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Q: Powerbook 5300c & booting from CF cards (PCMCIA & as IDE drive)

Hi all,

I'm trying to "upgrade" my vintage PB 5300c and replace the internal noisy slow HD to using CF cards via the IDE-CF card adaptors.

in theory, this should be pretty easy.. format the CF card as HFS, install OS (trying 8.1), connect everything and reboot.

however, I'm having severe difficulties. First, I couldn't get the 5300c to boot off the CF card via the PC card slot at all (ejects the CF card not finding any OS on it). This, I managed to figure out that using HFS+ was a bad idea. So I reformatted the CF card to HFS (standard), and then re-installed 8.1. At least this time it would recognize a system folder and try to boot.. but soon after the MacOS splash screen it crashes stating "bus error". I managed to get it to reboot once while holding the shift key, but only that once.

I've tried installing the CF card to the IDE drive chain, and managed to get it boot in OS8.6, but it's kinda slow.. so I would really like to boot into 8.1...

But either way, I need to make sure I can boot this thing via pc slot before I put it back into the IDE drive bay. so under HFS, I have tried installing a fresh copy of OS8.6, 7.6, 8.1 to no avail. it still boots fine via the internal hard drive, or using SCSI external. I haven't tried putting the CF card back onto IDE bay yet.

What is wrong? is there something wrong with the motherboard/logic board that is preventing it from booting from CF? I'm starting to think there is something more sinister than just a plain-vanilla "bad OS installation".

All installation is done on the 5300c, either through an install disk image on the CF, or the internal HD, or "drag-drop" a known working OS onto the CF.

I have at my disposal, my trusty Al-PB G4 running Leopard (kinda useless other than downloading stuff from the net and loading on to CF to get it on the PBs), PB G3 Lombarde (somehwat useful, although it won't work under 8.1, so trying the installation on that machine is useless). I also do have another 5300c with a bad power connector (the solder ripped off) so i do have some spare parts to swap if needed...

any ideas what to do? I guess I can try to install OS7.5 (painful...) instead of 7.6 and see if that works... I'm totally baffled, and I'm starting to get a bit discouraged here...

Powerbook G4 Al 15" 1.5Ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.11), MacPro 2.8Ghz 8-core, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Jun 21, 2009 9:24 PM

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Q: Powerbook 5300c & booting from CF cards (PCMCIA & as IDE drive)

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  • by PianoKitty,

    PianoKitty PianoKitty Jul 18, 2009 11:42 PM in response to jpl
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 18, 2009 11:42 PM in response to jpl
    my email is on my public profile now
  • by Jan Hedlund,

    Jan Hedlund Jan Hedlund Jul 19, 2009 4:09 AM in response to jpl
    Level 6 (9,901 points)
    Jul 19, 2009 4:09 AM in response to jpl
    Hi jpl,

    I made the Disk Tools PPC floppy on my Wallstreet running OS 9.2.1 using the older Disk Copy 4.2.


    I am a bit surprised. I was not aware of any possibility to use Disk Copy 4.2 with the NDIF. In the case of the Disk Tools PPC, see also this text file.

    If I (under a Swedish System 7.5.5 on a PowerBook 5300c) try to drag the Disk Tools PPC.img file (the result after a StuffIt Expander decoding of the .bin) onto the Disk Copy 4.2 program icon, nothing happens. An attempt to locate the image file in question via the Disk Copy 4.2 "Load Image File..." button is also negative. On the other hand, through Disk Copy 6.3.3 (and its "Make a Floppy..." command in the Utilities menu, from within the program) everything is fine. Are you sure that Disk Copy 6.x.x was not already installed on the machine? Could the latter program have been automatically launched when you double-clicked on the .img file, thus mounting the disk image?

    Regards,

    Jan
  • by jpl,

    jpl jpl Jul 19, 2009 10:19 AM in response to Jan Hedlund
    Level 7 (28,285 points)
    Jul 19, 2009 10:19 AM in response to Jan Hedlund
    Jan,

    Yes to all questions. I did have Disk Copy 6.3.3 in my Utilities folder which is part of a standard install from the MacOS 9.2.1 CD. And I am sure your scenario applies. I just did not give it much thought since everything worked (as it usually does on a Mac).

    Thanks for your analytical skills and pointing out my errors.
  • by Jan Hedlund,

    Jan Hedlund Jan Hedlund Jul 19, 2009 10:57 AM in response to jpl
    Level 6 (9,901 points)
    Jul 19, 2009 10:57 AM in response to jpl
    Hello again,

    Thank you for the clarification. If the floppy has been created from within the Disk Copy 6.3.3 program, through the Make a Floppy command under the Utilities menu, everything should be OK (a copy from a mounted image may be possible, but is usually not recommended). A couple of subsequent small floppy modifications on a Mac OS 8.x or 9.x computer would probably not affect the bootability.

    Kind regards,

    Jan
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