unable to boot FreeBSD 13.2 installation cd on PowerBook G3 333MHz

C

chiggen

I'm trying to install FreeBSD on my PowerBook G3 lombard but the installation cd won't boot. Specifically, I've written the "FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-powerpc-disc1.iso" file. The SHA512 checksum matches. To boot the cd, I enter openfirmware by holding cmd+option+o+f and once in openfirmware, I enter the "boot menu" with the command "multi-boot". Once in multi-boot I select the cd and hit the "start up" button. When booting the cd, the drive sounds funny (speeding up and slowing down repeatedly) if that has anything to do with it. Eventually, the boot process seems to get stuck on "random: unblocking device." I can boot from other installation disks like debian 8.10 and fedora 12 but so far not FreeBSD. Why is this happening and what am I doing wrong? Do I need an older version of FreeBSD like freebsd 12? Is it something completely different?
 
I'm leaving the laptop running overnight to make sure it's not just taking forever to boot but I've gone through the same process before to no avail.

UPDATE: after leaving it overnight, it is still stuck on "random: unblocking device." and the cd drive has spun down but there's still heat coming from the computer. I'm going to leave it running for a couple hours more but I doubt it will change much.
 
after having left it running for a good portion of the day, nothing's changed and I don't think it's going to boot into the installer

EDIT: after doing some research, I think I've found from here that there's a delay added to the boot? I'm having trouble understanding what's being said but I can't do anything now as I'm out of cds to write and I can't boot from usb.
 
wow that's an old computer.... and those Linux versions are old too, maybe try to boot the CD on another computer to verify it burned correctly? I wish I had some more feedback for you.
 
chiggen said:
I'm having trouble understanding what's being said but I can't do anything now as I'm out of cds to write and I can't boot from usb.
Click to expand...
No need to write a new CD. You can set the variable at the loader(8) prompt. You can select this at the boot menu screen.
 
yep, that's the loader prompt. Per the bug you linked, enter set kern.cam.boot_delay="320000" and then boot and that will try the workaround.
 
I don't think it works. I've tried it twice to no avail, leaving it for around an hour as I'm not keen to leave it overnight again. Is it possible that I could have less than the minimum required ram? I have 256mb of ram and the computer has a maximum of 512mb.
 
i'd think 256 megs should be enough to boot. have you tried boot -v to see if there's any more information in verbose mode?
 
Does a boot -v give you any more info? if not, our next step would be to break into the kernel debugger after it gets stuck, but i forget how to do that from the keyboard on a mac...
 
Sorry for the late reply. Trying
Code: 
boot -v
with the 12.4 cd after doing
Code: 
set kern.cam.boot_delay="320000"
gives nothing obviously an error. It's definitely more verbose but nothing jumps out to me as an error. Would setting a lower value (like 0) for the boot_delay variable do anything good?
 
also other bsds like openbsd and netbsd aren't recognized as operating systems in the multi-boot menu which is peculiar
 
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