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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Can't boot into Puma. Boot device wrong.

Squibler - Feb 23, 2007 - 3:28 am

I have lately been using open firmware to change my boot device so that I can boot from an external flash drive.

Just so you know, I never actually booted from the flash drive. The problem is, that now I can't boot from my hard drive with Puma installed.

This is what happens when I boot:
1. Plays chimes.
2. Displays a question mark in a folder for less than a second.
3. Displays a happy Mac in a folder for less than a second.
4. Normal happy Mac appears for startup (everything looks like it's going well).
5. Spinning pinwheel appears in the top-left corner (for a couple of seconds).
6. Pinwheel stops spinning. Hard drive becomes active and grinds for a while (about 5 seconds.
7. Pinwheel starts spinning again, but nothing else happens (apart from small hard drive activity every now and again).


This is what I've tried:
1. Setting the boot device to mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk0
2. Starting in safe mode (same thing happens).
3. Zapping the PRAM.
4. Starting in single user mode and verbose mode (same thing happens).
5. Starting from Puma CD, this works and it looks like it could install, but when I get asked where to install Mac OS X, the hard drive doesn't even appear.
6. Performing first aid on the disk (repaired something like a sibling line? Didn't work anyway).

When I installed Tiger onto my flash drive, I used Pacifier. According to Brad's Blog at:
http://www.bradbergeron.com/

That's pretty much it. All of the codes I entered to try and boot from the flash drive are the ones from this page:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...60301112336384


Thanks, any help is appreciated.

DeltaMac - Feb 23, 2007 - 8:07 am

Sounds like your internal hard drive needs to be replaced - it is dying or already dead.
Booting OS X to a USB drive is unlikely. There's one major point that Hint page misses. You need to have a Mac with a USB 2.0 port, and an old iBook clamshell does not have that. The access speed through that slow port just won't allow booting to OS X, in any version. There's no way to upgrade your clamshell to USB 2.0
You CAN boot to OS 9 through a flash drive. I have done this multiple times, and I keep a bootable system with me when I go on site. It's nice to keep a bootable drive in your pocket!

- Dale

Squibler - Feb 23, 2007 - 4:02 pm

Thanks.

What about if I just erased the drive and installed Mac OS X from scratch?

DeltaMac - Feb 23, 2007 - 6:24 pm

You can try that if you like...
If the hard drive is failing, nothing will change - or you may get it to work for a short time.
The hard drive in a clamshell iBook is challenging to replace - and I have a clamshell that refuses to boot from OS X on a larger hard drive that I installed - and I have tried all the tricks/hints to get it to work. Some iBooks don't like larger drives. I tried to use a 40GB in an iBook that originally came with a 3GB drive.
Unless you like the hobby of taking your iBook apart multiple times, I recommend moving on to something more modern.

Squibler - Feb 23, 2007 - 10:03 pm

Luckily I erased the drive and reinstalled OS X, it's running better than before now!
Hopefully the old clam will have a couple more years left in it. =)

Thanks for all the help,
William