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[GUIDE] NEW Method: Booting from USB on PowerPC Macs

I'm getting stuck at loading from open firmware after selecting the usb drive probe-usb usb2 /disk:1,\\:tbxi it says cant open than hangs. True I have a 64gb flash drive. I can't find anything older in local-stores and I won't pay big amount for shipping a flashdrive.... the dvd sees the drive fin in disk utility 10.5, I can even install the osx there,but it just won't boot from it, however info in disk utility says bootable....very confusing
 
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ediflorianus said:
I'm getting stuck at loading from open firmware after selecting the usb drive probe-usb usb2 /disk:1,\\:taxi it says cant open than hangs. True I have a 64gb flash drive. I can't find anything older in local-stores and I won't pay big amount for shipping a flashdrive.... the dvd sees the drive fin in disk utility 10.5, I can even install the osx there,but it just won't boot from it, however info in disk utility says bootable....very confusing
Click to expand...
I would try to avoid new USB drives in general with older hardware, especially any that large. I'd try to go with a 16GB capacity. This problem happened with some USB drives with i.e. a PS2 because the USB1.1 support in the USB drive wasn't really compatible with USB 1.1. I know, not the same thing, but maybe it could help here.

Also kind of unrelated, but Wallmart sells 16GB flash drives for literally $3, I have a ton of them. And they work even with a PS2 (which is extremely picky as mentioned above). I would try one of those.

As someone who has never, not once gotten a PowerPC Mac to boot anything from USB, I am excited to give this a try. Thanks OP for recognizing this issue is real (there was much debate on these forums years ago about if it was even possible).
 
Very cool thread. I used a similar method to boot from USB https://petergodwin.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/booting-os-x-from-usb-through-openfirmware/ and I was curious if anyone here knew a good way in openfirmware to get the installer to recognize USB drives as the next disks in multiple disc installers?
I successfully to booted a PowerBook G4 to a Tiger disc in the 4 CD version and even in the most minimal installation it requires stuff off of the second disc to complete.
People in this thread appear to be using the single disc DVDs but using the method I was trying i.e. confirming the usb drive is readable before booting, doesn't seem to work when I use the Tiger DVD image, it might be incompatible with this computer? I'm not sure. It doesn't show the disk partition when I run "dev / ls" despite plugging into the same port that I booted from the CD version of Tiger.
Anyways if anyone has ideas on how to proceed that would be so helpful. While I was researching how to boot from usb on these old computers in the first place, I saw one other user on a stack-something thread suggest aliasing 'cd' to the usb port and that's the only lead I have so far.
The disc drive on this laptop is broken so the only way to load data in is through either a USB or firewire ports but I don't have firewire stuff around.
 
So I attempted to use a USB with the 4 CDs each having their own partition and it threw some sort of error during installation, which is interesting because it wasn't the same error that I got when I only had the single CD image on a single partition. With the single partition one it asked for a disc to be inserted and wouldn't let me proceed with anything.
I also realized with this that only certain USB sticks get recognized in open firmware with these older computers. I was trying to use a different one of the same size for the DVD version and it wasn't being detected and I realized now that it was the USB stick itself and not necessarily the image being incompatible, though that could still certainly be the case.
Interestingly I got what appeared to be the same error log, a buffer overflow, when using the 4 partitioned USB regardless of whether I aliased 'cd' to the next to be installed partition.
Either way I'll see if I can squeak by with a single DVD installer for this particular laptop.
I still would like to know if there's a solution, some of the Macs don't have DVD drives and would require the multiple disc installers, right?
 

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Anybody have luck USB booting on a last-run iMac G4 1.25? Got a 20" with a busted DVD drive so USB booting is my only way to do anything further. I did a dual install of Tiger and 10.6.8a via my PMG5 before putting the SSD in, but now that it's sealed up I'd rather not go through the insanity of taking it apart again just to try a new OS. FWIW, these things sure run cooler without that drive in there!
 
Smithwick’s said:
Anybody have luck USB booting on a last-run iMac G4 1.25? Got a 20" with a busted DVD drive so USB booting is my only way to do anything further. I did a dual install of Tiger and 10.6.8a via my PMG5 before putting the SSD in, but now that it's sealed up I'd rather not go through the insanity of taking it apart again just to try a new OS. FWIW, these things sure run cooler without that drive in there!
Click to expand...
You can buy a USB CD drive, press C key on boot, and it will use the USB drive if all else fails.
 
I came across this thread while searching for a way to boot my G5 Cheese grater (OF version7,3) via USB. This has NEVER worked on this G5. I am trying to boot into Ubuntu 16.04 Remix. I followed the instructions on the first page of this thread. I'm not sure why after looking for the usb port for the installer usb, and then swapping the usb with the keyboard port makes any sense. Why would you look for the Linux usb port and then swap it with the keyboard port?

I ended up getting usb2 as the command that produced the keyboard@X list. Looking at the Linux USB in Disk Utility and also in Terminal diskutil list, the partition containing the linux files was also 2. Hence, I enterred:

probe-usb boot usb2/disk:2,\\:tbxi

i hit enter and nothing has happened for the past 15 minutes, so I'm pretty sure it's not going to work.

What did I do wrong or do I have the most belligerent G5 produced?

MacMaverick855
 
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MacMaverick855 said:
I came across this thread while searching for a way to boot my G5 Cheese grater (OF version7,3) via USB. This has NEVER worked on this G5. I am trying to boot into Ubuntu 16.04 Remix. I followed the instructions on the first page of this thread. I'm not sure why after looking for the usb port for the installer usb, and then swapping the usb with the keyboard port makes any sense. Why would you look for the Linux usb port and then swap it with the keyboard port?

I ended up getting usb2 as the command that produced the keyboard@X list. Looking at the Linux USB in Disk Utility and also in Terminal diskutil list, the partition containing the linux files was also 2. Hence, I enterred:

probe-usb boot usb2/disk@:2,\\:tbxi

i hit enter and nothing has happened for the past 15 minutes, so I'm pretty sure it's not going to work.

What did I do wrong or do I have the most belligerent G5 produced?

MacMaverick855
Click to expand...
This works for me for lubuntu 16.04 remix on an iBook G3 Clamshell!

Make the USB:
Code: 
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/lubuntu-16.04-remix-v2-ppc.iso of=/dev/rdisk8 bs=1m

Boot it:
Code: 
probe-usb boot usb1/disk:2,\\:tbxi

And for Debian 13.0.0 (ISO)

Make the USB:
Code: 
sudo dd if=/Users/lazd/Downloads/debian-13.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso of=/dev/rdisk6 bs=4m

Boot it:
Code: 
probe-usb boot usb0/disk:3,\\:tbxi
 
what does swapping the usb with the keyboard ports do for you? I didn't pay that close attention to the keyboard port number because I was only interested in the usb port. Then we swapped them for some reason. Why?
 
I just did the "dev usb#" , "ls" trick again and saw that the usb port ID did not change after swapping the usb and keyboard port. It looks like it did change for the keyboard.
 
MacMaverick855 said:
I came across this thread while searching for a way to boot my G5 Cheese grater (OF version7,3) via USB. This has NEVER worked on this G5. I am trying to boot into Ubuntu 16.04 Remix. I followed the instructions on the first page of this thread. I'm not sure why after looking for the usb port for the installer usb, and then swapping the usb with the keyboard port makes any sense. Why would you look for the Linux usb port and then swap it with the keyboard port?

I ended up getting usb2 as the command that produced the keyboard@X list. Looking at the Linux USB in Disk Utility and also in Terminal diskutil list, the partition containing the linux files was also 2. Hence, I enterred:

probe-usb boot usb2/disk:2,\\:tbxi

i hit enter and nothing has happened for the past 15 minutes, so I'm pretty sure it's not going to work.

What did I do wrong or do I have the most belligerent G5 produced?

MacMaverick855
Click to expand...
Linux can be finicky but if you type devalias you can see all the usb ports available. Just try each if all else fails. Not sure if it’s :tbxi though. You may need to try disk@1:,\\grub.cfg or something similar. I can double check later.
 
Good point @Smithwick’s. I was just about to try ALL of the USB ports. I'll check if U-16.04 remix boots with yaboot or grub. I looked at the USB drive on a linux machine (fdisk in Terminal) to see how it was broken down. The usb has 4 partitions, the first one contains all of the information and the last 3 show empty. So I need to find out how deep into the 1st partition the boot kernel is.
 
DistroHopper39B said:
After digging deep into Open Firmware, I think I have discovered a method to booting from USB on PowerPC Macs that works flawlessly* on every NewWorld Mac made after 1999. This method doesn't rely on having a USB flash drive that happens to play well with Open Firmware or any externally powered hub like previous methods do; rather, it probes the USB ports after boot. All it requires is a PowerPC Mac and any USB flash drive with a PowerPC OS (Mac OS X*, Linux, BSD) installed on it.

*Only some versions of Mac OS X boot cleanly from USB. The Mac OS X 10.5 installer seems to reliably work on every machine I tried it on, 10.4 seems to work on some machines and hang on others, and everything before that probably won't work. For everything but 10.5 I'd recommend using CD/DVD media in general, which lines up perfectly with 10.5's requirement of dual-layer DVDs.

For this process, you'll need 2 pieces of crucial information; the partition number and USB port ID. The partition number is pretty easy to get; you can find it in Disk Utility -> your USB partition -> Info -> Partition Number. For Mac OS X USB drives, the correct partition number is usually 3.

The USB port ID is a little bit more difficult. The easiest way to find it is this method:
  1. Disconnect all USB devices from your Mac.
  2. Connect a USB keyboard to your Mac. If it has a hub, make sure nothing's plugged into it.
  3. Boot to Open Firmware by holding Command-Option-O-F at startup.
  4. At the 0 > prompt, type:
    Code: 
    dev usb0
 ls
  5. If there are any keyboard@X values, stop here. The number after usb is your port ID. If not, type dev usb1 and ls and keep incrementing that number until you find some. If you're on a laptop, make sure there are no mouse@X values, since the internal keyboard and touchpad are sometimes connected via USB.
Now, shut down your Mac by typing shut-down at the prompt. Unplug the USB keyboard and connect the USB drive you want to boot from to the same port you just had the keyboard connected to. If you're on a desktop, reconnect the keyboard to a different port, and boot the computer back into Open Firmware.

It's now time to actually boot the Mac from USB. To do this, you need to issue this command:
Code: 
probe-usb boot usb<port ID>/disk:<partition number>,\\:tbxi

An example of this command with a port ID of 1 and a partition number of 3:
Code: 
probe-usb boot usb1/disk:3,\\:tbxi

If you're lucky, Mac OS X (or Linux, or BSD) will now boot.
Click to expand...
I wasn't lucky. Tried to boot a G5 Cheesegrater (OF 7,3) using this method to install Lubuntu 16.04 Remix. No Joy. I have never been able to boot this G5 from a USB stick. I was hoping this was going to work.
 
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