20-inch iSight SSD Booting Issues

I'm puzzled too.

I bet it needs a reset. Got confused over the hd switch.

somehow machine is forgetting startup info.

-- new battery???

-- set to someother boot device. set back to force refresh.. Try after reset if necessary.

-- try reset. look in firmware variable to see if startup device is set correctly.

Sometimes if volumes don't appear in Startup Manager (what you get when you hold down the Option key at startup), you need to reset the Mac's PRAM, NVRAM, and Open Firmware. Shut down the Mac, then power it up, and before the screen lights up, quickly hold down the Command, Option, P, and R keys, until the Mac has chimed twice more after the powerup chime. Then, before the screen lights up, hold down Command-Option-O-F until the Open Firmware screen appears. Then enter these lines, pressing Return after each one:

reset-nvram

set-defaults

reset-all

"The reset-all command should restart your Mac. If so, you have successfully reset the Open Firmware settings."

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1812?viewlocale=en_US

How to eject a cd from the internal cd drive:

eject cd

List of devices:

devalias

List of variables:

printenv

Before I try to find a battery for this machine, do you think it's possible that there would be compatibility issues with the SSD?

If it boots correctly to the hdd, I'd find it hard be the battery. Doesn't cost too much to try. I've read where some ssd devices do not work n the g5. You searched to see if the ssd works fine in your model of g5?

see what the bootable device is set to. there seems to be two likely variables.

Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

# press return to run the command.

# little terminal command will print our your firmware variables.

nvram -p

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Here is a picture of the battery that you need. Verify from the pictures on the web page.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAA36VPRAM/

I'm not a heavy in this area.

Good luck. an oddity indeed.

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If you like playing. Could install Linux/Ubuntu on the machine. It has a boot loader. Which you boot to then it would select the OS. You could default to X.

Could play around with boot parms via nvram.

How to boot cd from open firmware:

http://blog.litot.es/2006/03/02/boot-from-cd-in-open-firmware/

I hadn't been able to fathom the syntax... until I listed a bunch of os's. Used startup of system perferences to select disk/media then click on lock then

Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

nvram boot-device Now, we can guess meaning:
boot-device mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@0:12,\\:tbxi
| | Partition/location
| on device
|
0 = master
1 = slave

for ata internal device

Why set nvram variable? I've had open-firmware based Pegasos PPC and it simply had boot command, so instead of:

setenv boot-device ud:3,\:tbxi

should be enough to write:

boot ud:3,\:tbxi

my setup,boot my internal harddrive Tiger partition:
boot-device mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@0:12,\\:tbxi
my setup, boot my internal harddrive classic 9.2.2 partition
boot-device mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@0:10,\\:tbxi

boot from Mac OS 9 cd???
boot-device mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@1:9,\\:tbxi

boot 10.2 install cd
boot-device mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@1:9,\\:tbxi

boot hardware test cd
boot-device mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@1:9,\\:tbxi

boot from external firewire hd with Tiger installed
boot-device fw/node@1d202009c115c/sbp-2@c000/@0:10,\\:tbxi

boot from external firewire cd/dvd drive Tiger DVD
boot-device fw/node@50770500071002/sbp-2@4000/@0:3,\\:tbxi

boot from external firewire cd/dvd drive 9.2.2 install cd
boot-device fw/node@50770500071002/sbp-2@4000/@0:9,\\:tbxi

boot from external firewire cd/dvd drive Hardware test
boot-device fw/node@50770500071002/sbp-2@4000/@0:9,\\:tbxi

network startup
boot-device enet:bootp


mac $ sudo pdisk -l
Password:

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/rdisk0'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 120
4: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 56 @ 176
5: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 56 @ 232
6: Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288
7: Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800
8: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312
9: Apple_Free 262144 @ 1824 (128.0M)
10: Apple_HFS Apple_HFS_Untitled_1 2254440 @ 263968 ( 1.1G)
11: Apple_Free 262144 @ 2518408 (128.0M)
12: Apple_HFS Apple_HFS_Untitled_2 146538496 @ 2780552 ( 69.9G)
13: Apple_Free 6982440 @ 149319048 ( 3.3G)

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488 (74.5G)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: 23 @ 64, type=0x1
2: 36 @ 120, type=0xffff
3: 21 @ 176, type=0x701
4: 34 @ 232, type=0xf8ff

pdisk: No valid block 1 on '/dev/rdisk2'

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/rdisk3'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver_ATAPI*Macintosh 8 @ 64
3: Apple_HFS Mac_OS_X 5531656 @ 72 ( 2.6G)
4: Apple_Free 10 @ 5531728

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=5531738 (2.6G)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: 4 @ 64, type=0x701

mac $

Robert

Glad to hear of your success.

Robert