Half-dead G4

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On Jan 2, 2008, at 10:15 PM, Marcel Moolenaar wrote:

>
> On Jan 2, 2008, at 9:39 AM, jrh29 at alumni.cwru.edu wrote:
>
>> Related, I tried some boot experiments, and it does appear to  
>> boot, or
>> at least attempt to boot, an OS, since with no drive installed when I
>> hit the power button it powers off immediately, but with a  
>> bootable disk
>> hooked up (CD or hard drive) it gets to the point where I need to  
>> hold
>> it in for 5+ seconds before it powers off.  This leads me to believe
>> that perhaps it's switched into some sort of "Apple-only" mode, or  
>> OFW
>> thinks the console exists somewhere else (serial?) in which case I'm
>> probably boned unless I can find information on setting up a serial
>> console for a G4, which so far I haven't.
>
> Serial consoles work out if the box. That is, when you set the console
> to be serial in OFW, FreeBSD uses that. This is known to work on a
> Xserve G4. However, you do need a machine with an actual serial port,
> not a built-in modem.

There used to be cards that replaced the modem with an exposed serial  
ports (essentially pass-through cables from the header on the  
motherboard). One was called the GeeThree Stealth Serial Port. You  
may still be able to find them on eBay.
-Nathan