Making an Autorun CD for MacOS 8.x

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motorollin wrote:
Ok.... so any ideas what I do with it?

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moto

no.

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motorollin wrote:
I'm not even sure the VNC server is working. I downloaded a 68k VNC viewer and pointed it at localhost, and it just sat there. It actually appears to have hung the emulator.

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moto

I need to think...

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I think the PowerMac hasn't actually made it through the boot process :-(

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motorollin wrote:
I thought you said you can ping it?

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moto

Yeah, but the CD-Rom drive doesn't spin up upon disk insertion...

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motorollin wrote:
Hmm, so it's not booting or the drive is dead. Anyway, I used that MacImage software to supposedly create an image with an autostart app on it, but it won't burn. This is becoming very frustrating!

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moto

Buring boot the PowerMAc issues a few beeps that I'm not expecting... I suspect that the machine is halting on error... ie no keyboard....

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motorollin wrote:
I wonder whether the machine will boot from an IDE HDD? If so you could install OS 8 on to a HDD from within an emulator and put the VNC server in the System/Startup Items folder, then boot the PowerMac from it. The VNC server should then start on boot.

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moto

Right... Now I have to think how to do that :-)

Ok... I have a plan...

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motorollin wrote:
Not a huge amount of help if the machine doesn't actually boot though. Well I'll have to give it a rest for the night - I've got revision to do tomorrow so need some sleep!

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moto

I'm gonna hack a way for a bit... night! :-)

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motorollin wrote:
Ok, I'll be sure to check up in the morning ;-) G'night!

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moto

After installing OS9 on to a 640Meg HD... I discovered that the PowerMAC does not have an IDE port...

Back to square one. I think I have reached  the end of the line, with this one.

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pkillo wrote:
does this system have a floppy drive? it's a long shot, but assuming the model in question is wired to be able to boot from a floppy at all, you could likely mod an old netbsd install disk to boot, load the scsi driver, and start a tftp server. the server should be small enough that if you lose the actual installer there'd be room for it. i don't remember ever having to hold down any keys to boot from a floppy on any mac capable of doing so.

It does have a floppy drive... but I have no idea how to go about creating a NetBSD disk... or even how write to a floppy disk any more... let alone in Mac format...

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pkillo wrote:
if you have a linux/unix system, just issue the command "dd if= of=/dev/fd0" assuming your floppy drive is device fd0 (usually it is for the a drive), and you will have the image on the disk.

Ok, I didn't make myself clear... I don't have any machines with Floppy drives :-)

 the disks, as i recall, are not in the mac fs format; any bsd system (live boot from cd on a pc?) should be able to mount the disk after the write the image.

Can the PowerMac boot disks in the 1.44MB PC-FDC format?

here's a link to the floppy image:

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.4.3/macppc/installation/floppy/boot.fs.gz

that's the one from a very old version (circa 2000), I'm guessing it might have more room than a later revision. i would try to boot the unmodified disk first to see if it will load at all.

In for a penny... many thanks for the link!

Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

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niklasni1 wrote:

motorollin wrote:
Bloody non-standard connectors... why not just use PS/2 and VGA ports?

Because they didn't exist when the Mac connectors were introduced?

True, also the ADB is more like USB (a single serial bus for all low speed devices to plug onto) and thus better than PS/2... but I digress... without a keyboard/mouse or a monitor I am stuck...

bloodline wrote:
Buring boot the PowerMAc issues a few beeps that I'm not expecting... I suspect that the machine is halting on error... ie no keyboard....

Macs don't care that there's no keyboard. It's probably complaining that the computer was improperly shut down last time and is informing you that just pulling the plug might cause data loss and damage to the hardware..

When I press the powerbutton to power down, it spends a bit of time writing to disk before it powers off... so I assume it's following a shutdown procedure...

bloodline wrote:
Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

Are you sure that your W-30 (great taste in keyboards, BTW) floppy drive is PC-compatible?

Yeah :-) I've done it before... actually a quick look through my junk box, I;ve found an old Chinon FZ-357 so I can use that rather than pull my beloved 12bit sampling keyboard to bits :-)

I love the sound of the W-30...  for Moto: the main industrial sounding riff on Under Moonlight ;-)

To be honest I'd be surprised if it was.

:-)

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motorollin wrote:

niklasni1 wrote:

motorollin wrote:
Bloody non-standard connectors... why not just use PS/2 and VGA ports?

Because they didn't exist when the Mac connectors were introduced?

Meh, I suppose I'll let them off then :roll: ;-)

I'll let them off for the ADB... they had no excuse with not using a VGA port... :-)

motorollin wrote:
I love the sound of the W-30...  for Moto: the main industrial sounding riff on Under Moonlight ;-)

I *love* that sound! :-)

I wish I could remember the original sound source... suffice to say it had a slow birthing process :-) Only for it to be mostly covered up by the guitar in the final mix  :-x

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pkillo wrote:

Can the PowerMac boot disks in the 1.44MB PC-FDC format?

The hardware can read and write those disks. It definitely won't boot from a FAT fs disk, though. But it'll be completely happy with a disk made from an image using a PC.

In for a penny... many thanks for the link!

Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

np. There _should_ be a hole for a paperclip to be inserted, just like a CD-ROM drive. this is not to say that Apple having decided to cheap out on their floppies at some point in the 90s won't have eliminated this feature. I know at some point they switched to using cheap PC floppy drives, so YMMV.

No go... It didn't seem to recognize I had a floppy disk in the drive...

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niklasni1 wrote:
Hm.

Are you sure everything's connected to the motherboard?

Yup... it all look good in there!

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niklasni1 wrote:
And it doesn't even spit the floppy out when you start the computer? Just nothing at all?

Seems to ignore it...

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No wait , it does eject it if you boot with the disk in the drive!!!