Monday 29 December 2008

Boot off hard disk

I've just found this information off a forum it show a possible way to get os4 booting off a hard disk


Here is the solution. First copy the directories Devs, Kickstart, L and Libs from the Moana CD to the root of your MacOS hard disk, ignore the other files in the root of the CD.

Eject the CD, go back to OF and enter “devalias”. This will print all devices from your Mac mini. Locate the entries hd: and cd:. Now make cd: to look like hd: with “devalias cd /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk0” (your Mac mini setup it may differ from mine so change appropriately). Now boot Kickstart with “boot hd:\L\slb” and voila, with some luck you end up in AOS4. Unfortunately this method seems to fail often to load the USB stack. Not the best solutions but hey, it works. The SLB loader is really crap when not booting from a real CD.

9 comments:

  1. I suppose that inbetween devalias cd and boot hd there's also a devalias hd to make it identifiable as /disk1 right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here is the solution that works for me:

    Using the steps below to load the OS4 CD, install OS4 to the freshly formatted harddrive. Copy slb_v2 in the L and root directory. Shutdown or reboot. Use the same steps to load the Moana CD and when you get to the "All init done; about to kill OF and start ExecSG; press any key" stage,hit enter. It boots to the hard drive from there and you have a new "Amiga".

    The Moana loader bypasses the Apple system ROM and then allows you to use the Amiga OS. I have tried all possible ways to boot directly off the hard drive to no avail. Besides,this method reminds me of my A1000 with a Kickstart floppy to load the OS. It loads rather quickly and is quite stable.

    My next project is to start modifying the USB,audio and Ethernet drivers to use the native Amimac hardware. Anyone have a Poseidon usb driver?

    Hyperion made the AmigaOne when they made the Moana loader so I am going to use that machince as a template to work on the Amimac/Mac Mini.

    Hopefully my AOS4.1 SDK will be able to run and decomile the drivers,etc.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ¿Is the project dead? I have a Mac Mini and OS4, but I won´t install untill it supports all the hardware. Would the morphos drivers help in any way?

    ReplyDelete
  5. 'm happy to read this helpful blog post.
    Personal data deletion scenario is often a problem for the consumer.
    A variety of data recovery computer software programs are actually designed a by the professionals, to make sure that a user can easily quickly restore his or her damaged details.
    Individual have to be well aware of the available info recovery resources to ensure that the guy can deal the data damage scenario in the best way.
    repair dbx file

    ReplyDelete
  6. hello to all, are you still alive? last year I bought a second hand G4 mac mini, specifically to test the moana loader.
    unfortunately it is a 32MB videoram version, so, as far as I have read around the net, it can't boot into the installer workbench screen.
    or, to say the truth, it gets to the screen, but the screen stays black. how do I get this info? well it's a guess, but when I do all the OF commands and I get to the last OF message, when I press enter, the screen goes black, but there is a lot of cdrom activity, similar to the activity you get when installing a AOS4.x on a AmigaOne (which I own), then it stops. the sceren is still black, but if I prompt the display commands on the display, the info tells me I have a typical VGA screen entering the display, a 640x480 31KHz, 60Hz frequencies. so there is a video output from the mac mini but it's black. upgrading the videoram on the mac mini to 64MB is impossible for normal humans, since one should desolder the 2 videoram chips, one per side of the mother board, which are 2 K4D263238E chips (1M x 32Bit x 4) and replace them with 2 K4D553235F chips (2M x 32Bit x 4).
    so certainly the other way is to use a proper AtiRadeon.chip driver in the kicklayout loading.
    I have tried to burn different moana CDs, each with a different AtiRadeon.chip driver, but only the original moana CD works to the point that I said first, with all the others AtiRadeon.chip CDs , OF, after entering boot cd:\slb_v2, says: load-size=256 adler32=257001 unrecognized Client Program format
    I have also tried the trick of connecting to the mac a standard laptop dvd drve with the eject button and the eject safety hole, but when I do the swapping of the CDs as instructed n this forum, the mac mini get stuck.
    do you have any other hint to help me? or do i have to sell this and find a 64MB videoram G$ mac mini?
    thanx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ecactly same scenario here, it boots to blank screen. Anyone have an idea?

      Delete
    2. If it is helpfull, i can make a video of the entire boot process, and uoload it somewhere. I guess my problem is, like Fabrizio has described for his setup, the 32 Mb video cache memory(VRAM).

      Of course, you could just find a new device with the 64 Mb VRAM, unfortunately, the old PPC mac mini devices are not just like dusting up anymore.

      Delete
  7. I have a 1.5 G4 (there is another FS on eBay UK now!!) but I can't follow the instructions written here. Maybe a re-write is needed?

    ReplyDelete