8.1-RC1 fails to boot on iBook G4

[Marco Trillo]

Hi,

On 6/19/10, Paul Mather <paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:
> Almost always, I get the "Decrementer exception" error above, but once I got
> something akin to a "Memory access error" reported, with the same %SRR0 and
> %SRR1 values.  I even reset the iBook's PRAM via Command-Option-P-R, but to
> no avail.

Hmm... that "invalid memory access" looks exactly like the problem my
eMac has to boot kernels past 7.0:

<http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ppc/2008-September/003118.html>

You can try the 7.x CDs. If those do boot, then it looks like the same problem.

Unfortunately, the fix requires access to a working installation.  It
consists of patching the file <src/sys/conf/ldscript.powerpc> to CVS
revision 1.7 and relinking the kernel. That moves the kernel start a
bit after 00100100, which seems to make the firmware happy.



Regards
Marco