Yellow Dog Linux

I've inhereted two beige G3s from work and would like to put an old version of YDL on them, but it seems neither hard drive is being seen by either computer.

I was sucessful getting them to boot with an old Apple monitor (which has since expired), and they each had mac os nine point something and an older version of OS X. I've never had a mac with OSX on it so perhaps I shut down from the wrong operating system.

Anyway, now they boot from a OS8.5 CDR but drive setup only sees the CDRom and no hard drive. I can also get them to boot on the external SCSI bus on an old 50 pin SCSI drive, but have the same problem with drive setup not seeing the hard drive. I got the same lack of recognition from the YDL install CD.

I've tried resetting the ROM and zapping the PRAM numerous times to no avail. Any help would be welcomed.

Thanks

By the way, both drives in question are ultra-wide SCSI's.

sorry but are these old or new world machines? if theyre old world machines you need (well to prevent headaches) 9.x and bootx to boot ydl. if its a new world machine you may need to pass the kernel some options (anyone know how to list all the kernel boot options?)

Yessir, they're both oldworld machines. Using an external drive and bootx I can get the installer disk going. The problem is that I can't get it to see the internal drive, neither YDL or OS 8.5 can see it. I's unlikely that both drives failed at the same time, isn't it?

unlikely but possible. if you complete the installation to the externel drive can you then format or alter the internal drives. Also are the drives connected to an onboard controller or a card. If its a card you may need to either load the proper modules or compile them into the kernel to use it