A couple of problems preventing installation of Mandrake PPC9.1 on a Mac 8600.

When using the gui wrapper, it says it can't find the settings file. However I notice that the settings file I drag over from the CD-ROM and rename BootX Settings is mysteriously thrown in the trash before that error comes up.

When I go the other route and install BootX manually I get to a text installer and then the error message

No CDROM device found.


I get a list of drivers to try to gain scsi access, but none works. Seems like the best choices would be mesh.o (Macintosh integrateed SCSI (NewWorld or internal SCSI))

or mac53c94.o (Macintosh integrated SCSI (OldWorld or external SCSI))

but then I go to a window that says

Please enter the parameters to give the kernel. Leaving it blank brings me "Insmod failed."

Putting things like /mnt/cdrom get the same thing.

How do I get past this?

I have exactly the same problems here. For a first try on Linux I don't like this. I've tried multiple "distros" and all they have the same symptons on the same computers: On the black PPC 603 5500/275 they all can't see the SCSI bus (and so not the CD-ROM drive), and on my 1.25 GHz G4 I get black and blue vertical stripes immediately when booting from a "kernel" (maybe my LCD has something to do with that?). The computer hangs (caps lock doesn't work anymore), and no input field to correct it...

Well, that of the G4 I don't care much, but I want Linux installed on oldworld macs, and those all have built in SCSI... Anyone on the forums know the solution or the cause of this problem?

Thanks for reading my post!

Hi,

I have the same exact problem that you describe here. Were you able to find a solution? If not please also let me know. I thank you very much....--jh

I didn't find a solution with the G4, but I did find a solution for the black PPC 5500 SCSI bus. Using a 'benh' kernel (don't ask me for details, it was on the Mandrake 9 CD and thus I tried it, but I absolutely do not have experience with kernels and linux otherwise ;) with an alternate ram disk image (also on that CD) and some messing with the kernel arguments in BootX (different arguments were in the description), it installed and ran fine. The only problem I didn't solve is that XFree86 didn't want to start, let alone recognise my monitor. That mac version of XFree did work, but crashed instantly. Strangely, XFree86 can boot and function with the correct framebuffer argument and some totally nonsence functions, however, the colors are messed up then. After two months of discussing and searching I gave up on this X, and now I want to install another linux distro to see if that one works.

If you want I can post some links for you with articles/topics about the SCSI PPC 603. I don't have anything about my G4 though...

Thank you for your post. Please send me the links. Even though my hardware is different than yours but the problem is identical.
Just fyi: On this laptop (PowerBook G3) I was able to install and run YellowDog 3.01 successfully without any issue. I just like Mandrake tools better. YellowDog is RedHat based.
I have also tried both kernels 2.4 and Ben without any lucks.

Regards. --jh

I have a kernel for you if you get "insmod failed" if you try to load the SCSI driver. Don't have any of the BootX links anymore ...

I now managed to get Mandrake Linux 9.2 fully functional (including XFree86!) on my PPC 5500. Everything works, well, except my TV card ;-).

You do not need to enter any "parameters" (leave it empty) with that kernel by the way, and you must use the mesh.o driver (that one worked for my 5500/275). If you want it (you'll need a 3 MB mailbox) I can send it to you by mail (please don't post your email unmasked unless you do like spam), I can also turn on Apache and post the link to the file here. It is a kernel that came with BootX on the Mandrake 9.1 CD along with 6 others (and they do not tell you'll need different kernels for the install, and witch you need... handy)

Hi L66,

Thank you for your note. Sure, please email me the zip file to my work email address:

jafar.hosseinzadeh@childrens.harvard.edu

I thankyou very much....Regards, --jh

I'm sorry, the zip file bounced back a while ago.

While I did some investigations on this issue (I upgraded to Mandrake Linux 10.1) I've found the problem: You have to select the proper kernel with the proper ramdisk image. I've put up a kernel/ramdisk image for download on my local machine for you for Mandrake Linux 9.1 and 10.1. My machine isn't always on however...

O, and please mask your email address like "jafar*NO SPAM*@..." or "jafar at ... dot com" otherwise you'll be loaded with spam in no time...

http://l66.dyndns.org/rd_and_kernel_for_9.1.zip
http://l66.dyndns.org/rd_and_kernel_for_10.1.zip

Sorry again for the late reply!