PB 12" 1.5 Boot Commands Not Working

[Jack Neill]

I am stumped. I put a SSD in a 12" PB 1.5 and cloned Tiger from another PB via TDM and it worked great, I wanted to try out putting Leopard on it and had the brilliant idea of cloning the installer to a 2nd partition, it KP's at boot and I cannot get it to go into TDM, Boot menu, or boot from the DVD, although the DVD is sketchy worn out anyways, it makes bad noises. I have tried 3 different wired KB's including a Apple one and I cannot get it to do anything other than boot to a KP screen. Zapping pram or trying to go to OF just doesn't work. Short of taking it apart and pulling the drive I just don't know what to do. Ideally I would like it boot back into TDM and clone my tiger install again.

 

[XaPHER]

Can you get to an OF prompt? If so, what happens if you type multi-boot then hit return?

Otherwise, do you get a panic when booting in single user mode (holding cmd-s)?

 

[Jack Neill]

Open firmware command at boot does nothing, nor does the PRAM reset command. Booting to S Mode gives a KP.

 

[XaPHER]

You might have to remove your drive.For now you might want to try:

1 - With the machine shut down, power it on, but keep holding the power button down. It'll do a beeeeeep; keep holding it; hold it until the screen shows the OF prompt. It'll boot with factory default firmware settings.

Do the usual, reset-nvram set-defaults reset-all, then you might want to try to get to a boot menu again before it tries to boot.

I think you're not the only one having trouble with boot commands/open firmware on a powerbook G4. Not that I own one, but I've seen something like this before..

 

[Jack Neill]

You might have to remove your drive.For now you might want to try:

1 - With the machine shut down, power it on, but keep holding the power button down. It'll do a beeeeeep; keep holding it; hold it until the screen shows the OF prompt. It'll boot with factory default firmware settings.

Do the usual, reset-nvram set-defaults reset-all, then you might want to try to get to a boot menu again before it tries to boot.

I think you're not the only one having trouble with boot commands/open firmware on a powerbook G4. Not that I own one, but I've seen something like this before..

Well that worked in that I got to the OF screen, I was able to run reset Nvram and reset all, but my F key apparently doesn't work anymore, explains why O-F command wasn't working maybe. I still cant boot to the options menu or into TDM yet. I forgot what a PITA these PPC books were...

 

[XaPHER]

My iBook G4 is capricious, I agree.
Well, what happens for each: when trying to get to target mode; trying to get to boot menu?

 

[Jack Neill]

My iBook G4 is capricious, I agree.
Well, what happens for each: when trying to get to target mode; trying to get to boot menu?

Nothing, it just boots to the borked partition.

 

[Jack Neill]

You might have to remove your drive.For now you might want to try:

1 - With the machine shut down, power it on, but keep holding the power button down. It'll do a beeeeeep; keep holding it; hold it until the screen shows the OF prompt. It'll boot with factory default firmware settings.

Do the usual, reset-nvram set-defaults reset-all, then you might want to try to get to a boot menu again before it tries to boot.

I think you're not the only one having trouble with boot commands/open firmware on a powerbook G4. Not that I own one, but I've seen something like this before..

I was able to get it into TDM via a OF command and am currently cloning Tiger to it. Fingers crossed. Thanks for the tip!