This sounds like the following issue:
There’s also a maximum of 60GB volume size with plain BeOS R5 due to a bug in mkbfs, use the Bone version of “mkbfs” to format larger partitions.
Yep, probably is that. And using the “Bone version” of the mkbfs won’t work for PowerPC, so the restriction is a hard limit.
I think it was me that suggested using a smaller partition and/or drive. Glad you got it to work though 
I wonder if we can get the mkbfs from Haiku to build under PowerPC?! If the BFS issues are related to the size, I guess it is fixed for Haiku? I don’t know if the mkbfs from Haiku can handle big endian BFS though.
IIRC there was some BE related commits exactly for PPC BeOS in Haiku.
1 Like
I think not for mkbfs, only for the filesystem driver itself?
Also it is usually not that easy to get our code building on BeOS, especially the PowerPC version which does not use gcc. I did it for x86 in some occasions (for example I ported our screenmode utility so I could set the correct video mode for my display, which isn’t available in BeOS screen preferences) but I had to cut away several parts of the code that used new APIs in BString. I imagine any other part of the code will have similar problems.
Hey folks, I’m back. I haven’t had much chance to work on the BeBox, but now I’ve got a new (and hopefully easier) issue. I’m trying to install BeOS on a PowerMac 9600 and my burned disks get me wither a black screen or a frozen Be boot logo. I’ve tried with and without extensions enabled, but I get the same results.
What speed/logic board revision 9600? Starting with the 250mhz (I think?) there was a change to the logic board that prevented BeOS compatibility.
Yeah, there are two revisions. The Tsunami ones should work, but the newer Mach V ones do not.
BeOS probably could boot, the issue is that the bootloader app doesn’t know how to configure the hardware. So when it gets to the Be logo, the hardware is not in a bootable state. I have a Beige G3 desktop, and it will boot to the Be Logo and I can get in to the boot menu, but it can’t find any bootable volumes. Probably because the chipsets on the motherboard are not supported by the drivers or, as mentioned, the hardware is in a “dirty” state.
It was originally a 9600/233. I got it with a MaxPowr G3 in it, so I picked up a 200mhz 604 just for this purpose.
It should run if it was a 233, also the G3 should also work as a lot of aftermarket G3 cards to work.
Suggestions
- Check the scsi termination, BeOS is a lot less forgiving. I’ve seen MacOS boot, but BeOS hang.
- If you have a floppy, try connecting at least the cable. My Mac clone refuses to boot if the cable is not connected, but the 9500 doesn’t care. Again - MacOS would boot, but BeOS would hang… it made no sense at all.
- Check which SCSI controller you are using. The 9500 has 2 controllers, both work up to a point, but I think the internal one is more reliable. There’s a header for both on the 9500, so the 9600 might also have 2. The second one also feeds the external back plane. In the 9500 the two are actually completely different controllers also. One is a MESH, but the other is something else.
- You can run all the same serial debugging as on the BeBox, you just need the right cable and you need either another Mac using a regular Mac Serial cable or a PC compatible null modem cable on the other end. Any old Mac with a terminal app should work though.
I can help you more with Mac hardware - if you want to carry in on this topic that is fine, but you can message me directly or start a new topic if you want to keep stuff more organised (I’d suggest the latter.) I have totally stripped and put back together multiple Macs that run BeOS over the years and have access to hardware so I can run tests and give you actual help, rather than rusty recollections. @cian might have some input too.
1 Like
How did you burn the disc? It can be slightly challenging to burn discs for BeOS PPC, I can’t quite remember what I had to do last time I think it was a bin/cue option, on Windows using ImgBurn. My genuine R5 CD is scrapped to hell and the PPC libbe.so is damaged so can’t install from it
“ISO” images may burn something with a working x86 partition but not PPC.
I’ve used PowerISO on a Windows machine for all of the disks I’ve made. I’ll have to try ImgBurn and see if that does any better.
Almost the best way is to extract the PowerPC session with IsoBuster and write that to a hard drive. I have done that and it worked well. You need a really decent CD drive to make burnt CDR’s work under BeOS PowerPC. I have about 4 or 5 SCSI CD drives, and only 2 will read/boot from burnt disks, and one of those is a CD Burner, so it has an unfair advantage. They do not age well apparently.
The PowerPC session is the third on on the disc, so the outermost (IIRC) and probably the most likely to get scratched or damaged on Retail discs I guess. When you extract the raw session it has the option to convert it to an ISO, and you actually might have more luck using that to burn the session to a CDR. I know that once under BeOS the ISO option is best, as you can use the mount command line exe to mount the image in the OS and access the files. Physical media I am a little more hazy about.
As a last resort, the other thing I can probably do - I have a 16GB SD card that will boot in my clone using an SD to IDE adapter. I bet if I extract that to a raw image, you could probably write it to a hard drive directly. I can try to set you up one with MacOS and a basic BeOS partition and then then dd that to an image and some how get you a copy. I think that would be okay. If I set the partitions up to be as small as possible, you will be able to set something up I’m sure and the size won’t be problematic to transfer over the internet.
Great news all! Turns out the issue this entire time was the S3 card I was using. Apparently it had partial compatibility (enough to display splash/bootloader, but that’s all). Switching to a Cloud 9 card made it book straight into the install I’d DD’d onto disk. Thanks all very much for the help along the way!
5 Likes
Cloud 9? Never heard of those.
Do you mean Number 9?
That’s what I get for posting before bed lol. Good catch.