Booting Linux from an internal IDE Zip disk?

ME dugan at passwall.com
Thu Dec 20 11:14:31 PST 2001


On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, kory white wrote:
> I'm trying to do the same thing...or kind of the same thing on a Mac
> G4...the problem I'm having is tweaking my system so that it recognizes the
> Zip drive (it is an ATAPI) as a bootable device. Any ideas?

My knowledge on this has been limited to what I have heard from others, so
please only take the following as rumor - not fact:

The beige series G3 machines that had Zip Drives completely lacked the
ability to boot from the built-in Zip, though later firmware upgrades may
have changed this.

Blue and White series G3 and G4 machines with the open Firmware were
targeted by some that were trying to do this exact thing.

Te most obvious/easiest approach (conventional?) would be to check your
apple conrol panels and look for one that is called "Boot Devices" or
something like that. It allows you to choose what device you would like to
have your machine boot from and in what order. If Zip is officially
supported for booting by your G3/G4, then the Zip devices should be listed
here as an option to choose. (Examples that I am certain are available
include Fixed Disk, CD-ROM, and Network booting
http://mike.passwall.com/macnc/ )

If the traditional approach (above) does not allow you to get Zip booting
to work, then the next step would be to research OpenFirmware for your
mac.


> Also, I have a doorstop PC that I have been trying to install Linux
> on....Red Hat 6.2.....it's a 200mHZ, 6x86L processor, 64 megs RAM, 6 gig
> hard drive.....I've partitioned the drive with /, swap, bootloader and
> home.....even with minimal packages selected it barfs during the package
> installation and ejects the CD....any ideas?

Not a redhat guy. Others here may be able to offer more help. Could you be
more specific on the error message that appears, and at what stage during
the install process it occurs? (This is information they would likely
need to better diagnose the problem.)

Non-distro-specific:
bad CD-ROM drive, disk was written on a CD-RW drive with a CD-RW disk and
your CD-ROM drive is only a normal CD-ROM that may have limited ability to
read CD-RW disks, bad hardware (memory, excess heat due to over-clocking,
excess heat generated by the HD and CD-ROM during heavy load of file
copy/install) bad sectors on the HD (did you scan for bad blocks during
fs format? Good idea - esp on older machines.)

RH people may have some more specific suggestions based on your feedback.

-ME

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