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PowerBook G4 won't boot from perfectly good HD


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PowerBook G4 won't boot from perfectly good HD
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Dave
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
 
2015-04-23, 10:58

I've got an old PBG4 (1.25 GHz) that I'm trying to get to boot off a FW hard drive (no internal drive, and it's IDE anyway, so I can't just go get one). Is there a secret or something to getting this to work? Here's what the computer can do:

Boot from the installer disc (10.5 retail version, so it's not one of those "custom" versions that only has support for one model or something)
Detect the attached FW hard drive
Format & Partition the drive (HFS+ and APM, respectively)
Install the OS onto the HD

But what it can't do is actually boot from the HD. I've plugged the HD into another computer after installing the OS and verified that software-wise everything is actually installed, but the PowerBook refuses to boot from it. The Installer's utilities even list it as a bootable device, but if I select it and reboot, it won't work. It just sits there for a while, then boots from the DVD again, or gives me the blinking ? if I eject the disc. IIRC, even Open Firmware listed it as a bootable device (I held down opt at startup to get a list of them), but it just refused to actually work.

All I can think of is that PowerBooks don't support booting from drives as big as 1.5TB, so I also tried it with 512GB drive, both as one partition and as a 80GB and 432GB partition. No dice.

Any thoughts?

When I was a kid, people who did wrong were punished, restricted, and forbidden. Now, when someone does wrong, all of the rest of us are punished, restricted, and forbidden... and the one who did the wrong is counselled and "understood" and fed ice cream.
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alcimedes
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2015-04-23, 12:54

Drive size would be my guess, that or it can't boot from a SATA drive vs. IDE.
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Dave
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
 
2015-04-24, 10:41

Wouldn't the FW enclosure get rid of any SATA vs IDE issues? I do have a couple of old IDE->FW enclosures... I'm not sure where their power bricks are, or if I can find a working IDE drive to put in them, but I'll poke around.

What was ye olde drive size limit? I remember something about 100GB, but I could've sworn Apple fixed that back in the G3 days (or earlier).

When I was a kid, people who did wrong were punished, restricted, and forbidden. Now, when someone does wrong, all of the rest of us are punished, restricted, and forbidden... and the one who did the wrong is counselled and "understood" and fed ice cream.
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PB PM
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2015-04-24, 16:49

The old limit was 120GB, and that limit was lifted on the second generation G4 systems. Long before the mentioned 12" Powerbook would have been around. I believe the size limit for those systems was 750GB.

Apparently a drive formatted on an Intel Mac will not boot on a PPC machine, even if it is APM.

Last edited by PB PM : 2015-04-24 at 17:28.
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Dave
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
 
2015-04-24, 18:18

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
The old limit was 120GB, and that limit was lifted on the second generation G4 systems. Long before the mentioned 12" Powerbook would have been around. I believe the size limit for those systems was 750GB.

Apparently a drive formatted on an Intel Mac will not boot on a PPC machine, even if it is APM.
Oh that's interesting... I wonder what the difference is? I know I formatted at least one of the drives from the PowerBook, but I can't recall if it was the 512GB drive or the 1.5TB drive. Wait, it would've been the 512GB drive because that's the one I repartitioned just to make sure I wasn't trying to boot off a too-big volume.

(Also, I can't see how it'd matter, but it's a 15" PowerBook G4, not 12".)

When I was a kid, people who did wrong were punished, restricted, and forbidden. Now, when someone does wrong, all of the rest of us are punished, restricted, and forbidden... and the one who did the wrong is counselled and "understood" and fed ice cream.
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PB PM
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2015-04-24, 18:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave View Post
Oh that's interesting... I wonder what the difference is? I know I formatted at least one of the drives from the PowerBook, but I can't recall if it was the 512GB drive or the 1.5TB drive. Wait, it would've been the 512GB drive because that's the one I repartitioned just to make sure I wasn't trying to boot off a too-big volume.
Not sure, but that is what I've found by looking up APM on Intel vs PPC. Apparently a drive formatted APM on a PPC machine can act as a boot drive on either PPC or Intel, but not the other way around. My only guess is that APM on an Intel machine is modified to only work with EFI based systems, while the PPC version works with Open Firmware (PPC Macs) and EFI (Intel).
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ThunderPoit
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Join Date: May 2004
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2015-04-24, 23:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
Not sure, but that is what I've found by looking up APM on Intel vs PPC. Apparently a drive formatted APM on a PPC machine can act as a boot drive on either PPC or Intel, but not the other way around. My only guess is that APM on an Intel machine is modified to only work with EFI based systems, while the PPC version works with Open Firmware (PPC Macs) and EFI (Intel).
Yes, make sure the partition type is Apple Partition Map and not GUID on a PPC mac
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PB PM
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2015-04-25, 18:31

If you read the OP's post, Dave mentioned that the drive is using APM. My point was the a drive formatted to APM on an Intel Mac will not work on a PPC machine.
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