Oh and does anyone know if RealPC or any other virtual machines/emulators have PCI pass through? Tossing a Live and a Voodoo 2 in to use with a virtual PC is an enticing idea.

Doesn't holding the C key down on bootup force it to boot from the CD-ROM?

http://davespicks.com/writing/programming/mackeys.html

Never used PCI passthough and I remember always being quite disappointed in the performance of virtualised Windows when running on a PPC machine.

There will be no boot selection if there is no device considered to be 'bootable'. Or problems can be caused by a flat PRAM battery so test its voltage. Also you might need to reset the PMU (make sure you follow the procedure correctly or this can kill the PRAM battery). The G3 is very picky about CDs if they are burned rather than retail. Usually booting from an external firewire drive is the best bet (if it's a blue & white model).

I can boot fine from CD or HDD (OS 8.6 on there right now, 10.3 and 9.22 at times), but can't switch the booter using C or D or option.
To switch startup I /have/ to do it from the OS which is really weird.

Mine does the same. There's no boot select if you come up with the OPTION key held down. It will initially only boot from the CD drive. You're limited to the CD drive because the B/W's couldn't even use Target Disk Mode.
Try selecting system folders with the Startup Disk control panel normally found on the OS install CD's.

if I set it to disk boot when the disk is busted I actually have to boot open firmware and force a CD boot. Then the system crashes, but it's set to CD boot so I can proceed.

What?? So you tell it to boot from the CD and it crashes because it's booting from the CD? 😕

B/W G3's look awesome but they were terrible things. Nobody knows positively how to make them happy but once they got an install you didn't touch it in fear of these weaird non-booting issues.

SRQ wrote:

Oh and does anyone know if RealPC or any other virtual machines/emulators have PCI pass through? Tossing a Live and a Voodoo 2 in to use with a virtual PC is an enticing idea.

Nothing's coming to mind, but I haven't been following PCI pass-through in modern VMs very closely.

With a retro Mac, there was a version of Connectix Virtual PC which offered Voodoo pass-through support (only) IIRC. I think it was Virtual PC 3.0 circa 1999. I've no idea how well it worked.

Stiletto wrote:

SRQ wrote:

Oh and does anyone know if RealPC or any other virtual machines/emulators have PCI pass through? Tossing a Live and a Voodoo 2 in to use with a virtual PC is an enticing idea.

Nothing's coming to mind, but I haven't been following PCI pass-through in modern VMs very closely.

With a retro Mac, there was a version of Connectix Virtual PC which offered Voodoo pass-through support (only) IIRC. I think it was Virtual PC 3.0 circa 1999. I've no idea how well it worked.

E: oops quoted the wrong guy.
RealPC 1.1 can do it. Not gonna bother though since the V2 seems unstable in this mac- only lasted 5 minutes of UT99. System is stable otherwise.

CelGen wrote:

Mine does the same. There's no boot select if you come up with the OPTION key held down. It will initially only boot from the CD […]
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Mine does the same. There's no boot select if you come up with the OPTION key held down. It will initially only boot from the CD drive. You're limited to the CD drive because the B/W's couldn't even use Target Disk Mode.
Try selecting system folders with the Startup Disk control panel normally found on the OS install CD's.

if I set it to disk boot when the disk is busted I actually have to boot open firmware and force a CD boot. Then the system crashes, but it's set to CD boot so I can proceed.

What?? So you tell it to boot from the CD and it crashes because it's booting from the CD? 😕

B/W G3's look awesome but they were terrible things. Nobody knows positively how to make them happy but once they got an install you didn't touch it in fear of these weaird non-booting issues.

Literally yes. I call a boot to CD from OF and it will then hard-crash and shut down. Once I power back up, it boots CD properly.
This is the only way I can boot successfully if the HDD is unbootable. It's quite strange.

I believe the PRAM battery is toast. Goddamnit Apple why did you have to use a non-standard battery augh.

SRQ wrote:

Literally yes. I call a boot to CD from OF and it will then hard-crash and shut down. Once I power back up, it boots CD properly.
This is the only way I can boot successfully if the HDD is unbootable. It's quite strange.

I believe the PRAM battery is toast. Goddamnit Apple why did you have to use a non-standard battery augh.

Heh, like mentioned, the B/W's are really really weird beasts when it comes to OF and booting. Once you get the OS on it though they settle down.
The only good thing about all the first gen G5's dropping like flies is that if you know anyone who gets them in for recycling or has a dead one or five you can steal the 3.6v batteries out of them and not have to be paying whatever the heck I last saw the things selling online for years ago.

you have to boot off the cd (any bootable os install or update cd that is compatible with the machine) and then go under "Control panels" and select "Startup disk" and choose which partition to boot there
thats how it was done on powermacs that came before the invention of the Sawtooth AGP G4 which introduced the option key being held down to choose partition regardless of toolbox image (tbxi)

i think there were some number key shortcuts u could make which also would direct the g3 to boot off different SCSI iD's on your SCSI chain because at the time of the B+W g3 many "professional" mac's had been running off SCSI hard disks because they were much more reliable then ATA IDE hard disks of that age. i was wondering because the seritek 1s2 pci sil3112 controller comes up as scsi drive maybe it would be possible to use the scsi keyboard shortcuts built into macOS startup to be able to choose startup disk that way

"For classic Apple Macintosh computers, to boot from a specific SCSI ID, use the Command-Option-Shift-Delete-# key combination, replacing '#' with the desired SCSI ID number.
-To bypass the startup disk and boot from the first available bootable device or the internal CD-ROM, use Command-Option-Shift-Delete without the number. "