to find out. 🤦
Funny thing is that even the FW400 will not wake the display I was using after booting OS 9 either. So there is some weird compatibility problem with that monitor. Nice call out, everyone! Any chance it's to do with its resolution? (1680x1050).
I guess I just get more fast OS9 machines. I won't complain!
Thanks to everyone who stuck it out and added lots of good info. All of your voices were really appreciated. Let it be known, display wake issues can be caused by using monitors that don't work well with these machines..
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Facing a similar challenge with my rev.B 1Ghz eMac Combo (no native os 9), and coming to this thread a year late, certain steps were ambiguous to me but I found a solution and wanted to post a followup here to confirm and clarify for others who might be looking for help. . .
My setup is simple: eMac 1GHz combo drive, with a big HDD (500Gb)
My problem is the catch 22:
1. Mac OS9 Lives CD (for unsupported G4) boots fine, but Disk Setup cannot partition more than 130Mb of my big drive
and
2. No OSX install that I have found shows me the "Install OS9 Drivers" checkbox option in Disk Utility.
So I am stuck unable to take full advantage of the large drive, multi-partitioned for dual boot.
After reading a LOT of threads, it seems #2 comes up for people enough to acknowledge it. I understand the option should be there when selecting the whole drive (not a volume within) and that it must be done FIRST (i.e. "Initialize" FIRST as made so very clear above). However, there's just no initialize option in the OSX Disk Utility after trying multiple versions of OSX installs. Furthermore, every screenshot I ever see that includes the "Install OS9 Drivers" checkbox has it on the Partition tab. I have tried Panther, Tiger and Leopard disks (booting each from install discs) and for me at least, I have never seen the OS9 drivers option under any circumstance. Yes, even the "Use a Leopard Disc" advice failed in my case.
Poised to try using a Terminal and "diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 120G. . ." command to force the drivers to install, I decided to try one last thing before that with the insight above: The MacOS9Lives CD boots and auto-launches the Drive Setup version 1.92 (even though the 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version).
My solution:
Boot from the MacOS9Lives for Unsupported G4 disc. Close the auto-launched Drive Setup. Navigate to the CD and mount the .img disk image file that is used for installing OS9. Go into the mounted volume, find Utilities and open drive setup in there!
This version of Drive Setup let me properly initialize and partition my 500Gb drive. Of course, it installs the OS9 drivers and I was able to install OS9 on one of my partitions which boots fine, leaving the other partitioned volumes for OSX or whatever I want. Then, I booted from Tiger disc and installed OSX 10.4 on one of the other partitions--and I am off to the races!
Of course, I have disabled spotlight. It seems to default boot OSX, but holding ALT lets me select OS9 whenever I like. Dual Boot working.
This resolved my catch-22. I hope it works for others that are mystified by the missing checkbox for "Install OS9 Drivers" and confirms you are not going crazy! Others like you are not seeing the option either. This is real and it's very frustrating, but here is a workaround.
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Sometimes it's difficult to see the forest fir the trees…
The root of the problem is very simple and basic. All of those OSX installers you tried, "see" they're on a non-native OS9 eMac and so the OS9 drivers option is simply not presented.
It's just one of the little fun things you get to overcome when you defy Apple's wisdom.
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All of those OSX installers you tried, "see" they're on a non-native OS9 eMac and so the OS9 drivers option is simply not presented.
It's just one of the little fun things you get to overcome when you defy Apple's wisdom.
The "Install OS 9 Drivers" option can appear on my Power Mac G5 and Intel Mac running Tiger or Leopard. It might depend on the drive. I think it works at least for FireWire drives and disk images.
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All of those OSX installers you tried, "see" they're on a non-native OS9 eMac and so the OS9 drivers option is simply not presented.
Yeah, that's exactly what I figured. Another approach I considered was to maybe try using the IdentityTool described here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2141.0
That might have done the trick and could be a new how-to technique, but the Box link on that thread is broken. Also, given the minor difference between my RevB emac and the one released 6 months earlier which IS native OS9 capable, isn't this something I could spoof using OF commands? I don't really need the answer to that now, but researching OF tricks was going to be my next attempt.
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The Install OS 9 drivers option when using OSX's Drive Setup will only appear if the drive you are formating is an external drive, i.e.firewire. OSX will not offer that option if it sees it as an internal drive.
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Ahhh. That makes sense, and explains the differences of observations among the accounts of attempts to use it. Thanks for that insight.