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shifuimam · Nov 29, 2006, 01:01 PM

Hi all,

I have a modified 466Mhz iBook G3. I've upgraded the optical drive to a combo DVD/CD-RW pulled from a Compaq laptop. Since this upgrade, I have been unable to boot from any bootable CD, be it Linux or an Apple OS disc. I could for a short time boot from a 10.2 install CD, but now even that fails. When I attempt to boot from a 10.2 or 10.3 CD, I get the Apple logo, but it will suddenly freeze, garble the display, and completely lock up. A PowerPC Ubuntu LiveCD won't boot at all.

I have heard rumblings that there's special firmware on Apple's optical drives, and unless you're lucky enough to get a drive with the right firmware (I know that some non-Apple drives are bootable), you're SOL. Is this true, or is there something I can do in OF or somethng to fix this?

Thanks!

[edit]According to xlr8yourmac, two people have successfully booted off this drive. What am I missing here? If this is a repost from an ancient thread that I missed in searching, mods plz lock this and point me to the right thread.[/edit]

imitchellg5 · Nov 29, 2006, 01:04 PM

Yeah, it is a firmware issue. Try putting Tiger on it. Tiger should boot from it.

shifuimam · Nov 29, 2006, 01:24 PM

Let's say I do get Tiger to boot (I'll have to grab me a Tiger DVD first - I'm assuming the Universal Binary/Intel DVDs won't work on a G3?) - can I do something with that to make the drive universally bootable?

I was *really* hoping to dual-boot OS X and Ubuntu...

gooser · 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

Let's say I do get Tiger to boot (I'll have to grab me a Tiger DVD first - I'm assuming the Universal Binary/Intel DVDs won't work on a G3?) - can I do something with that to make the drive universally bootable?

I was *really* hoping to dual-boot OS X and Ubuntu...

this may be too obvious , but have you tried installing ubuntu from target disc mode? at least i guess you can do this.

shifuimam · Nov 29, 2006, 07:46 PM

That's the funniest thing. I did try that. When I originally replaced my 300MHz board with the 466 board, I had to reinstall OS X. I decided then to try dual-booting.

I first found out that my combo drive upgrade wouldn't boot any PPC-compatible bootable CDs. Then, after formatting and partitioning the drive with Disk Utility through my boyfriend's PowerBook via target disk mode, I went to install Ubuntu.

I'm no stranger to Linux. I'm not a pro, but I've successfully installed Suse, Red Hat, Fedora Core 5, Knoppix, and Gentoo before. Ubuntu is a really straightforward installer made for non-Linux users - it's all GUI-driven like the OS X installer. I was very nearly done installing, and the installation completely failed. It's been awhile, but I believe I attempted installation again, and it failed. After that I just gave up and installed 10.3 through the PowerBook.

I'm not sure if Ubuntu failed because I was trying to install over Firewire, or what. When I went to install through the LiveCD, I made sure to unmount the drive IN the PowerBook to prevent any conflicts or accidents (my boyfriend would have killed me if I formatted his hard drive by accident!)

Aside from installing an OS on the hard drive, though, being able to boot off a Linux LiveCD would be really great.

It's been confirmed that other people have installed this model of drive, as well as many other models of non-Apple drives (e.g. models that were not specifically used in Apple laptops), and been able to boot off it. What is with my machine? It's driving me crazy. Is there some kind of Open Firmware thing I'm missing here? I've triple-checked to make sure I'm running the latest OF version for this iBook.

gooser · Nov 29, 2006, 10:40 PM

you may want to contact chasingapple. i know he tried to install ubuntu on his clamshell and he has a busted optical drive. don't know if he was successful. good luck.

chefpastry · Nov 30, 2006, 01:16 AM

Have you tried booting up holding the Option key and either 10.2 or 10.3 disc in the machine? I have an old Pismo which I replaced the optical drive on and that's the only way it will boot up from the optical drive. Holding the C key doesn't work.

shifuimam · Nov 30, 2006, 12:47 PM

Sure thing. I've done every kind of boot option I could find out about on Google.

It is the weirdest thing. It starts booting, but then it fails and locks up. Using the exact same disc on the G4 PowerBook boots up spectacularly. Same goes for the Ubuntu LiveCD.

If the firmware were completely unbootable, then I shouldn't be able to do anything with any bootable PowerPC-compatible OS CD, right? Something, somewhere, is deciding for me that it doesn't really want me booting off optical media. Psych!

So, yeah. I'm baffled.

stefanicotine · Nov 30, 2006, 12:56 PM

Have you tried booting normally and inserting the disk while the OS is up and running? If you can do that and click on the installer icon it will shut down and automatically boot to DVD. No guarantees, but it can't hurt.

shifuimam · Nov 30, 2006, 11:27 PM

I tried that, too, with the Panther installation CDs.

Same result - started booting, froze, and I had to hard reboot the machine.

I'm starting to think there's nothing I can do.

gooser · Nov 30, 2006, 11:48 PM

do you have access to an external firewire optical drive that you can hook up to install this? may work, may not.

shifuimam · Dec 1, 2006, 10:44 AM

I don't, unfortunately. I'd like to find a solution that lets me use my optical drive so I don't have to lug around anything extra. If Apple was nice enough to allow booting off USB, I could use a thumb drive, but that's a moot point.

Is there some kind of OF hack I could try?

shifuimam · Dec 6, 2006, 12:27 PM

Bizarrely enough, on a whim I decided to try booting off CD 1 of the OS X 10.3 retail CDs. It worked!

Very strange. I still can't boot off Ubuntu LiveCDs, but I'm going to try to burn a new one and see how that goes. Will post if it works.

Is is possible that by updating OS X to 10.3.9 with all the latest patches, that fixed it?