I now have an Efika, which already has an unregistered MorphOS 2.3 installed on a CF card (via an IDE adapter). Unfortunately it won't boot, even though it apparently worked fine for the previous owner.

After the firmware (aka "BIOS") screen, it gets stuck on a black screen with some white text at the bottom saying "MorphOS 2.3 loading..." on the first line, and "bplan,EFIKA5K2 396MHz, 101MB RAM" on the second line. I wondered if there should be a logo shown (there is none)?

It doesn't seem to have survived the postal service completely. Can anyone suggest what I could try to get it to work? I have already tried dismantling & rebuilding it. I don't want to try reinstalling MOS (except as a last resort) since it should be fine (I think it must be a hardware or firmware issue).

Could the firmware being reset (due to battery issue) cause any problems? I did try removing & reinserting the battery at one point.

Holding down both mouse buttons didn't seem to do anything.

[ Edited by ChrisH 04.05.2011 - 19:57 ]

Hi Chris,

Glad to see that you got a MorphOS2.x compatible system to test your software on. It could be a battery/reset problem and there are threads here in the forums that you can search through to find the correct method of resetting the Efika after a battery replacement. That should not prevent it from booting, but could prevent it from recognizing that it has a registered version of MorphOS2.x (if it did have a registered keyfile).

Most likely it is a corrupted file that is preventing the Efika from completing the boot process and the only way to fix that is (without knowing which file is corrupted), is to do a re-install of MorphOS2.x. I would suggest doing so anyway, to use the latest version of MorphOS that has better memory management for the Efika than the earliest versions of MorphOS2.x had.

The install process does not take long and on the Efika is easier to do from a USB thumb-drive/memory stick. If you have any troubles with the re-install of MorphOS2.x, post your questions back in this thread and I will try to help you.

Again, welcome to MorphZone.org and to using a MorphOS2.x computer (once you get your Efika working).

That "holding down both mouse buttons" can be a bit tricky. For boot menu I'd reccomend booting manually with string like that:
Code:
If this doesn't help - try booting from USB stick and upgrading your system to something up-to-date. You don't need to do a clean install, every MorphOS version allows you to just upgrade from previous ones.

OK, I have wiped the existing MorphOS 2.3 installation, and am trying to install the latest MOS 2.7 from a 4GB USB memory stick... but have run into problems:

As it looked like the ISO would take a lot longer to download than MOS's 30 minute time-out, I downloaded it from the same URL using my PC (in a faction of the time). I put the ISO on the memory stick. I successfully booted from morphos-2.7-efikainstall.img (also on the memory stick). I started the installer, pointing it to the ISO on the memory stick, but it failed after a little while (saying something like object not found) and the mouse pointer was frozen.

So I rebooted, and tried copying (using Ambient) the ISO from the USB memory stick to the Temp partition I had set-up. This got a little way through the copy, and then also failed.

Suggestions?

EDIT: Tried copying (a much smaller file) using the Shell, and that failed & then froze too. Is the Efika FUBARed, or is this a common problem?

[ Edited by ChrisH 04.05.2011 - 12:13 ]

First of all, the battery can be a pain in the ass on the Efika. Even if you don´t care about the keyfile/MAC it seems to cause strange issues sometimes.

Better replace it. If possible, try to replace it while the system is running. In case the MAC is still correct that would save a lot of nerves, in case you turn it on and get a bad MAC after swapping the battery. But be careful
not to drop the battery onto the board or any connectors.

About the installation. Pressing both mouse buttons is not needed. Another way to reach the boot menu is press and hold F1 right after the spinning /-\ thingy vanished.

The logo can be disabled in OF. Also there is a blue letter which is shown, when the keyboard wasn´t detected by the OpenFirmware. This happens even on other systemes from time to time and is nothing to be worried about. If you see the text output its fine.

The logo on the boot screen can be disabled and configured. If the boot stops there the problem is some missing/broken file on hard disk.

My suggestions to fix the problem:

Try pressing ESC to reach the OF. Best thing is while its counting down. If this is not working for some reason unplug the harddrive. Once in OF type:

Setenv autoboot? false

This deactivates auto booting. Reconnect the drive (and consider getting a CF Card which is best for the efika, as the Efika tends to slow down massivly using SFS. Of course this depends on your needs of disk space.)

Use another system and download the "Efika install iso" and the "Pegasos2" iso. The second is the once the efika will try to load during installation and you may need it later. I suggest to rename the first one boot.iso and copy both to your usb stick.

Plug the usb stick in and reset (OF does not detect usb device changes)

type:

boot scsi boot.iso

This will take a while. If its done you should get into the installer. It should ask you about upgrading installation. Just follow the installation. Once you get to the point where you should download the iso, you simply specify the secons big iso, which contains all needed files. This helps to avoid the 30 minute limit.

If there is a problem with USB lockup, then try another stick or insert an USB hub (the openfirmware may not like an usb hub, so ensure the keyboard is connected direct to one of the efika usb ports. Lockups in genaral should not happen, when using an up to date iinstallation img.

If you´re done reboot and type

boot

now the system should be fixed and boot up again. If it is fine once again enter OF and type

setenv autoboot? true

This enables automatic booting again.

If there are still problems or questions, feel free to join #morphos or #geit.de in freenode.net IRC to get into some personal interaction which is more effective than this delayed conversation. :D

Geit

[ Edited by geit 04.05.2011 - 14:33 ]

> autoboot

Isn't it 'auto-boot' (with hyphen)?

I managed to copy the ISO file directly to the CF card (on an FFS partition), using OS4 on my Sam440. So no possibility of Efika USB problems, and I even verified the file after copying it.

But using it as the installation source still gives "MorphOS failed to install" "object not found".


Does anyone have a CRC32 checksum for the iWizard/Efika ISO file? Other than that, I can't think of any other reason it would fail, except that the Efika is FUBARed.

[ Edited by ChrisH 04.05.2011 - 15:13 ]

About that .iso again - can you mount it (using RMB on the .iso and selecting "Mount" ) as a virtual drive? Maybe it'll work this way.

> Does anyone have a CRC32 checksum for the iWizard/Efika ISO file?

You can find the MD5 sum there (different URL but identical file):

http://www.morphos-team.net/downloads.html

It's not the "Efika ISO file" but the "eMac, Mac mini G4, Pegasos 1 & 2, Power Mac G4" ISO file, i.e. what geit called "'Pegasos2' iso" here in this thread.

@Andreas_Wolf Quote:
Are you SURE about that? Because when I originally started downloading both the "Efika ISO file" AND the "Pegasos2 ISO file"... they had slightly different file sizes according to Firefox! So I believed the Efika ISO was different, for some reason.

But just started download both ISOs again just now, and now they show the same size. So either there was temporarily a buggy version on the server, a server bug, a Firefox bug, or an internet bug...

So this may be the reason for (some of!) my problems. Will try again, sigh.

OK, looks like the ISO file was truncated/corrupt, because now I was able to install MorphOS first time of the USB stick

> Are you SURE about that?

Yes, absolutely.

> Will try again

Good luck.

> now I was able to install MorphOS first time of the USB stick :-)

Time to rejoice :-)