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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Classic Macs and Mac OS > Help installing X on PowerTower Pro 225

Help installing X on PowerTower Pro 225
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l008com
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Aug 1, 2002, 06:02 PM
 
I bought a PowerTower Pro 225 on ebay for use as a server. But I am having trouble getting X installed on there using XPostFacto. The problem is when the machine tries to boot with the OS X CD, I get the broken System Folder icon. I AM using an Apple CD ROM drive, and I did freshly reformat the har drive with Apple's Drive tool. Those are the two suggestions on the XPostFacto web site. I can't think of anything else. The machine has 128 MB of ram. It should work, and has for others. I need help.
     
himself
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Aug 3, 2002, 02:42 AM
 
it could have something to do with the jumper configuration or scsi id of your cdrom drive (typically set to 0)... but, obviously, this is only a guess.
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 3, 2002, 02:48 AM
 
I checked, and I set the hard drive to 0 and the CD ROM to 1. I unterminated the hard drive and terminated the CD ROM drive, and the CD ROM drive is at the end of the chain. Im telling you this thing is perfect. I can't figure it out at all.
     
Britney F.
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Aug 4, 2002, 06:06 PM
 
Originally posted by l008com:
I checked, and I set the hard drive to 0 and the CD ROM to 1. I unterminated the hard drive and terminated the CD ROM drive, and the CD ROM drive is at the end of the chain. Im telling you this thing is perfect. I can't figure it out at all.
Do you have any PCI cards installed? What video card are you using? Have you booted into Verbose Mode to see where X is failing?

Britney
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 4, 2002, 07:16 PM
 
The only PCI card is the default video card, which is some old ati card I believe. Yes I booted in verbose mode and I attached the results below...
The "Still waiting for root device" keep repeating over and over again, every minute(?) or so. What does it all mean? I did also reformat my hard drive with apple's drive setup. Also if you read the page on XPostFacto, the "PatchedIOSCSICDDrive cannot be loaded" is normal, it will always do that.
     
Britney F.
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Aug 5, 2002, 02:25 PM
 
Originally posted by l008com:
The only PCI card is the default video card, which is some old ati card I believe. Yes I booted in verbose mode and I attached the results below...
The "Still waiting for root device" keep repeating over and over again, every minute(?) or so. What does it all mean? I did also reformat my hard drive with apple's drive setup. Also if you read the page on XPostFacto, the "PatchedIOSCSICDDrive cannot be loaded" is normal, it will always do that.
Depending on what ATI card it is could be the problem. Most PTP shipped with IxMicro cards but there may have been some with ATI. The still waiting for root device usually indicates a problem with SCSI termination. It could also be that it is not recognizing the cd-rom as bootable. Have you tested the cd-rom by booting from an OS9 disk? Another thing to try is to move the internal scsi cable from the 10Mb/s to the 5Mb/s connection on the Motherboard. I would also try zapping the PRAM and/or holding down the CUDA switch before booting 9 to try to install X.

These are just some other things to try.

Britney
     
himself
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Aug 6, 2002, 02:01 PM
 
Originally posted by l008com:
I checked, and I set the hard drive to 0 and the CD ROM to 1. I unterminated the hard drive and terminated the CD ROM drive, and the CD ROM drive is at the end of the chain. Im telling you this thing is perfect. I can't figure it out at all.
Try setting the CD ROM to SCSI ID 0. There are also some "weird" jumper settings that work, like my 8500 CD ROM only boots with the first jumpers (parity, 0, 1) and the next to last jumper set. Also, are you certain that the OS X Install CD is bootable?
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 12, 2002, 02:35 AM
 
The OS X CD is bootable, but I was under the impression that the way XPostFacto works, it doesn't actually boot from teh CD, it boots from the mini kernel it installs, and just uses the CDs resources. I haven't tried it without the ATi Card, because its the only PCI card I have, and ATi card are about the only thing you can get for and old mac right? What to do? But I know I have my SCSI termination right. I have a Small SCSI2 drive as ID 0, a bigger SCSI drive as ID 2 and my Apple CD ROM drive as ID 6 terminated. The way it works is the ID numbers can be in any physical order on the chain right, but the terminated drive must physically be the last one? Its goona take some tricky rearranging if I am going to try and make one of the hard drive the terminated end. Thats all I cna think of to try, any other ideas. Time is running out for mac.com, I need my new email server up soooon.
     
Britney F.
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Aug 12, 2002, 10:20 AM
 
Originally posted by l008com:
The OS X CD is bootable, but I was under the impression that the way XPostFacto works, it doesn't actually boot from teh CD, it boots from the mini kernel it installs, and just uses the CDs resources. I haven't tried it without the ATi Card, because its the only PCI card I have, and ATi card are about the only thing you can get for and old mac right? What to do? But I know I have my SCSI termination right. I have a Small SCSI2 drive as ID 0, a bigger SCSI drive as ID 2 and my Apple CD ROM drive as ID 6 terminated. The way it works is the ID numbers can be in any physical order on the chain right, but the terminated drive must physically be the last one? Its goona take some tricky rearranging if I am going to try and make one of the hard drive the terminated end. Thats all I cna think of to try, any other ideas. Time is running out for mac.com, I need my new email server up soooon.
Xpostfacto does use the CD to boot. However a modified BootX is written to the HD.

As long as the ATI card is the stock card it should work fine. In fact it does work fine if you are able to read the screen when booting in verbose mode.

According to this page the "still waiting for root device" indicates that your system is having problems with the CD-ROM. I would try moving the whole SCSI chain to the slow internal SCSI bus and see what happens. If you get the same error you will need to replace the SCSI drive.

Hope this helps.

Britney
     
himself
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Aug 12, 2002, 02:25 PM
 
It just seems like you'll need to do a lot of fiddling around to get it working right. You could try ID-ing the devices in sequence (HD1 = ID1, HD2 = ID2, CDROM = ID3, etc)... I'm not sure if PTP's scsi is identical to apple's setup, but you probably don't need to enable termination, unless you have a HD with an extra adapter to connect it to your chain... sorry, wish I could help more.
     
Britney F.
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Aug 12, 2002, 04:37 PM
 
Originally posted by himself:
It just seems like you'll need to do a lot of fiddling around to get it working right. You could try ID-ing the devices in sequence (HD1 = ID1, HD2 = ID2, CDROM = ID3, etc)... I'm not sure if PTP's scsi is identical to apple's setup, but you probably don't need to enable termination, unless you have a HD with an extra adapter to connect it to your chain... sorry, wish I could help more.
The PTP's motherboard is almost identical to the 9500's motherboard on which it is based. Just about the only difference is that the 9500 has 12 ram slots while the PTP has only 8.

Changing the SCSI IDs should have no effect on the SCSI chain assuming that there are no conflicting IDs. On the PTP & 9500 the internal Fast SCSI connector is ID7. To correctly terminate the SCSI chain both ends of the chain should be terminated. In the case of the internal Fast SCSI the motherboard is terminated and the last drive on the chain MUST be terminated. Correct termination is essential when trying to use X. 9 is not as picky regarding termination. In fact my PTP's CD-ROM was the last device on the chain and was not terminated from the factory. It was rock solid in 8 & 9 for 4 years. It was not until I tried to install X that I found that the CD-ROM was not terminated. Once I terminated it X booted.

Britney
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 12, 2002, 05:49 PM
 
I had the same problem with the original CD Drive (non apple) so i removed it and replaced it with an true Apple 12X CD ROM drive, and I made sure it was terminated, and it still doesn't work. SCSI Id's are fine. And what internal slow SCSI are you talking about, far as I can tell I only have ONE Internal SCSI connector?!
     
Britney F.
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Aug 12, 2002, 07:12 PM
 
Originally posted by l008com:
I had the same problem with the original CD Drive (non apple) so i removed it and replaced it with an true Apple 12X CD ROM drive, and I made sure it was terminated, and it still doesn't work. SCSI Id's are fine. And what internal slow SCSI are you talking about, far as I can tell I only have ONE Internal SCSI connector?!
On the PowerTower Pro there are 2 SCSI buses. One is Fast SCSI (10Mb/s) and the other is SCSI-1 (5Mb/s). The Fast SCSI bus is an internal only bus. The SCSI-1 bus has an external and an internal connection. Once you open up the PTP look where the SCSI cable is connected. Both of the internal connectors are accessable without removing drives or the CPU card. They are located above the CPU card. The one closer to the drive bays is the Fast SCSI connector and the one closer to the rear of the machine is the SCSI-1 connector.

Hope this helps.

Britney
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 12, 2002, 10:21 PM
 
So, assuming the slow bus works, that means I can only USE the slowest of slow SCSI 5 MB/sec on the PowerTower under X? That stinks since the SCSI Drive I have for the thing is a 10,000 RPM, and I"m sure it can spit 10 MB/sec when needed ;-)
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 12, 2002, 10:35 PM
 
Well it worked, its installing in the other room as I write this... so does this mean I'm stuck with the super slow scsi? Or once its installed can I plug it back into the normal plug and have it go fast again?
     
Britney F.
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Aug 13, 2002, 09:16 AM
 
Originally posted by l008com:
Well it worked, its installing in the other room as I write this... so does this mean I'm stuck with the super slow scsi? Or once its installed can I plug it back into the normal plug and have it go fast again?
Usually you are able to switch it back to the Fast SCSI bus once it is installed. I would suggest booting back into 9 once you switch it over and reinstall BootX and extentions from XpostFacto. If for some reason that doesn't work try splitting the devices between the two busses. I would try the CD-ROM on the slow bus and put the HDs on the fast bus with the last drive in the chain terminated. This would require two internal scsi cables but would give you the speed out of the HDs.

Glad you got it working!
Britney
     
   
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