SOLUTION!: Still waiting on Root Device

[paull2k]

Okay, what we're going to be doing for this guide is using VMWare 5.0 to install a copy of Darwin 8.01 to your physical hard disk drive.

First, make sure you have downloaded the Darwin 8.01 iso image for x86.

Next open VMWare 5.0, then proceed with the following steps:

 

1) File > New > Virtual Machine..., then Next > button.

2) Select Custom option, Next > button.

3) New Workstation 5.

4) Under Guest Operating System, choose Other, then under the Version drop down box on the same screen, choose FreeBSD.

5) On this screen, call the name of Operating System, anything you would like.

6) Memory shouldn't really matter, but on mine, I have 512mb selected.

7) Under Networking, select Use bridged networking.

8) Under I/O adapter types, choose Buslogic, I'm not sure why, just following what it said on the original guide I had found on OSX86 Project Wiki.

9) Select use a physical hard disk (for advanced users).

10) Now this next step may vary, depending on what you're installing Darwin to:

10.1) If you are installing Darwin to a different hard disk, from the Device dropdown box, choose PhysicalDrive1. Make sure that Use entire disk is selected before you continue. If you have completed this step, move to Step 11, otherwise, proceed with Step 10.2 and 10.2.1

10.2) If you are installing Darwin to a partition, choose Make sure that Use individual partitions is selected before you continue.

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Only continue to Step 10.2.1 if you have completed Step 10.2 and NOT Step 10.1

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10.2.1) Ok finally, hit the next button, and if you chose to install Darwin on a different partition, simply place a check mark

in the partition you wish to install it to, then hit the next button. and finally proceed onto Step 11.

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11) Call the vmdk file whatever you wish, it should not matter, you can leave it as the default name if unsure what to do.

12) Hit Finish button yay!

13) Now that we're done with the wizard, the real fun starts now. Double-Click on the CD-ROM option under devices in the main window of VMWare, from here, Select use ISO Image

14) Now click on the Browse button and search for the extracted Darwin 8.01 (darwinx86-801.iso) image file, once you have the file selected, choose Open, then hit OK, to get out of the CD-ROM Device window.

15) Now click on the Power On button at the top of VMWare in the main toolbar, it's a green arrow icon.

16) Just for safety measures, hit the Escape (Esc) key at the top right corner of your keyboard, now Select the CD-Rom Device option from the menu that comes up, this should boot from Darwin install cd if you've done everything correctly.

17) Now just let it sit here for a bit, will take about 1 - 2 minutes until you're able to give it any input

18) Once it asks you where to install Darwin to, you should see this:

----1. VMWare Virtual IDE Hard Drive @ disk0

You'll want to type just 1 then hit Enter, and do not worry about the fact that it says Virtual IDE Disk, this will indeed write to the actual drive itself, I have had no problems with my OS X installation after all this.

19) It will give you three choices:

----1) Auto-partition the disk (Destroys all disk contents)

----2) Manually partition the disk using fdisk

----3) Use existing partitions

You'll want the first option, again type in 1, then hit Enter. After that, just sit back relax for about 20 minutes or so and let it install Darwin to your physical hard disk!

20) After this is all done, just configure Darwin as you wish, it doesn't really matter what you type in, after you've given it all the values, simply click on the stop button, exit out of VMWare, and restart the PC just to be safe.

 

Yay! And there you have it, Darwin installed in twenty simple steps! This should work for everyone that was having issues with "Still waiting for root device" I too was one of those people, and it is a fantastic workaround, and am glad I thought to do it this way.

 

Now for the rest of the steps as to how to actually install and resize the OS X partition, please refer to Braveheaart's guide - No More Small 6 GIG

 

Hope at least someone out there found my guide useful, if you have any troubles regarding this guide, please leave replies and feedback, and I will try to answer them to my fullest.

[daniloc]

I have done the same thing on my Toshiba Sattelite 5200-810 laptop. Except i was using Patched Tiger DVD instead of Darwin. I have finished installation through Vmware without any problems and added option in Win XP boot.ini to dual boot.

 

When i restart the pc i get the boot meny in which i can choose to boot freshly installed Tiger X86 from my partition. But when the booting starts i again get the famous " Still waiting for root device" error imediately after Darwin loads the ATA driver. Does anybody have some clues about the kext's that i have to change in order to boot the Tiger. So for now Tiger is installed on the partition but i cant boot it.

 

I have installed the MacDrive 6 which gives me access to Tiger HFS+ partition from Windows so i can change pretty much anything on that partition.

 

Possible problems with my system are that HDD and DVD-Rom are connected to one ATA ( HDD being the master )