Mac newbie unable to boot Hoary LiveCD / PPC

[Eric Dunbar]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 11:34:21 -0800, Johan Walles wrote:
> I've attempted to run the Hoary LiveCD on a 400MHz G3 Macintosh.
> Unforturnately I was unable to even boot from the CD :-(.  Since I have
> almost never attempted to do anything to a Mac before, I'm probably
> doing some very basic mistake.

Q: is it a "Blue and White" G3/400 (i.e case with blue and white
see-through plastic;
<http://www.apple-history.com/frames/body.php?page=gallery&model=g3blue>)?

If it's *not* blue and white coloured, and instead is "Beige" (i.e.
generic, dull typical i86 case colour ;) and lacks USB then you can't
boot a non-Apple CD directly BUT you can still install USB with a
little trick (search for BootX in the Ubuntu wiki)

> Anyway, I burned the CD using "cdrecord" on an i386 Warty system,
> passing no flags to cdrecord except the minimum required for burning
> the CD.
> 
> I inserted it into the Mac as soon as possible after the boot process
> had started.  The computer booted MacOS9.
> 
> It did find the CD, and it was called something like "Ubuntu Hoary
> LiveCD PPC".  It did contain a bunch of folders, with one named
> "Install" that had a happy face on it.  So for some definition of "OK",
> the CD seemed OK.
> 
> I then re-booted the system again, with the CD still in the drive.
> MacOS9 booted.
> 
> I then re-booted the system and held down the "c" button during the
> boot sequence.  MacOS9 booted.

You must press the c key as soon as you hear the chime (bong). Keep
holding it until you can confirm that the OS is booting, but, I
suspect something else is going on given what you report below. I
don't think your "Hoary" CD is Mac bootable (at least the way you
burned it)!

> I then found a tool called "Välj startskiva" (En: "Choose start (boot?)
> disk").  It presented a list with the hard drive, the Ubuntu CD and the
> network in it.  The Ubuntu CD was greyed out :-(.

In English that "control panel" is called "Startup Disk" (so, similar
to choose startboot). I'm not entirely sure what's going on with your
system.

A lazy troubleshooting attempt would be to reset the PRAM by holding
command-option-p-r when you restart (depress the key combination when
you hear the restart/power on chime). Keep holding that key combo
until you hear a SECOND chime. That indicates that the PRAM has been
reset to factory defaults. You will still need to reboot with the c
key held down to boot off the CD though.

However, I suspect this will *not* fix your problem (though, I'd be
happy to be proved wrong :)

FYI command-control-power is a USB hard restart and should work 95% of
the time (USB isn't low-level enough to always interrupt the mobo). On
the B&W (Blue and White) there are also two little buttons on the
front of the computer (IIRC): one is the "programmer's interrupt" and
the other is a hardware restart (works 100% of the time).

FYI2 command key = Apple key

PS Try holding down the "option" (Alt) key at startup. You *may* be
able to select a boot partition/CD but I don't think the B&W supports
this feature (it was the last Mac that didn't).

> What should I try that I haven't already?

Take a Look at YellowDog's how to burn a CD instructions -- see if
they do something different than what you did (aside from different
distro ;).

<http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/iso_burn-linux.shtml>

<http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/resources/downloads.shtml>

I would also advise you to try the "warty" CD or to try the
YellowDogLinux (<http://www.yellowdoglinux.com>) installer CD (1st CD)
and see if you can get them to boot. If they'll boot, then you know
it's the Hoary CD, otherwise, it's probably the software you're using
to burn the CDs (I don't think it's a hardware problem).

PS The B&W is a nice machine -- looks really good, isn't that noisy
(unless you have a noisy drive) and has room for extra drives and PCI
cards.

Eric.