[Cipher13]

Okay, I have an iBook 500 with no screen, and the CD-ROM drive seems to be busted.

When I try to boot off a CD, or install from it, everything takes aaages... I think I left it go for several HOURS and it never made it to the package selection stage. It's as if the CD-ROM drive can only read incredibly slowly.

I've removed it from the machine and am cleaning it as we speak.

The machine plays audio CDs fine, and CDs do mount fine.

Anyway... while it isn't recommended, I know, could I just copy an OSX install over the network to this machine, and boot it? I ask because I'd rather not do it if it isn't going to work; once I format the drive, I can't exactly reinstall OS9 from a CD either.

I have no FireWire cable, so I can't use TDM.

I don't have an OSX Server machine handy, so I can't use NetInstall or NetBoot.

Has anyone done this? Theoretically, I don't see a problem... worst comes to worst, I play around in OF a bit to tell it to boot OSX (like I would with Linux).

[milhous]

You could take the hard drive out, adapt it from 2.5 -> 3.5 IDE and then stick it in a desktop machine and install it that way. But I guess you'd have to be comfortable with the iBook's innards before proceeding.

1 left to go...

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by milhous:
You could take the hard drive out, adapt it from 2.5 -> 3.5 IDE and then stick it in a desktop machine and install it that way. But I guess you'd have to be comfortable with the iBook's innards before proceeding.

1 left to go...

I've stripped iBooks down to nothing but their frame before... that isn't a problem. I'm way too lazy to do that, though.

I can't copy the stuff over the network, due to permission problems. Grrr.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Okay, I have an iBook 500 with no screen, and the CD-ROM drive seems to be busted.

When I try to boot off a CD, or install from it, everything takes aaages... I think I left it go for several HOURS and it never made it to the package selection stage. It's as if the CD-ROM drive can only read incredibly slowly.

I've removed it from the machine and am cleaning it as we speak.

The machine plays audio CDs fine, and CDs do mount fine.

Anyway... while it isn't recommended, I know, could I just copy an OSX install over the network to this machine, and boot it? I ask because I'd rather not do it if it isn't going to work; once I format the drive, I can't exactly reinstall OS9 from a CD either.

I have no FireWire cable, so I can't use TDM.

I don't have an OSX Server machine handy, so I can't use NetInstall or NetBoot.

Has anyone done this? Theoretically, I don't see a problem... worst comes to worst, I play around in OF a bit to tell it to boot OSX (like I would with Linux).

Use Firewire Target Disk Mode. Boot the laptop holding the T key down. Hook it up to another Mac via a firewire cable. Put the installer CD in the other Mac, and have fun!

(BTW, you only said you don't have a firewire cable; you didn't say you don't have another machine w/ firewire. So, get a cable!)

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Detrius:
Use Firewire Target Disk Mode. Boot the laptop holding the T key down. Hook it up to another Mac via a firewire cable. Put the installer CD in the other Mac, and have fun!

(BTW, you only said you don't have a firewire cable; you didn't say you don't have another machine w/ firewire. So, get a cable!)

Getting a FW cable requires effort on my part, and more importantly, would require that I put my main OSX machine out of action for the duration of the install, which isn't an option.

I only have 3 machines with FireWire; one being the target machine, and two that I can't really take offline.

Also, that means I have to wait until I get a cable.

There must be another way. I guess I could make an image of an OSX install and restore the image to the other machine, but... ah. So much effort. Back in the OS9 days I could've done this in minutes.

[Kissargi]

why waste the space of this forum by setting up a post if your not going to do any of the suggestions people have put forward?

[Angus_D]

So he can boost his post count to even less sane levels. (What are you compensating for, cipher? )

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Kissargi:
why waste the space of this forum by setting up a post if your not going to do any of the suggestions people have put forward?

Why waste space on this forum with a reply as useless as yours?

I explicitly stated that I didn't have a FireWire cable, and therefore couldn't use TDM.

That was one of the issues to overcome. Deal.

Angus: see, it's actually reverse psychology...

[Angus_D]

If you have multiple partitions you could image the installer CD, copy it across the network, mount it on the iBook, ditto it to one of the partitions and then boot it off that. Otherwise, get a fscking firewire cable.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Getting a FW cable requires effort on my part, and more importantly, would require that I put my main OSX machine out of action for the duration of the install, which isn't an option.

I only have 3 machines with FireWire; one being the target machine, and two that I can't really take offline.

Since when would you have to take those machines offline to mount your laptop on them as a hard disk with target disk mode?

[chabig]

Since when would you have to take those machines offline to mount your laptop on them as a hard disk with target disk mode?

He wouldn't have to take it offline to mount the laptop. But he will have to take it offline to boot it from the installer CD because that's a necessary installation step.

Hwever, he could use Carbon Copy Cloner to just clone of his other machines to the iBook. That wouldn't require any changes to the machine that needs to remain online.

Chris

[besson3c]

Cipher:

My iBook has the problem you are describing of having difficulty reading some CDs.

I discussed this problem with my local Mac hardware repair guy (whom I consider a reliable source of information). Apparently, there is a difference in read "strength" from burned CDs and pressed CDs.

Burning CDs involves altering the dye on the CD, while pressed CDs are.. ummm.. pressed. I, too, have no problems reading pressed CDs.

This is all an aside, but I found this interesting...

His suggestion was to try different kinds of CD media for burning, and sure enough this has helped. Apparently, it is not uncommon for older iBooks to have problems reading burned CDs. Something to do with power starvation...

[eevyl]

The best option seems to be to try Carbon Copy Cloner, using a local network or ... TDM.

Anyway, I strongly suggest getting a FireWire A-A cable to you Cipher13, and any other FireWire capable Mac users out there. If you have more than one Mac (even if you don't, for sure you know other people who owns a Mac) TDM with FireWire is one of the easiest way to transfer big chunks of data between Macs.

I never travel with my Mac without one in the backpack

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
If you have multiple partitions you could image the installer CD, copy it across the network, mount it on the iBook, ditto it to one of the partitions and then boot it off that. Otherwise, get a fscking firewire cable.

Good idea. Unfortunately, there's only one partition on the iBook, and formatting that would result in the loss of its currently functional operating system

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Since when would you have to take those machines offline to mount your laptop on them as a hard disk with target disk mode?

As chabig said, I'd have to boot this machine into the OSX installer CD.

Originally posted by besson3c:
Cipher:

My iBook has the problem you are describing of having difficulty reading some CDs.

I discussed this problem with my local Mac hardware repair guy (whom I consider a reliable source of information). Apparently, there is a difference in read "strength" from burned CDs and pressed CDs.

Burning CDs involves altering the dye on the CD, while pressed CDs are.. ummm.. pressed. I, too, have no problems reading pressed CDs.

This is all an aside, but I found this interesting...

His suggestion was to try different kinds of CD media for burning, and sure enough this has helped. Apparently, it is not uncommon for older iBooks to have problems reading burned CDs. Something to do with power starvation...

Yeah, tried all that.

I tried legit pressed Jag CDs, burned dark blue CDRs (the best), and even crappy gold CDRs. No good. It plays burned OR pressed audio CDs fine, though.

Originally posted by eevyl:
The best option seems to be to try Carbon Copy Cloner, using a local network or ... TDM.

Anyway, I strongly suggest getting a FireWire A-A cable to you Cipher13, and any other FireWire capable Mac users out there. If you have more than one Mac (even if you don't, for sure you know other people who owns a Mac) TDM with FireWire is one of the easiest way to transfer big chunks of data between Macs.

I never travel with my Mac without one in the backpack

Something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

It doesn't appear this is possible. The iBook hard drive cannot be formatted, given that I can't boot off a CD.

[ckohler]

Do you have (or know someone who has) an external Firewire CD-Rom drive? If so, just plug that puppy in and boot the OSX install CD off that.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
As chabig said, I'd have to boot this machine into the OSX installer CD.

You can't just run OSInstall.mpkg directly on the CD and tell it to install on the laptop hard drive?

[Cipher13]

Charles: nice idea, should've tried that... but I lost track of this thread.

Better to bring an old one back to life than waste forum space, I guess, so:

I bought a FireWire cable yesterday (I said I was lazy... only 3 months on )

So, I hooked the iBook up to my main machine, and installed from there. Now... the iBook will not boot Panther.

If I boot to OpenBoot, it sees the OS X system; clicking the arrow to continue booting results in not a whole lot happening.

If I just boot without any modifier, it comes up with the 'missing system' icon. Reset the PRAM, et al. Next step is to manually set up the boot with OF, but I'm not sure which partition to specify... so I'm sorta lost on that.

Any ideas?

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Charles: nice idea, should've tried that... but I lost track of this thread.

Better to bring an old one back to life than waste forum space, I guess, so:

I bought a FireWire cable yesterday (I said I was lazy... only 3 months on )

So, I hooked the iBook up to my main machine, and installed from there. Now... the iBook will not boot Panther.

If I boot to OpenBoot, it sees the OS X system; clicking the arrow to continue booting results in not a whole lot happening.

If I just boot without any modifier, it comes up with the 'missing system' icon. Reset the PRAM, et al. Next step is to manually set up the boot with OF, but I'm not sure which partition to specify... so I'm sorta lost on that.

Any ideas?

FWIW, what I ending up doing with my iBook (which I've since sold) is create a separate partition about the size of a CD, and use ASR to write/restore disk images to this partition.

It worked very well, and was easy to do.

[CharlesS]

edit: I had a way to install the OS using Pacifist here, but I have decided to send it to you via PM instead, since if the information is posted on a public Web site such as this, it could possibly be construed as a way to get around the copy protection on some of the update CD's. Sorry...

[Boondoggle]

There are hardware specific things that get installed.

I am pretty sure that the install scripts are not smart enought nor is there an option to detect the hardware on a target disk system as the boot system. In other words, if you're using a Powermac to install to an iBook in TGM then the system that gets installed is a powermac system. The installers expect you to be booting the powermac off the iBook.

This is consistant with my experience with OSX and 7-9.

You could concievably use CCC but you would have to clone OSX from a like system, probably another iBook of close lineage.

bd

[Jellytussle]

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
There are hardware specific things that get installed.

I am pretty sure that the install scripts are not smart enought nor is there an option to detect the hardware on a target disk system as the boot system. In other words, if you're using a Powermac to install to an iBook in TGM then the system that gets installed is a powermac system. The installers expect you to be booting the powermac off the iBook.

This is consistant with my experience with OSX and 7-9.

You could concievably use CCC but you would have to clone OSX from a like system, probably another iBook of close lineage.

bd

I think if you poke around on macosxlabs.org ,you'll find the asr broadcast (from Apple) that states pretty much the exact opposite. OS X is a universal install. If you use CCC, it'll ignore machine-specific files like the kextcache, so they'll be re-created on the new machine.

[tooki]

How about using an external FireWire CD or DVD reader/writer? (Yes, it will boot from it.)

tooki

[wataru]

I think a big issue is that the OS X installer modifies the target system's firmware. If you don't do the install from the target machine then obviously it can't do anything to the firmware.

[besson3c]

Here is exactly what I did:

1) repartitioned the drive, created a partition the size of a CD

2) created disk images out of the OS I wanted to install

3) Mounted the disk image

4) from the command line: asr --source="/Volumes/imagename" -- target="/Volumes/partitionname"

HOpe this is helpful

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
edit: I had a way to install the OS using Pacifist here, but I have decided to send it to you via PM instead, since if the information is posted on a public Web site such as this, it could possibly be construed as a way to get around the copy protection on some of the update CD's. Sorry...

Charles, thanks a lot for the email - was extremely helpful - unfortunately, the process didn't work. I think this machine is cursed

I'm gonna give it another try though, because it seems more than sound to me.

Originally posted by besson3c:
FWIW, what I ending up doing with my iBook (which I've since sold) is create a separate partition about the size of a CD, and use ASR to write/restore disk images to this partition.

It worked very well, and was easy to do.

Yeah, I might end up having to do that... but I really don't want a partitioned drive (esp. when there's only 10GB to play with), if I can avoid it, and I'd need to create the disk images first.

As a last resort, I think this would be the way to go.

Originally posted by ckohler:
Do you have (or know someone who has) an external Firewire CD-Rom drive? If so, just plug that puppy in and boot the OSX install CD off that.

Originally posted by tooki:
How about using an external FireWire CD or DVD reader/writer? (Yes, it will boot from it.)

tooki

Nope. Nor anybody with an enclosure, even. If only...

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
There are hardware specific things that get installed.

I am pretty sure that the install scripts are not smart enought nor is there an option to detect the hardware on a target disk system as the boot system. In other words, if you're using a Powermac to install to an iBook in TGM then the system that gets installed is a powermac system. The installers expect you to be booting the powermac off the iBook.

This is consistant with my experience with OSX and 7-9.

You could concievably use CCC but you would have to clone OSX from a like system, probably another iBook of close lineage.

bd

I think that's what I'll end up doing. I'll try using CCC and imaging the new iBooks system over to the other one, even if it does make no difference with regards to specific systems - the iBook system is the most trimmed of all the ones I run, so... makes sense regardless.

Originally posted by besson3c:
Here is exactly what I did:

1) repartitioned the drive, created a partition the size of a CD

2) created disk images out of the OS I wanted to install

3) Mounted the disk image

4) from the command line: asr --source="/Volumes/imagename" -- target="/Volumes/partitionname"

HOpe this is helpful

Interesting... I'll look into that as I look into using CCC. I suppose it's just a matter of which of the two is easier.

Again, thankyou everyone for the help

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Charles, thanks a lot for the email - was extremely helpful - unfortunately, the process didn't work. I think this machine is cursed

Wow, if neither that trick nor OSInstall.mpkg will work, something sounds really messed up.

Perhaps you could boot into Verbose mode and see where it's failing during startup? Maybe that will give some clues.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Wow, if neither that trick nor OSInstall.mpkg will work, something sounds really messed up.

Perhaps you could boot into Verbose mode and see where it's failing during startup? Maybe that will give some clues.

Something is definately amiss.

I copied an OS9 system over, and it dropped into Macsbug very soon after showing the startup screen... not nice.

The machine used to run OS9 fine (I think the system I copied over was a little messed up, though).

I can't boot into verbose mode, as I can't get past the flashing system folder icon...


EDIT: Some info about the machine.

iBook 500, 64 megs of RAM, 10 gig hard drive. No Airport card.

Smashed screen, which I have removed... it's a headless laptop. Outputting video via the vga dongle to a CRT.

It also has no battery, just running off AC.

I'm absolutely stumped. Going back to basics - a pure install of OS9.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Something is definately amiss.

I copied an OS9 system over, and it dropped into Macsbug very soon after showing the startup screen... not nice.

The machine used to run OS9 fine (I think the system I copied over was a little messed up, though).

I can't boot into verbose mode, as I can't get past the flashing system folder icon...


EDIT: Some info about the machine.

iBook 500, 64 megs of RAM, 10 gig hard drive. No Airport card.

Smashed screen, which I have removed... it's a headless laptop. Outputting video via the vga dongle to a CRT.

It also has no battery, just running off AC.

I'm absolutely stumped. Going back to basics - a pure install of OS9.

Wow, that's weird. Sounds like your headless laptop has become brainless as well.

Have you tried resetting Open Firmware? Command-Option-O-F at boot, then:

reset-nvram
reset-all

[Cipher13]

Sure have... repeatedly.

This is insane.

I've just installed OS9 via the G4, and now when I boot up I get the disk with the flashing question mark... uh oh.

Seems to be getting worse...


EDIT: Perhaps I was being impatient. It booted OS9.1, but got a bus error almost straight away. Bad RAM, perhaps. Sigh...

[Cipher13]

Great. Any OS9 installation fails to boot.

Perhaps it's a software issue... I don't know.

I ran the Apple Hardware Test CD from my iBook 900 onj the machine, and it came up all clear.

No problems detected.

I'm just... completely out of ideas.

[CharlesS]

What was the last thing you did with the machine before it started doing this? Did you install a new hard drive, anything like that?

[Hash]

exchange the cd drive to more modern one, one which reads CDRs fine. Your old drive is not much useful anyway.

here hint for lazy people

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
What was the last thing you did with the machine before it started doing this? Did you install a new hard drive, anything like that?

Nothing has changed, hardware wise. At all.

It used to boot into OS9 just fine.

If only I had the original CDs for the iBook 500. I can get them from work, but not for a few weeks most likely.

Originally posted by Hash:
exchange the cd drive to more modern one, one which reads CDRs fine. Your old drive is not much useful anyway.

here hint for lazy people

Not an option... thanks though.

[tooki]

Originally posted by wataru:
I think a big issue is that the OS X installer modifies the target system's firmware. If you don't do the install from the target machine then obviously it can't do anything to the firmware.

Nah, not true. It doesn't have to do anything to the firmware (other than set the desired startup disk, which is something OS 9 does, too).

You can boot a Mac that has never used OS X from an OS X disk/disc that was created on another machine.

What IS true is that on many Macs, OS X requires an update to the last firmware revision.

tooki

[CharlesS]

Hmm, maybe the hard drive on the iBook has a bad sector or some similar problem. The old system might have been on a clean area of the disk, while the new system is getting put on top of a bad sector, causing it to have these problems.

What happens if you try zeroing all sectors on the disk (which I believe you can do with Disk Utility if the iBook is connected via FireWire Target Mode) and installing the OS again?

[Cipher13]

I'm zeroing the drive at the moment... something I hate doing. It isn't good for the drive, but hey... it might be what's necessary.

Now that Tooki mentions it, I'm not sure that it has had the firmware updated (or if it needs it). I doubt it'd need it. I'm fairly sure it doesn't.

Either way, I can't exactly update its firmware without a functional operating system, and either way, it still won't even boot OS9.

This is very odd.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
I'm zeroing the drive at the moment... something I hate doing. It isn't good for the drive, but hey... it might be what's necessary.

I can't guarantee it will solve your problem, but it did work for me, once. There was one time I was trying to install OS X on a Pismo, and it just wouldn't install without giving me errors, until I zeroed the drive.

Let us know how it turns out.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
I can't guarantee it will solve your problem, but it did work for me, once. There was one time I was trying to install OS X on a Pismo, and it just wouldn't install without giving me errors, until I zeroed the drive.

Let us know how it turns out.

This gets stranger and stranger.

After zeroing all data, I copied an OS9 system via TDM and it booted perfectly. Worked fine.

Now, I installed OSX using Pacifist again, and... question mark at boot. No good. Can't get to OS9 anymore either.

Quite strange, indeed. I'm lost...

Thanks for your persistance, either way, though - it's much appreciated.

EDIT: I suspect that TDM may be corrupting the drive. I'm also about to try it with Jag, as opposed to Panther; perhaps the process you sent me doesn't work for Panther, for some reason.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
This gets stranger and stranger.

After zeroing all data, I copied an OS9 system via TDM and it booted perfectly. Worked fine.

Now, I installed OSX using Pacifist again, and... question mark at boot. No good. Can't get to OS9 anymore either.

Quite strange, indeed. I'm lost...

Thanks for your persistance, either way, though - it's much appreciated.

EDIT: I suspect that TDM may be corrupting the drive. I'm also about to try it with Jag, as opposed to Panther; perhaps the process you sent me doesn't work for Panther, for some reason.

You mean that after you installed OS X, the OS 9 system that was already on the drive wouldn't boot anymore?

This is starting to freak me out...

The process I described works with Panther on my machine and in my own tests. I tried it out on a spare 5 GB partition that I keep for doing stuff like this before I sent you that e-mail - it works on my machine, in my tests, but that is no guarantee that it will work on yours, I guess.

How about zeroing the drive, and then immediately installing OSInstall.mpkg on the drive using the standard Apple installer? Perhaps only the first OS installed on the disk will work for one reason or another, and subsequent OS installs will fail? God knows why, though.

edit: just to satisfy my curiosity, perhaps before you wipe the drive again you could try a few things to see if we can get the OS 9 system to boot, and maybe figure out why it won't in the process.

1. The bless command can bless two separate system folders on the drive - one for the OS X folder, and one for the OS 9 folder. There is a command-line switch you can give bless to tell it to use the OS 9 folder instead of the OS X folder, and that could possibly be what OS X is using to tell the iBook to boot from that folder.

I wonder what would happen if we set both folder variables to the OS 9 system, like so:

sudo bless -folder /Volumes/whatever/System\ Folder -folder9 /Volumes/whatever/System\ Folder -bootBlocks

2. If that doesn't work, I wonder what would happen if we rm -rf'ed the OS X stuff from the disk, leaving only the OS 9 stuff. Theoretically, if we did that and then blessed the OS 9 folder, we should be able to get the disk back to the state it was in when OS 9 was working, right?

3. If you end up zeroing the drive, I am curious to know whether OS X will work without OS 9 on the drive, and if you add OS 9, if it disables OS X in the same way that X is disabling 9.

[Cipher13]

IT'S ALIVE!

Just finished installing Jag via Pacifist, and booted the iBook up. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see that bloody grey Apple symbol.

The main thing different this time is that I installed OSX on a partition, with OS9 already present on another partition. I don't see how that would have influenced things much, though.

The other difference is that it was Jag, not Panther. I'd say that was the kicker... though you said Panther works fine with the instructions you gave me?

Go figure.

Either way, being the moron that I am, I don't think I can leave well enough alone... I'm gonna have to try it with Panther now.

But at least we know it works.

Thanks for everyones input, especially CharlesS.

BTW - Pacifist == awesome

Thanks again, seriously.

(I'm not finished with this personally though, I wanna know whats going on with Panther... )

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
edit: just to satisfy my curiosity, perhaps before you wipe the drive again you could try a few things to see if we can get the OS 9 system to boot, and maybe figure out why it won't in the process.

1. The bless command can bless two separate system folders on the drive - one for the OS X folder, and one for the OS 9 folder. There is a command-line switch you can give bless to tell it to use the OS 9 folder instead of the OS X folder, and that could possibly be what OS X is using to tell the iBook to boot from that folder.

I wonder what would happen if we set both folder variables to the OS 9 system, like so:

sudo bless -folder /Volumes/whatever/System\ Folder -folder9 /Volumes/whatever/System\ Folder -bootBlocks

2. If that doesn't work, I wonder what would happen if we rm -rf'ed the OS X stuff from the disk, leaving only the OS 9 stuff. Theoretically, if we did that and then blessed the OS 9 folder, we should be able to get the disk back to the state it was in when OS 9 was working, right?

3. If you end up zeroing the drive, I am curious to know whether OS X will work without OS 9 on the drive, and if you add OS 9, if it disables OS X in the same way that X is disabling 9.

Sorry man, already formatted before I saw the appended post... I'm quite tempted to go back to scratch and see what was happening though, now that I know there's no hardware problem... I'm not a big fan of partitions, and I'd like to remove the OS9 partition if at all possible.

As it stands, I have OSX on one partition (first partition) and OS9 at the back end of the drive (last 500 MB)... anything I can do with that setup to satiate your curiosity?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Sorry man, already formatted before I saw the appended post... I'm quite tempted to go back to scratch and see what was happening though, now that I know there's no hardware problem... I'm not a big fan of partitions, and I'd like to remove the OS9 partition if at all possible.

As it stands, I have OSX on one partition (first partition) and OS9 at the back end of the drive (last 500 MB)... anything I can do with that setup to satiate your curiosity?

Nothing that I can think of. Congrats on getting X to boot! Since you've got a working system, whether you decide to continue with this is entirely your call.

There seem to be three variables that have changed, and which could have affected this:

1. Two partitions.
2. Jaguar.
3. Only one OS per partition.

I suppose you could copy OS 9 to the Jaguar partition and see if it becomes unbootable again. Not sure if you want to do that, though, when you could probably just install Panther over Jaguar and have a chance at a working Panther on the iBook (assuming the cause isn't #2). Up to you...