Mac OS 9 Lives
Mac OS 9 Discussion => Software => Topic started by: wayneh69 on August 10, 2023, 12:20:20 AM
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Hi
I have a PowerMac MDD with 1.25 DP (FW400), and a white MacBook core duo 2.0 with FW400 port.
The PowerMac had three physical drives (2xOWC SDDs and a spinning hard drive) which boot into os 9.2.2; Leopard and Tiger.
My issue is: when restarting in target disk mode on the MDD, with the Macbook connected via firewire, I ca only see the OS 9 disk and not the other two from the Macbook. Shouldn’t I see all three dives?
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Are the two drives connected to a PCI SATA card?
IME, only drives connected to the Mac's native ATA bus(es) show up in FireWire Target Disk Mode on another Mac.
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Thanks - for the respose.
All three drives are connected to the ATA bus (2 rear and 1 front). The one showing up is a OWC branded 120 SDD, which is exactly the same as one of the other drives. The spinning HD in the front bay is a seagate barracuda.
Wayne
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All three drives are connected to the ATA bus (2 rear and 1 front)
Just as a test move an additional drive from the "front" to the "rear" ATA. It may be that only the primary ATA bus is seen. Never noticed this, after all these years, but I usually only use target mode on machines that are harder to open... iMacs, laptops, etc. You may have discovered something.
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Should be able to find the answer by looking at Open Firmware dumps.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-how-powerful-of-a-graphics-card-will-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/post-30082400
I don't have a G4 MDD to test. The following is what I could decipher from looking at the init? word of the firewire-disk-mode package in my "ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM G4 Mirrored Drive Doors/Dump/Part2.of" file.
In Open Firmware, what's the value of product-family?
product-family
If it's 2 or 4 then the default list of supported devices is:
cd:0,cd1:0,zip:0,ultra3:0,ultra2:0,ultra1:0,hd:0
Otherwise, the default list of supported devices is:
cd:0,hd:0
Check devalias for the full path of each of those.
devalias
Are all your disks matching one of those paths? I think you can use the dir command to list the files on each one but that requires knowing the partition number of an HFS, HFS+, or FAT file system. I have a list-partitions command but you need to connect using telnet or serial port to paste it in.
If you know where your disk is, and it's not one of the above paths, and it's readable in Open Firmware maybe you can add it to the path list.
Does aapl,tdm-units appear in the options device or printenv result?
dev options
.properties
printenv
It's probably an empty string which means it will use one of the default lists above.
If the disk you want to add is mydisk:0 then you would add it like this:
setenv aapl,tdm-units cd:0,cd1:0,zip:0,ultra3:0,ultra2:0,ultra1:0,hd:0,mydisk:0
Verify that the change appears in the options device
dev options
.properties
After making the change, restart and try target disk mode again.
The maximum number of drives target disk mode will support is max-units which is 6. This can be patched but most people don't have that many disks.
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Hi
I have a PowerMac MDD with 1.25 DP (FW400), and a white MacBook core duo 2.0 with FW400 port.
The PowerMac had three physical drives (2xOWC SDDs and a spinning hard drive) which boot into os 9.2.2; Leopard and Tiger.
My issue is: when restarting in target disk mode on the MDD, with the Macbook connected via firewire, I ca only see the OS 9 disk and not the other two from the Macbook. Shouldn’t I see all three dives?
I want to make sure I understand this because it doesn't make sense to me.
You say you are trying to boot your Macbook via target mode from drives in your MDD?
Aside from asking the obvious question… why? There are a couple of caveats to be considered.
Assuming for a second that all drives in the MDD are visible to the MB, we ask: Why wouldn't Tiger or Leopard show up?
The first thing I can think of is that we must remember that both the later versions of Tiger and all versions of Leopard were packaged as both PPC AND Intel compatible. The installer in both would first look at what machine it was launched on then install the proper files for that machine.
That means if they were installed on a PPC machine, they won't boot an Intel and vice-versa.
So, why would the OS9 System show up at all since it certainly won't boot the Intel either? I have NO idea. Maybe there's some odd characteristic about it (the MDD Multiprocessing file?) that is basically unknown since virtually NObody would even try that anyway.
To resolve the "Is it the SSD or the ATA bus or the ghost of Jobs" question you need to boot the MacBook from it own OS then start the MDD in TD mode to see if all 3 drives show up.
If they DO, the above is likely correct.
If they DON'T, maybe it IS a "Where and on which ATA are they all?
OR… more likely:
You didn't specify, but I'm guessing that OS9 is on the spinner and Tiger and Leopard are on the SSD's.
That would mean the ATA adapters or whatever you're using to connect the SSD's causes them to not show up in Target Mode.
OR, going back to my first sentence, am I misunderstanding what you're even trying to do in the first place?
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This is my understanding:
The MDD has the three drives.
The Mac being restarted in Target Disk Mode is the MDD.
The MacBook is not being restarted. It is connected to the MDD so that when the MDD enters Target disk Mode, the MDD's disks should appear in the Finder of the MacBook.
The MacBook is a Core Duo 2.0 so it must be running Mac OS X. Which version? If a disk doesn't appear in the Finder, does it appear in the diskutil command? The mount command?
diskutil list
mount
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OK…… So most of what I wrote above… per Rosanne Rosannadanna: "never mind".
Going with: MacBook booted first then MDD booted in Target Mode. I did an experiment:
I have a MacBook Pro running Catalina.
I also have an MDD with 6 volumes on FOUR drives:
ATA100 rear: Leopard; OS9.2.2 & Aux files
ATA66 front: TM backup; Archive files & OS9.2.2 for emergencies
So, When I boot the MDD in Target Mode, ONLY OSX Leopard comes up on my MBP.
Note my OSX is on an SSD with a Red Startech adapter in the Master position of the ATA100 bus although all drives are set to Cable Select.
I've never had to try this before but since both of our similar setups seem to show only one drive, I'm now suspecting it may be normal.
Especially if your OS9 is also in the front position on the rear ATA100 bus. That may be the default "primary drive" position where Target Mode looks first.
They go in order
Disk 0: ATA100 master
Disk 1: ATA100 slave
Disk 2: ATA66 master
Disk 4: ATA66 slave
I'm not curious enough to dig into my MDD and start swapping drives around but you might want to see if whichever drive you put into the Disk 0 position is the only one that comes up on the MacBook.
If you must have all MDD drives available on the MacBook, you can always connect them over Ethernet either directly or thru your router.
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I'm not curious enough to dig into my MDD and start swapping drives around but you might want to see if whichever drive you put into the Disk 0 position is the only one that comes up on the MacBook.
Are you curious enough to follow my Open Firmware instructions?
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Are you curious enough to follow my Open Firmware instructions?
Actually, no. This was / is not my problem to begin with. I've already spent quite a bit of time on it already.
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Thanks for the replies everyone - and taking the time to think about this issue.
The spinning drive in the front bay has Tiger on it. The rear drives have Leopard and OS 9. I use OS 9 to run Rebirth RB 338 and Leopard to run (Propellerheads) Recycle and Reason 4. The spinning HD is big so has a stash of samples and loops that I wanted to transfer to the Macbook (Leopard 10.5.8) which also has Reason 4 on it. I’m away for a week and wanted to take the Macbook to do learn some more of the Reason workflow and thought that it would be handy a quick to use TDM, neber having used it before - ofcourse I could and did in the end use a USB stick - but it bothered me that I could onle see the one drive so thought I’d ask the community…!
I will certainly try some of the suggestions and I wonder if it has anything to so with the IDE/ATA adpaters and the master/slave settings? I’m not sure what the settings are but will have a look when I get back next week.
Thanks so much for giviing some thought to this issue!
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What does the MDD Developer Note says about the Target Disk Mode?
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Target Disk Mode
The user has the option at boot time to put the computer into a mode of operation called Target Disk Mode (TDM). When the Power Mac G4 computer is in Target Disk Mode and connected to another Macintosh computer by a FireWire cable, the Power Mac G4 operates like a FireWire mass storage device with the SBP-2 (Serial Bus Protocol) standard. Target Disk Mode has two primary uses:
■ high-speed data transfer between computers
■ diagnosis and repair of a corrupted internal hard drive
The Power Mac G4 computer can operate in Target Disk Mode as long as the other computer has a FireWire port and either Mac OS X (any version) or Mac OS 9 with FireWire software version 2.3.3 or later.
To put the Power Mac G4 computer into Target Disk Mode, restart the computer and hold down the T key until the FireWire icon appears on the display. Then connect a FireWire cable from the Power Mac G4 to the other computer. When the other computer completes the FireWire connection, a hard disk icon appears on its desktop.
If you disconnect the FireWire cable or turn off the Power Mac G4 computer while in Target Disk Mode, an alert appears on the other computer.
To take the Power Mac G4 out of Target Disk Mode, drag the hard disk icon on the other computer to the trash, then press the power button on the Power Mac G4 computer.
For more information about Target Disk Mode, see the section “Target Mode” in Tech Note 1189, The Monster Disk Driver technical note. For information about obtaining the Tech Note, see “Apple Technical Notes” (page 65).
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The technical note does not seem to help on this point either from what I can make out.
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Try 'diskutil list' in Terminal, as joevt suggested.
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I tried it with my FW400 MDD. Only the master drive on ATA100 showed up, the slave didn't. I have no drive connected to other ATA buses, except for the optical drive. So couldn't test that.
BTW, I found someone said, for PPC Macs prior to 2003, only the master drive on the first ATA bus is available through target mode. The Macs came after that have all drives accessible.
https://uk.comp.sys.mac.narkive.com/fCYeDE92/target-disk-mode-ppc-and-intel
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BTW, I found someone said, for PPC Macs prior to 2003, only the master drive on the first ATA bus is available through target mode. The Macs came after that have all drives accessible.
So that pretty much means we are at the end of the line for PPC machines that can natively boot to OS9 :(
This is very interesting because I am shocked I never noticed this, but it kinda makes sense that I didn't because target mode is my "go-to" for things like iMacs with broken screens, laptops with broken screens, etc., and these machines have only 1 internal drive; normally with towers I just open the door, swap drives, copy and clone... still this is one of those quirky mac scenarios. It is amazing to think Apple did something without really documenting it... LMAO
"Think Different, Design different, and remember to keep the user guessing..."
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You can try accessing the disk from Open Firmware. And if that works, then add the disk to the aapl,tdm-units nvram property.
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If the disk is visible when you hold the Option key at boot (must have a bootable partition on the disk), then it means it's accessible from Open Firmware.
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Arrgh……The……Thread……That……Won't……Die !!!
BTW, I found someone said, for PPC Macs prior to 2003, only the master drive on the first ATA bus is available through target mode. The Macs came after that have all drives accessible.
https://uk.comp.sys.mac.narkive.com/fCYeDE92/target-disk-mode-ppc-and-intel
That was one unverified quote from one guy in the UK 15 years ago…
Even if true, it would be of very limited use around here… Anybody have a G5 or a pre-Catalina Intel radiator or trashcan to test?
I would imagine you would need be running OSX to see much of anything beyond the G5.
You can try accessing the disk from Open Firmware. And if that works, then add the disk to the aapl,tdm-units nvram property.
If the disk is visible when you hold the Option key at boot (must have a bootable partition on the disk), then it means it's accessible from Open Firmware.
Everyone who's ever booted a Mac in Target Mode must have noticed that it comes up in just a second or two.
That is because a subroutine is invoked that provides an interface to and mounts the drive on the FW bus - a place the drive would never see normally. It doesn't even bother to send over the drive's icon - only a generic icon or no icon at all appears on the receiving end.
I suspect that makes all of the above Open Firmware ideas moot because the Target machine never really even loads the OS. It just connects the drive and displays the FW symbol onscreen.
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That is because a subroutine is invoked that provides an interface to and mounts the drive on the FW bus - a place the drive would never see normally.
The drive is an ATA drive and is therefore not on the FireWire bus.
The only thing on the FireWire bus is the two Macs. One Mac is running Mac OS X. The other Mac is running Open Firmware.
Open Firmware is reading/writing to block devices (ATA, SCSI, etc.) from the Open Firmware device tree according to commands sent over Fire Wire from the other Mac. Any block device should work. It just needs a read and write command according to the Open Firmware spec.
It doesn't even bother to send over the drive's icon - only a generic icon or no icon at all appears on the receiving end.
If the drive's icon is not on the disk then there's nothing to send. If you want a volume to have an icon, Mac OS X will look for a .VolumeIcon.icns file in the root directory of a volume. The root directory also needs to have its Custom Icon flag set.
I suspect that makes all of the above Open Firmware ideas moot because the Target machine never really even loads the OS. It just connects the drive and displays the FW symbol onscreen.
Correct. Open Firmware just passes info about the list of block devices it has made available through the FireWire Target Disk Mode interface. Open Firmware displays the FW symbol onscreen to show that the Mac is in FireWire Target Disk Mode. I'm not sure if the disk appears as a FireWire disk (using FireWire mass storage device driver) or as a special block device in Mac OS X. If it was the former then it would appear in Windows and Linux as well.
On Intel Macs, EFI does the job of presenting block devices over FireWire, USB, or Thunderbolt Target Disk Modes. Macs that support multiple Target Disk Modes will show an icon for each supported connection type until you connect a Mac with one of the supported connection types - then only the icon for that connection type remains.
Holding the option key at boot as I suggested is a method to determine if a drive is accessible to Open Firmware, since Open Firmware is also responsible for the Startup Manager UI. If a startup volume is accessible to Open Firmware, then the entire disk (block device) that contains the startup volume (partition) should be accessible by FireWire Target Disk Mode. If the disk is not in the default list of drives to be included for FireWire Target Disk Mode, then the default list needs to be overridden by creating a new list in the aapl,tdm-units nvram variable using setenv in Open Firmware or nvram in Mac OS X.
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Wow…… Just, Wow…
I going to make two points and then I'll never address this subject again, I swear!
per·spec·tive | pərˈspektiv |
True understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion: we must keep a sense of perspective about what he's done.
Phrases
put something into perspective
correctly regard something in terms of relative importance:
these expenses may seem high, but they need to be put into perspective.
AND:
The spinning drive in the front bay has Tiger on it. The rear drives have Leopard and OS 9. I use OS 9 to run Rebirth RB 338 and Leopard to run (Propellerheads) Recycle and Reason 4. The spinning HD is big so has a stash of samples and loops that I wanted to transfer to the Macbook (Leopard 10.5.8) which also has Reason 4 on it. I’m away for a week and wanted to take the Macbook to do learn some more of the Reason workflow and thought that it would be handy a quick to use TDM, neber having used it before
Sometimes we all (including ME) need to remember that not everyone is a wannabe code monkey and / or wants to dig into the bowels of their computer (especially if they never have before) to accomplish a simple task. This poor dude is a musician who just wanted a simple answer and we proceeded to drag him through "Macintosh OS 301" instead of giving him what he really needed.
AND, after all that?
ofcourse I could and did in the end use a USB stick - but it bothered me that I could onle see the one drive so thought I’d ask the community…!
He took the shortest, most direct path to accomplish the task. I therefore submit that wayneh69 is clearly the smartest guy in the room.
Someone told me I have two faults… I don't listen and some other shit they were rattling on about…
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Wow…… Just, Wow…
Count to 10 and take a deep breath.
I going to make two points and then I'll never address this subject again, I swear!
It's ok if you want to address this subject again, when you have something interesting or useful to add.
Sometimes we all (including ME) need to remember that not everyone is a wannabe code monkey and / or wants to dig into the bowels of their computer (especially if they never have before) to accomplish a simple task. This poor dude is a musician who just wanted a simple answer and we proceeded to drag him through "Macintosh OS 301" instead of giving him what he really needed.
This is a public forum. Sometimes a code monkey will appear and will want to learn or try something new. No one is dragging anyone around. We are exchanging ideas and suggestions and knowledge. All of which can be ignored if you like.
AND, after all that?
ofcourse I could and did in the end use a USB stick - but it bothered me that I could onle see the one drive so thought I’d ask the community…!
He took the shortest, most direct path to accomplish the task. I therefore submit that wayneh69 is clearly the smartest guy in the room.
I'm glad he found a solution and can move on and go about his day. He said he was bothered by the issue and might try some of the ideas next week. Or maybe he won't. That's ok too.
Maybe he or someone else in the future will come back to this thread and try something different to discover why Target Disk Mode doesn't see all the drives, what drives it can see, and how to make it see all the drives. I think the first two of those three questions are answered. The third just needs testing. Then the thread can end. :)
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I admire your patience, joevt.
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Well - I am coning to the end of my week away (you’ll all be pleased to hear) so will try some of the suggestions next week! Love passion shown here - kudos to all
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Hmm - I booted to the startup manager on the MDD - all three drives are showing. On the Macbook, when connected in TDM to the MDD the “diskutil” commmand only lists the OS9 disk - this is the master on the MDD. No other drives show up. The optical drive on the MDD when loaded does not show up either. However, the MDD can see the optical drive of the Macbook when I put that machine into TDM.
I’ve kind of reached a dead end right now. I did boot into open firmware, but I got scared that I might brick my machine as I have zero knowledge and experience of it so I’m not going to mess.
Ultimately I can live with it but - as has been said here, maybe someone with the right skills, patience and motivation can eventually get to the bottom of this.
Thanks for trying though
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Hmm - I booted to the startup manager on the MDD - all three drives are showing. On the Macbook, when connected in TDM to the MDD the “diskutil” commmand only lists the OS9 disk - this is the master on the MDD. No other drives show up. The optical drive on the MDD when loaded does not show up either. However, the MDD can see the optical drive of the Macbook when I put that machine into TDM.
I’ve kind of reached a dead end right now. I did boot into open firmware, but I got scared that I might brick my machine as I have zero knowledge and experience of it so I’m not going to mess.
Ultimately I can live with it but - as has been said here, maybe someone with the right skills, patience and motivation can eventually get to the bottom of this.
Thanks for trying though
Hmm…………
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Hmm - I booted to the startup manager on the MDD - all three drives are showing. On the Macbook, when connected in TDM to the MDD the “diskutil” commmand only lists the OS9 disk - this is the master on the MDD. No other drives show up. The optical drive on the MDD when loaded does not show up either. However, the MDD can see the optical drive of the Macbook when I put that machine into TDM.
I’ve kind of reached a dead end right now. I did boot into open firmware, but I got scared that I might brick my machine as I have zero knowledge and experience of it so I’m not going to mess.
Since all three drives appear in the Startup Manager on the MDD, it means that all of them are usable from Open Firmware and probably also FireWire Target Disk Mode (baring some bug in TDM).
For those that do want to mess, the commands in http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6819.msg52145.html#msg52145 have no chance to brick. They are there for gathering info for the setenv aapl,tdm-units command.
On the MDD, diskutil list can get the partition number of the HFS volumes of each disk.
For a specific disk, the pdisk command can be used to get more info from the partition map and to verify the Apple Partition Map numbers match the diskutil numbers.
pdisk -l /dev/disk3 # or whatever the disk number is
To list the files on partition 17 (decimal) of hd, append a colon and the partition number in hex:
dir hd0:11
Another command in Mac OS X that might be useful is
ioreg
The IO Registry path of a disk can help to determine the Open Firmware path of the disk.
If you set a disk as the default startup disk in the Startup Disk preferences panel in Mac OS X, then type
nvram -p
It may show the Open Firmware path of the disk in the boot-device nvram variable. You can also see that nvram variable in Open Firmware using printenv.
For G4 MDD, I believe these are the devaliases referring to disks:
hd /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0
cd /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-3@20000/disk@0
zip /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-3@20000/disk@1
ide0 /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-3@20000/disk@0
ide1 /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-3@20000/disk@1
ultra0 /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0
ultra1 /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@1
ultra2 /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk@0
ultra3 /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk@1
cd1 /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-3@20000/disk@1
This is the list of supported TDM disks:
cd:0,cd1:0,zip:0,ultra3:0,ultra2:0,ultra1:0,hd:0
The zip devalias might not exist but that doesn't matter if the cd1 dev alias exists since it is the same path and the TDM code appears to be smart enough to skip invalid paths.
ide0, ide1, ultra0 are duplicates of other paths.
Either the missing disk is not among the devaliases, or the list of supported TDM disks is only
cd:0,hd:0
The list is determined by the product-family value. It needs to be 2 or 4 to get the full list of supported TDM disks.
2 and 4 refer to PowerMac and RackMac but 0 also refers to PowerMac.
product-family is the 4 most significant bits of the 16-bit product-id. Neither value is a property, so they can't be seen by ioreg in Mac OS X. You have to get their value in Open Firmware like this:
product-id
.
product-family
.
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Ok….
All my drives appear in the devalias list.
The product family value appears to be 2
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All my drives appear in the devalias list.
For each one, what is the device path and partition number as shown in boot-command nvram variable?
What's the boot device path for the one that doesn't work with TDM?
Check in Mac OS X that the aapl,tdm-units nvram variable exists and is blank:
sudo nvram aapl,tdm-units
For all three drives, try this in Mac OS X (replace hd with the devalias for the first of the three drives)
sudo nvram aapl,tdm-units=hd:0
Restart into TDM. On the other Mac, verify that only that one drive is mounted in TDM by itself.
Repeat for the second drive that works. Does it appear by itself also?
Do that for the two working drives will prove that aapl,tdm-units works has an affect.
Then repeat for the third drive that doesn't work. Does it appear by itself or is it still not working? If it does appear, then it means there could be a problem if the drive is not specified by itself or if it is not first in the list. In that case, you could try setting aapl,tdm-units to all devices, but have the problem device first in the list.
For example if the problem device is ultra2, then change the order like this:
sudo nvram aapl,tdm-units=ultra2:0,cd:0,cd1:0,zip:0,ultra3:0,ultra1:0,hd:0
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when I type sudo nvram aapl,tdm-units in terminal, I het an error (-1) code saying the variable does not exist.
Not sure if I am trying this wrong - ??
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nvram: Error (-1) getting variable - 'aapl,tdm-units'
:(
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I think that might be a standard error for empty nvram variables? I would have to setup my Quad G5 to find out.
You can use nvram -p to show all nvram variables. It might include the empty variables or it might not.
printenv in Open Firmware should show all the nvram variables including empty ones.
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This is now fixed!
The problem - in summary, was that in target disk mode and connected to a MacBook, my PowerMac MDD only mounted the boot disk (HD) and not the other two physical drives installed or either of the CD drives.
The solution: having established in OS X terminal (nvram -p) that there was no command to tell the MDD which drives were available in TDM (and I am assuming that it defaults to drive designated HD in the absence of this), as per @joevt instructions I added the missing drives to a TDM list using the command (in OS X)
sudo nvram aapl,tdm-units=cd:0,hd:0,ultra1:0,ultra2:0
The three drives and CD are now all mounted on the desktop when the MDD is restarted in TDM. I should add ultra 3 and the second CD drive for completeness.
I guess so long as you know it defaults to the HD, for practical purposes this might not be an issue and it may even be desirable not to have to wait for all the physical drives to mount, but in case you don't see your CD or you are using a drive as a backup storage device - it is useful too have the option.
Huge thanks to all who have commented in this thread and super big thanks to @joevt!
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sudo nvram aapl,tdm-units=cd:0,hd:0,ultra1:0,ultra2:0
Wow ! Damn that's cool... one of the sexiest commands I've ever seen; time to get printed T-Shirts made... think the wife will wear one ?
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joevt is da man!
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Speaking of T-shirts and similar stuff and a bit of OT.
An old childhood friend of mine owns a boat named .. see pic ;D