Re: Building a macppc bootable USB image

On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 13:21:11 +0000, David Brownlee wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Jan 2024 at 12:49, Valery Ushakov <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 07:40:55 +0100, Martin Husemann wrote:
> >
> > > > For entertainment value I tried creating a standard MBR type 12 msdos
> > > > partition on a USB stick, and copying ofwboot.xcf and a kernel onto it
> > > > but it also did not boot (I didn't expect it to be that simple :)
> > >
> > > I would expect that to work but needing a more complex boot command
> > > specifying partition numbers.  Can you show the boot command you
> > > tried and the fdisk output for the stick you created?
> >
> > It doesn't need them for booting off of an MBR-only hdd.  My mini has
> > boot-device set to hd:,\ofwboot.elf where hd is the usual alias for
> > the primary disk, and that disk is MBR-only with a FAT32 (11, boot)
> > and a NetBSD (169) partitions.
> >
> > But then apple's ofw is effed up in unique artisanal ways every step
> > of the way, so nothing would really surprise me :)
> 
> While every model may be its own unique handcrafted slice of
> unexpected boot behaviour, we should be able to have a simple path
> that works for many of them, and is easy to document and follow :)
> 
> Could I ask as to a little more detail on your booting setup? - what
> was the PowerMacX,Y model, was the FAT32 partition 0, did it just hold
> ofwboot.xcf, was it active etc?
> 
> (Unless I could persuade you to update some NetBSD docs directly? :-p

I have a g4 mini - PowerMac10,1 with "Apple PowerMac10,1 4.8.9f1
BootROM built on 12/10/04 at 09:15:25".

From the most recent round:

  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2023/10/04/msg003030.html
  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2023/10/05/msg003041.html
  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2023/10/05/msg003043.html

For completeness, the old trampoline boot ISO trick

  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2002/09/19/0001.html

and netbooting with ISC dhcpd

  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2018/06/11/msg002525.html
  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2018/06/20/msg002535.html


Unfortunately I don't have time to write the proper prose for this.
Every time these questions come up I post links to my previous
descriptions of the simple boot options that don't require apple pmap
and ask someone to please add them to the docs :) There haven't been
any takers so far :)

PS: I also have B&W G3 in storage but no time to take it out and see
if its still alive.  It used the boot ISO trick to boot.

-uwe