The fallowing is attempt in the very least to put all known information
about the problem into one place.

1) The white-screen-of-death occurs only on OFW 3 computers, I have seen no
case of it occurring on another OFW version.

2) There is a relation to the BootROM or Firmware (not open) version. My 350
had no trouble with the straight auto boot until it's Firmware was updated.
This leads me to believe that a solution is possible.

3) It does not have the same symptoms of a drive not spinning up as from my
experience with earlier non BSD os's this was not a issue if the box was
reset at the point the boot failed as the 2nd time the drive was already
spinning this is not the case with this error.

4) No amount of patches directed at fixing a non spun up drive did anything.

5) The ofwboot.xcf and ofwboot.elf both produce the same result.

6) both ofwboot.xcf and ofwboot.elf do not resemble all other Open Firmware
boot files I have been able to find. Specifically before the ELF or XCONF
all other boot files have chirp boot script.

7) there are changes made to the var's available to setenv in different
Firmware versions. Example: Prior to the update a var named boot-args
exsisteted after the update the the var is no longer there. This leads be to
believe there have been changes to the way the ofw boot command works.

Any corrections to the above statements are greatly encouraged before I try
and find a way to fix this :)

Has anyone been able to locate any documentation detailing the nature of ELF
files and the requirements of the newest Firmware updates to boot?
    --Gavin


On 5/26/02 11:47 PM, "Charlie Allom" <charlie@eatyourpets.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 09:00:08PM -0700, Gavin Carothers wrote:
>>  
>>> Where you are (purposely) in OpenFirmware, what does printenv say ?
>> 
>> Only things changed from signiture are:
>> boot-comand          boot
>> boot-device             ultra1:,\ofwboot.xcf
>> boot-file                    netbsd.macppc
>> 
>> that's it. Everything else is as it was. It boots fine just when it reboots
>> the boot loader exits and drops back into ofw. Well at least that's what it
>> was doing till a few minutes ago. Now I get a lovely blank white screen,
>> however if I hold down the Command-Option-O-F I can just type boot and it
>> boots up normally.
> 
> You look like you've been bitten by the white-screen-of-death
> rebooting bug ;)
> 
> My wallstreet also cannot reboot by itself. Some earlier machines can
> be fixed by patching the nvram to idle a second or two so as to allow
> the hard drive to spin up. (see the FAQ)
> 
> Also check early this months port-macppc for a similiar "me too"
> thread about machines this has affected.
> 
> C.