PC 10.5.6 "Still waiting for root device" Error

[Undiscovered]

Okay, so here's my story:

I've tried installing iDeneb before I turned to iPC. iDeneb went crazy and didn't let me start the installation. It gave me an error that said "Error parsing plist fileLoading Darwin/x86." When I tried -v or ?, my computer started making this constant beeping noise and all of these random overlapping characters appeared on my screen.

Now when I tried iPC for the first time, it did the same thing. I decided to use 7zip instead of WinRAR to extract the .iso file and used the Windows Disk Image Burner that came with Windows 7 on my laptop to burn the .iso to a dvd. That made the installation start, but I got the error with the crossed circle on the apple logo. I did the -v thing and it ended at "Still waiting for root device." Above that, it said "Could not get chip to halt within 100ms" 2 times.

At the moment I'm dual booting Windows 7 Ultimate RTM and Windows XP.

Please help me. :(

Please note: If you need any of my Computer Specs, I would be happy to give them to you. Just tell me which information you need and I'll get right on it.

[Imkantus]

Please note: If you need any of my Computer Specs, I would be happy to give them to you. Just tell me which information you need and I'll get right on it.The Vendor and Model of your Mainboard or the Chipset / Southbridge it uses is required to be known here....

[Undiscovered]

Can you tell me how to get that information? Sorry, but I'm pretty new to all of this.. I have SWI on my computer to tell me the information. Could you tell me if/how I can get the information you require from that program?

And sorry for cross-posting. I thought I could delete the other thread but I couldn't find out how to.

[Imkantus]

Get CPU-z Utility and take a screenshot of what is displayed at "Mainboard" section.
If your Motherboard ain't OEM stuff, the model name is usually also somewhere printed on the board itself.

[Undiscovered]

Here you go! :)

[Imkantus]

OK. There might be various reason for this message coming up.

How much RAM are you currently having applied? If it is more than 2048MB you might try to boot using maxmem=2000 bootflag.

Another scenario I could imagine would be that the DVD drive you are using might be connected through IDE - in this case you should ensure your IDE setup to have a correct Master and Slave setup (not beeing using Cable Select) If it's SATA you don't need to care about this.

There are various revisions of iPC OSx86 released as PPF:
http://pcwizcomputer.com/ipcosx86/?page_id=105
You should have at least PPF3 beeing applied for iPC to work on nForce Chipset Mobo.

Maybe it would also help to add some more specifications about your setup... :)

[Undiscovered]

Can you take me through the steps to apply this patch? I don't see the steps on the webpage you gave me.

Other Computer specs:
AMD Sempron Processor 3400+ 1.8 Ghz (1 core)
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Graphics card (64 mb)
1.25 Gb of DDR2 RAM

EDIT: Or is this a totally new version that can act as a standalone version? Not sure if that made any sense.

[Imkantus]

How about your DVD drive? Do you know about the kind of connection (IDE or SATA) it uses? (Otherwise you might be forced to take a look inside... ;D

Updating the iPC image: First you need to know what version of iPC image you got downloaded beforce you can start adding those update patches to it. Patching tool is part of PPF1 Download - so even if you've downloaded iPC OSx86 with PPF2 beeing already added, you'll need to grab that one, too.
Be sure to apply those PPF Patches one by one and to check for md5 cheksum afterwards each time...

[Undiscovered]

I have an IDE drive.

[Imkantus]

I have an IDE drive.
K. Is there another device beeing connected to the same cable?
40-Pin IDE cable can connect a master and a slave device at a time - which one of them is beeing used as which is configured using a jumper you'll find on the back of any IDE device:
http://www.iomega.com/europe/support/deutsch/manuals/mo/atapi/images/master_slave_jumpernew.jpg
(1 = Master, 2=Slave)

Be sure to have the IDE device beeing connected to the outer-port, beeing jumped as Master & the one beeing connected to the inner-port beeing jumped as Slave.

I am running nForce 4 mainboard myself and expired my IDE configuration not to work properly on OS X without having it beeing seted up this way, although it worked fine on other OS with my previous configuration...
I hope this will gonna work in your case too. :)


//Edit:
Beforce I forget - I should properbly tell you, that there is no support for your onboard GFX on OS X. So if you want to have working graphic accerlation, you might need to add a supported graphics card to your setup...

[Undiscovered]

Graphics acceleration? Does that mean I can't do anything at all with it? My current situation prevents me from upgrading or buying a new PC. :(

[Imkantus]

Graphics acceleration? Does that mean I can't do anything at all with it? My current situation prevents me from upgrading or buying a new PC. :(
Well the OS itself should work but graphics will just be VESA, you will miss some stuff like Coverflow on iTunes or VLC will not be showing video.... If you just want to do stuff like textprocessing on OpenOffice, surf the web & watch some videos on YouTube you won't miss it that much I would guess.
You can compare this with running Windows without proper graphic driver.

Apart a 7000-Series GeForce can be baught for about 15€ or even cheaper on eBay.de (I dunno what country you are from - situation might be different.)

[Undiscovered]

You can compare this with running Windows without proper graphic driver.
Ouch.. So I'd assume playing online games is out of the question? :rolleyes:

EDIT: Do you know if this graphics card would work properly?
http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Nvidia-GeForce-7300LE-128Mb-PCI-e-Video-Card-LP_W0QQitemZ380135582453QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Vid eo_TV_Cards?hash=item5881d8aaf5

This is the third card I found, not sure if you noticed or not. I'm positive that this is the best deal I can find.
(http://www.amazon.com/MSI-nVidia-GeForce-PCI-Express-N8400GS-TD256/dp/B0019WSGS6/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1271553631&sr=1-9)

[Imkantus]

EDIT: Do you know if this graphics card would work properly?
http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Nvidia-GeForce-7300LE-128Mb-PCI-e-Video-Card-LP_W0QQitemZ380135582453QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Vid eo_TV_Cards?hash=item5881d8aaf5
Yep. It should work fine just with bootloader provided inject & without any further tweaking. :)

But maybe it's a good idea to make the rest of OS X to work, once before buying additional hardware - ain't it?
So how's the situation at the frontline? :D

[Undiscovered]

I finished patching the OSX. Now all I need to do is burn it to a DVD and try installing it again.

[Undiscovered]

Still no luck, I'm afraid. After patching the OS, I tried to burn it using Windows Disk Image Burner but it said it wasn't a valid file. I tried burning it with CDBurnerXP and it didn't detect the disk when I booted up the computer.

[Undiscovered]

K. Is there another device beeing connected to the same cable?
40-Pin IDE cable can connect a master and a slave device at a time - which one of them is beeing used as which is configured using a jumper you'll find on the back of any IDE device:
http://www.iomega.com/europe/support/deutsch/manuals/mo/atapi/images/master_slave_jumpernew.jpg
(1 = Master, 2=Slave)

Be sure to have the IDE device beeing connected to the outer-port, beeing jumped as Master & the one beeing connected to the inner-port beeing jumped as Slave.

I am running nForce 4 mainboard myself and expired my IDE configuration not to work properly on OS X without having it beeing seted up this way, although it worked fine on other OS with my previous configuration...
I hope this will gonna work in your case too. :)
Do I need to worry about this if there is only 1 device that's connected through the IDE cable?

[Imkantus]

Do I need to worry about this if there is only 1 device that's connected through the IDE cable?
If your DVD drive is the only IDE device you are currently using, I would try to set it up as Master - maybe it will work, maybe not - but apart from using an SATA or USB DVD drive, I think this is currently the best option you can try out. ;)

[Undiscovered]

Tried it.. didn't work :(
Is there anything else you know that I could try? Preferably with no cost :)

[Imkantus]

You could of course try a more recent OSx86 Leopard image like iAtkos v7 or to install Snow Leopard using EmpireEFI CD for AMD + Retail DVD...
Maybe one of those will work better for you as I still could imagine your iPC PPF applied to be to old to support nForce...

[Undiscovered]

Which would have a higher chance of working on my machine?