MacChief Posted April 27, 2007 Share Posted April 27, 2007 I have the JaS 10.4.8 install DVD, burned fine, appeared to install fine on a Western Digital 160GB USB hard drive. Box is a small-form-factor Hp/Compaq machine with P4 3.2GHz (SSE3), 512MB RAM, BIOS that supports booting from USB. Deleted FAT32 partition on hard drive, used Disk Utility from install disk to make the only partition, a 20GB HFS+, which I then selected as the install destination. Installation went without a hitch, until reboot. The thing would not boot off the hard drive. I realized that it was because it did not have a bootloader on the MBR, and I put a couple different ones on there, to no avail (by manually adding the hex in the MBR before the partition table). Tried both chain0 ("Chain booting error") and recent Microsoft ("Error loading operating system"). Is there a different bootloader that I should try, or should I partition differently? There's nothing on the drive, so time and effort are the only things that really prevent me from starting over. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emymrin Posted April 29, 2007 Share Posted April 29, 2007 on a Western Digital 160GB USB hard drive May be USB HDD is the problem? Windows for instance won't even install on USB HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oracle67 Posted April 29, 2007 Share Posted April 29, 2007 FireWire supported... USB no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacChief Posted April 30, 2007 Author Share Posted April 30, 2007 I did run across a guide saying that it could be done through VMWare by making an image and then dd'ing it, so I took the Deadmoo, put it on there, and got it to work. Now I'm trying to get the full 10.4.8 from the JaS to install as well in some way on another partition, and try to switch things around so that it works. It definitely seems to be some sort of bootloader issue right now. After dd'ing Deadmoo, there was just the 6GB partition from that, so I added a 20GB 0xaf partition using GParted. Then I booted the JaS DVD, formatted the parition, and it installed no problem. I rebooted, and by supplying an "rd=" parameter it booted from the HDD, and did the user setup, etc. It ran great while it did (aside from audio, ethernet, which will need work), but I have not been able to boot it again. With the Deadmoo partition active, I get the Darwin bootloader (I don't think that I have tried to boot Deadmoo again since the installation, but anyway). I can select between the two, but I have not been able to get it to boot. It seems to hang when it gets to the grey Apple screen booting that way. Booting off the install DVD and supplying various "rd=" parameters I always get "waiting for root device", same thing with the Darwin install CD. With the other partition active, it sits there not doing anything, if my memory does not fail me (no bootprompt, nothing...). I am going to play around with making different partitions active, and changing the partition type in the MBR so as to "hide" the Mac partitions and see if I can get anything to fly. Once I get it working I will definitely try to put together a how-to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ramm Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 Deadmoo == Obsolete. Grab a newer image and install it to the USB drive. I don't think it will work, but it may. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacChief Posted May 1, 2007 Author Share Posted May 1, 2007 Played with it for a few hours this evening. My interesting conclusions: So far, unable to boot directly. No luck trying to hide the Deadmoo partition (hangs w/o even bootloader options), setting the 10.4.8 partition active (same), or selecting it from the bootloader after Deadmoo starts (hangs when grey Apple screen comes up, or, using -v, before it starts showing all of the interesting boot info). DOn't know what kind of incompatibilities or whatever are causing it. However, I have been able to get it to boot by starting from the install DVD, then passing a rd=disk2s2 option. I knew this had worked once before (on the initial boot), so I just had to find the right disk parameter and it came up. Nice and quick, need to get AC'97 audio and Broadcom Gigabit ethernet working. Will probably also try to put together a simple bootdisk just for this purpose. In my situation having to use a bootdisk isn't too horrible of an option, though it would be nice to just boot straight up and I may try to get that going anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spartango Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 you can always upgrade a deadmoo with apple software. and if you want ilife you can borrow it from other machines. Make sure that you enable sse3 on deadmoo and then all will be well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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