PowerBook G3 Lombard -- OpenBSD woes

lepidotós

New Tinkerer
Jan 16, 2022
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I've been trying to install OpenBSD for the last three days now. It's been going terribly.
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Turns out, the issue may be my CF adapter, but that hasn't stopped me from continuing to try to brute force it anyway even after learning this (I'm on what must be attempt #40 now).
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The activity LED will flash normally while writing for about a minute, the time is always different but usually base70 gets to about 40-60% install before it just completely dies for the rest of the time the laptop is running. One time, bsd didn't even install before it died.
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Constanrtly. It won't let me quit so I have to cut the power, which I'm sure is terible for the power supply.
Amazingly, it actually corrected the error this time, but I doubt it will do so again.
I'm also planning on trying the 512MB memory module in this laptop, even though the unofficial max is 512MB, just in case it does work. I'll post an update to that when I get to it.
The adapter doesn't always not work -- it installed Mac OS X DP2 just fine.
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But OpenBSD judt has been giving me nothing but trouble.
On top of that, in the preinstall environment, having my 802.11g cardbus WiFi card inserted resets the machine. I got another one for X/OS 9 that's known to work, but it's shrinkwrapped, so I want to open that one on camera.
Edit 1: and just as it seemed it might actually work and I'd look like a liar... nope. Dead again.
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lepidotós

New Tinkerer
Jan 16, 2022
10
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Alright, it fully installed, but it's now spitting "can't OPEN hd:,ofwboot" at me when I try to boot it.​
 

Patrick

Tinkerer
Oct 26, 2021
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action retro had the same problems with CF adapters as you do on an imac G3


I think you can still get IDE SSD hard drives. i wonder if they would work?
 

lepidotós

New Tinkerer
Jan 16, 2022
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You can get them, but as far as I'm aware they're essentially the same thing as a CF to IDE. I can try, but they also sacrifice one of the reasons I went with CF -- pulling the 16GB Mac OS card out and putting in the 64GB OpenBSD at a whim, or the other way around.​
 

Patrick

Tinkerer
Oct 26, 2021
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so it might not work anyway.

on the video he tried MANY adapters. and most didn't work. I think he said if he would to do it over again he would just stick with the stock drive.

YMMV
 

lepidotós

New Tinkerer
Jan 16, 2022
10
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As it turns out, I forgot to reset the jumper to M/S position; I had set it to S/M in case it helped at all with installing. It works now, though the adapter is still having issues freezing every so often.​
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lepidotós

New Tinkerer
Jan 16, 2022
10
4
3
It turns out, the 512 module is just recognized as 256MB. I wonder if I still have memory interleaving combined with my actual 256...
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