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shifuimam · Dec 14, 2007, 08:52 PM

I've burned countless ISOs of both Fedora and Ubuntu - install CDs and LiveCDs, as well as Fedora DVDs. I've tried booting off my internal drive in my iBook (pulled from a Compaq laptop) and booting off a CD-ROM installed in a FireWire enclosure with an Oxford chipset. I cannot boot off anything for the life of me, other than my retail 10.3 OS X CDs. Those work just fine, as do retail 10.2 CDs.

I've burned these ISOs in OS X and in Windows to no avail.

Is there a particular method to burning a Linux ISO so that it's bootable? This is really driving me crazy.

Warren Pease · Dec 14, 2007, 09:46 PM

Should be able to do it from Disk Utility with no problem. Make sure the disks aren't mounted when you burn them.

mduell · Dec 15, 2007, 12:10 AM

Three dumb questions:

How are you burning the ISOs? As a big file or burning the contents of the ISO?

Are you burning the PowerPC ISO or x86 ISO?

shifuimam · Dec 15, 2007, 03:52 AM

I'm burning the ISO directly. I've tried both Nero 7 Ultra in XP/Pro SP2 and Disk Utility in OS X 10.3.9. In Disk Utility, I'm just going to Burn... in the menu bar (I forget which menu it is), selecting the ISO in the Open dialog, and burning it. These are PPC ISOs on clamshell iBooks.

I got as far as booting the FC8 LiveCD on my other clamshell (original CD-ROM, 20GB drive, 320MB RAM), but it hung at some point after it started loading the kernel, leaving nothing but a white cursor in the top left of the screen. I can't even get that far on my XGA clamshell.

besson3c · Dec 15, 2007, 07:07 AM

So since it is booting the kernel it is detecting the CD, right?

Does the drive sound like it is having a hard time reading the media?

mooggeek · Dec 15, 2007, 08:11 PM

I feel your pain and I'm glad I'm not alone.

I have an indigo clamshell w/ firewire and a working cdrom pulled from a blueberry iBook. From the internal drive I can boot 10.1 and 10.2 and install with no problems. It chokes on 10.3, spinning up and down with lots of seeking noises, not even showing up when powering up with the option key. This week I picked up a firewire enclosure and put in an old DVD-ROM and was able to install 10.3 from that...joy!

I've downloaded and burned images for Ubuntu and Debian for PPC and I cant boot from them. I can see them in the option/power boot manager but they just wont boot. I've tried the internal drive and the external DVD drive with no luck. I'm fairly confident that they have been burned properly.

I'll be eager to hear if you have any luck getting this to work. I'll report back if I can get something going.

besson3c · Dec 15, 2007, 08:47 PM

I used to have a clamshell iBook, and IIRC the optical drive in those were very power starved, and had a hard time reading burned (as opposed to pressed) media. This would explain all of the seeking noises. I ended up doing a lot of booting and installing off of other external media to compensate for this weakness.

I'm not sure whether this applies to Shifuimam's drives she stole from a Compaq machine though...

penguindevil · Dec 16, 2007, 11:32 PM

I'm having the same issue. I've burned CD-roms of Ubuntu 7.04 Alternate PPC, Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop PPC and Fedora Live 8 PPC. Each of these I had made sure to have burned the Disc Images to the CD's, instead of just putting the contents of the DMG on the CD, or just putting the DMG itself on the cd. To no avail... Starting with "c" does nothing, Boot manager ("option") brings up the OSX and linux disk buttons, but selecting the Linux and continuing just returns it to the boot manager... I've also tried booting all of these yaboot's through Openfirmware, which brings me to a gray window with a "circle with line through it" in the center and a need to manually powerdown the computer.

I have also tried using the Hard Drive install of Debian. It just seems that whatever it is in the Linux installers (yaboot?) just doesn't work for me and I'm starting to obsess about getting Linux on this darned G4...

besson3c · Dec 17, 2007, 08:46 AM

penguindevil: describe the process in which you've burned your Linux ISOs... Perhaps that will help.

shifuimam · Dec 17, 2007, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

I'm not sure whether this applies to Shifuimam's drives she stole from a Compaq machine though...

Even if using a non-OEM internal drive is part of the problem, that doesn't answer the question of why my FW enclosure also will not work. This was an enclosure sent to me by a friend who used it frequently with Macs for years, so I know that the enclosure's chipset and hardware is completely compatible with Apple hardware.

ghporter · Dec 17, 2007, 02:20 PM

A hard drive is a hard drive. There isn't any "Mac-only" or "Windows-only" hard drive anywhere. That's not a direction to look in. It's sounding like it's not the disc but maybe something odd with the firewire port on the computer. If I'm reading the original problem correctly, all your efforts have been with something tied to the firewire port...

I'm either missing something obvious or you didn't say what specific computer you're trying to boot. Does it have a USB port? Can you lay your hands on a USB external enclosure (or even "external drive adapter" which is just a cable that plugs into the back of the drive on one end and a USB port on the other)?

shifuimam · Dec 17, 2007, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

A hard drive is a hard drive. There isn't any "Mac-only" or "Windows-only" hard drive anywhere. That's not a direction to look in. It's sounding like it's not the disc but maybe something odd with the firewire port on the computer. If I'm reading the original problem correctly, all your efforts have been with something tied to the firewire port...

...I've been trying to boot off the internal CD-RW/DVD and the FW400 CD-ROM on my modded clamshell. I've also been trying to boot on the internal OEM CD-ROM of my non-modded clamshell. I don't think it's an issue with the hard drive.

I think there's a problem somewhere with the discs I'm burning (seeing as I at least got my FC8 LiveCD to start loading the kernel on my unmodded clamshell, whereas it won't even start to boot from it on my modded clamshell), as well as possibly with the hardware in the FW400 CD-ROM and the internal Compaq-OEM combo drive in the modded clamshell...

The CD-ROM in the FW400 enclosure was pulled from some Windows desktop at some point in the distant past - probably a Dell or an IBM. The modded clamshell has a Compaq-OEM CD-RW/DVD, and the unmodded clamshell as an Apple-OEM CD-ROM.

It could very well be that the FC8 LiveCD just can't handle how slow the processor is on the unmodded clamshell, which is why it's hanging once it starts loading the kernel. I haven't tried a different distro (Ubuntu 6.10 or YDL) yet, but I will.

For the record, I can boot off retail 10.2 and 10.3 CDs in both clamshells without any issue (after I upgraded the RAM, that is - OS X wouldn't even try to boot with the stock 64MB in the unmodded clamshell). The unmodded clamshell is a Rev. B with 64MB onboard + a 256MB DIMM and a 300MHz G3. The modded clamshell is a Paris with 64MB onboard + a 512MB DIMM and a 466MHz G3. The modded clamshell has an NVRAM script that changes the display-family value that OF reports to OS X, but I had this issue before I ever did that mod.

I'm either missing something obvious or you didn't say what specific computer you're trying to boot. Does it have a USB port? Can you lay your hands on a USB external enclosure (or even "external drive adapter" which is just a cable that plugs into the back of the drive on one end and a USB port on the other)?

Both have USB 1.1 ports, but IIRC older PPC Macs (including clamshells) are incapable of booting via USB, no? I believe I read something on a Mac website that mentioned if you have OS 9 installed, you can boot via USB. Neither clamshell has OS 9 - one has just OS X 10.3.9; the other has OS 8.6 (via the original restore CDs that shipped with the clamshell) and OS X 10.3.9.

ghporter · Dec 17, 2007, 09:19 PM

Ok, a lot clearer. And that is indeed what I was asking about USB for. Or at least part of it. If you can read the burned CD via USB, that would tell you something about whether or not it's your firewire port.

You may be correct that something like FC8 would refuse to run with a very slow processor, but that would only be after it booted into something that would be able to find out how fast the processor is or isn't.