booting from a cd on a emac powerpc
 

I have an emac powerpc that runs Mac OSX version 10.4. I am having trouble booting from a live cd. Holding down C does not work an I have tried different commands in open firmware and none of them work.
I need help.

What are you trying to run? Have you verified the download and burn?

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I have a live cd of both ubuntu and debian for powerpc, and I can't get either of them to work.

Did you ensure the live CDs you got were PowerPC compatible? A generic live CD won't work as those will likely be ia32 or amd64 based what a PowerPC will not be able to run.

I agree with the special format needed.

The other thing is that some older cd readers have trouble reading burned disks. Exactly how old is this cd reader? Even if it can read cd's it may not be able to boot to one.

Be sure to use the highest quality cd and burn at the very slowest speeds. The mac may not like things like overburn.

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Yes I did burn the powerpc version of linux, and I am not sure how old the cd reader is.

But http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1352 says that enabling open firmware disables the "C" boot. So is their a way to disable open firmware? Or is there a command to boot from the cd?

Command-Option-Shift-Delete : Forces your Mac to startup from its internal CD-ROM drive or an external hard drive. Very helpful if you have a 3rd party CD-ROM drive that is not an Apple ROM device.

From here.http://face.centosprime.com/macosxw/...-boot-options/

See also this.

http://www.netbsd.org/docs/bootcd.html

The main issue is this. See here. If you have problems booting, see the section called “Troubleshooting the Installation Process”.

Currently, the only PowerPC subarchitectures that support CD-ROM booting are PReP and New World PowerMacs. On PowerMacs, hold the c key, or else the combination of Command, Option, Shift, and Delete keys together while booting to boot from the CD-ROM.

If your system doesn't boot directly from CD-ROM, you can still use the CD-ROM to install the system. On NewWorlds, you can also use an OpenFirmware command to boot from the CD-ROM manually. Follow the instructions in the section called “Booting NewWorld Macs from OpenFirmware” for booting from the hard disk, except use the path to yaboot on the CD at the OF prompt, such as

0 > boot cd:,\install\yaboot

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ok thanks I will give it a shot.