New (to me) Power Macintosh G4 (PCI) - no drive detected, no System Restore disc, how to boot from burned CD-R?

[@GamesMissed]

(First off, if this is a duplicate or there's an easy answer to this and I'm just not seeing it, please feel free to point me to a link.)

I'm trying to get a Power Macintosh G4 tower (this model: https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=PowerMac1,2) working. I bought it a few weeks back, swapped in a new PRAM battery, and have gotten it to the point where it boots to the blinking "question mark" folder icon. It came to me with an aftermarket 500 GB IDE drive, but that was either wiped by the previous owner or has given up the ghost.

I'd like to try booting from a CD installer, either OS 9 or 10, or an Apple Hardware Test disc. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the discs that originally came with the machine. I've tried burning an .iso to a CD, and CD drive shows activity as if it's trying to start to read the disc, but never gets farther than regular repeated noises.

Also possibly confounding the problem are that:

• I don't have a USB Apple keyboard (only ADB), and I'm not 100% certain that the generic 104-key USB keyboard that I'm using is being recognized properly to allow me to choose to boot to a CD or the boot manager in any event.
• I don't even know whether these ancient CD-Rs I'm using are writing correctly. I'm writing the discs on a Linux PC, and can't read them back once written. It looks like they're not what I think of as a "normal" partition map ("file" run on the .iso returns "Apple Hardware Test v1.2.iso: Apple Driver Map, blocksize 2048, blockcount 15360 ... etc. etc.)
• I have never worked with a G4 Mac before in my life.

Is there a way to get images for the correct system restore discs? If so, do I need to burn them from another Macintosh in order to have them write correctly (I can likely use a relative's Mac for that)?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

No, any system can burn the .iso to disc, and the USB keyboard shouldn't make a difference (though avoid connecting it through a hub). Are you sure the optical drive is in working order?

A few things you can try. Hold down Command-Option-O-F on the USB keyboard as you turn it on. When the Open Firmware screen appears, release the keys.

- Try typing "boot cd" . What does it say?
- If that fails, try "dir cd:,\" (get them in the right order: c d colon comma backslash) and see what gets listed.

 

[@GamesMissed]

No, any system can burn the .iso to disc, and the USB keyboard shouldn't make a difference (though avoid connecting it through a hub). Are you sure the optical drive is in working order?

A few things you can try. Hold down Command-Option-O-F on the USB keyboard as you turn it on. When the Open Firmware screen appears, release the keys.

- Try typing "boot cd" . What does it say?
- If that fails, try "dir cd:,\" (get them in the right order: c d colon comma backslash) and see what gets listed.

Thank you! I can get into Open Firmware (let me know if any of the version information would be helpful), and I tried the commands you suggested. If I type "boot cd", it returns

DISK-LABEL :  read of block0 failed
can't OPEN:  cd
ok

It returns the same error if I try "dir cd:,\" as well. I turned off the system and re-seated the ribbon cable at both ends, but it hasn't made a difference. The drive has power (eject works, of course, and it seems to be trying to spin up?), but clearly something's wrong.

[Edit:] Oh, and I popped in a regular CD-ROM, a MacAddict disc that came in the box with the G4, to see whether that could be read. It still gives the same error.

I have exactly one IDE optical drive still lying around, but it's a DVD drive. I can try swapping that in over the weekend to see whether it makes a difference.

This was very helpful in giving me a direction in which to proceed. Thanks again.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Yeah, that sounds like the optical drive is shot. It should be okay with a DVD drive for reading.

 

[@GamesMissed]

Yeah, that sounds like the optical drive is shot. It should be okay with a DVD drive for reading.

A quick follow-up: it would theoretically be fine with a DVD drive, except that one is refusing to spin up, either. Argh. Well, either I pick up another optical drive at a flea market or from Goodwill, or I figure out how to repair an optical drive. Or both ...

Thanks for your help, @ClassicHasClass . As a newcomer, I greatly appreciate it. Have a good day.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

It does seem a little odd that both drives *and* the internal HD (all of which would be on IDE) don't work. Try "dir hd:,\" just for yuks to see what the hard disk is doing. If that fails in *exactly* the same way, then a controller failure can't be ruled out, though if it fails differently, it could still just be bad luck.

You do have a couple other options, but these aren't easy. The FireWire ports are readily bootable if you have a drive or a FW400 enclosure. I suspect you don't, though, since most people who aren't classic Mac nerds don't really have a reason to have any lying around. While you may be able to coerce the machine to boot from USB, this is typically difficult in these older G4 systems, and you would need a bootable volume to do so as well as knowing the USB port and partition number to boot from.

 

[@GamesMissed]

It does seem a little odd that both drives *and* the internal HD (all of which would be on IDE) don't work. Try "dir hd:,\" just for yuks to see what the hard disk is doing. If that fails in *exactly* the same way, then a controller failure can't be ruled out, though if it fails differently, it could still just be bad luck.

You do have a couple other options, but these aren't easy. The FireWire ports are readily bootable if you have a drive or a FW400 enclosure. I suspect you don't, though, since most people who aren't classic Mac nerds don't really have a reason to have any lying around. While you may be able to coerce the machine to boot from USB, this is typically difficult in these older G4 systems, and you would need a bootable volume to do so as well as knowing the USB port and partition number to boot from.

"dir hd:,\" returns "can't OPEN the DIR device" . This is slightly different? "dir cd:,\" returns

"DISK-LABEL : read of block0 failed
can't OPEN the DIR device
ok"

I might be able to find a Firewire drive or enclosure at the local electronics flea market in a few weekends, although I don't know what the asking price might be.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I'd go for an FW enclosure, since the idea is maximum flexibility. You could try connecting a USB optical drive if you have one. Something like "dir usb0/disk:3,\" or "dir usb1/disk:3,\" might yield something (play with those numbers). I wouldn't run out and purchase a USB optical drive unless it were cheap, though, since they can be finicky boot sources even on working machines.

 

[@GamesMissed]

I'd go for an FW enclosure, since the idea is maximum flexibility. You could try connecting a USB optical drive if you have one. Something like "dir usb0/disk:3,\" or "dir usb1/disk:3,\" might yield something (play with those numbers). I wouldn't run out and purchase a USB optical drive unless it were cheap, though, since they can be finicky boot sources even on working machines.

I am exactly the sort of person who still keeps USB optical drives around; I have two, maybe three, all working. I just didn't expect them to be an option.

I also have two IDE hard drives still kicking around in my Old Drive Box. Is it a bad idea to try swapping one of them into the G4? Does it just take standard IDE drives, I don't need to worry about non-standard connectors? I realize it still wouldn't boot off of them, but would it give me the opportunity to test whether they can be detected in Open Firmware?

 

[phunguss]

Old drives laying in a box should be fine, as long as they are not TOO old, meaning do they have jumpers for sector size and heads?

I don't think anything PPC was designed to boot off of USB, regardless if it was optical. But I may be wrong.

 

[joevt]

I don't think anything PPC was designed to boot off of USB, regardless if it was optical. But I may be wrong.

According to https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...l-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/ in the "List of Open Firmware versions", USB was bootable when FireWire became bootable - at least since Open Firmware 3.2.4f1 02/18/00.
Apple removed automatic USB boot some time after 04/06/04 and before 08/25/04 but you can add a nvramrc patch to restore it.
I am looking for ROM dumps of Open Firmware version / Power Mac model combinations not included in that list.

Unfortunately, PowerMac1,2 probably predates FireWire/USB booting support. It would take a lot of work to update the firmware to a version that supports FireWire / USB. It would require porting the code from a later Open Firmware version and creating a firmware updater. I think we have all the code needed to do that. DingusPPC is an emulator that can test new ROMs for the PowerMac1,2 (but it doesn't support USB or FireWire yet so it can only test everything else in the ROM which is ok).

Maybe you can use a SATA HD or CD-ROM drive with a SATA to IDE adapter from StarTech or similar.
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2sat2

When connecting an IDE drive, you need to check the jumpers to see if it's primary (master), secondary (slave), or cable select.
I think for PowerMac1,2 the HD is master on the PCI ATA controller and the CD is master on IDE0 bus. There may also be an inaccessible IDE1 bus. A Zip drive is probably slave on IDE0 bus.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I am exactly the sort of person who still keeps USB optical drives around; I have two, maybe three, all working. I just didn't expect them to be an option.

I also have two IDE hard drives still kicking around in my Old Drive Box. Is it a bad idea to try swapping one of them into the G4? Does it just take standard IDE drives, I don't need to worry about non-standard connectors? I realize it still wouldn't boot off of them, but would it give me the opportunity to test whether they can be detected in Open Firmware?

It won't harm anything. You could try a command like "probe-usb multi-boot" with a USB device connected and see what it does. Note that this may interrupt your mouse or keyboard and you may need to hold in the power button to force it back down, so this is just to test how far you get. If it comes up and tries to access those devices, then it might work (we just have to find the magic OF words).