A puzzle: getting Fedora PPC on to an iBook G4

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I have a late 2003 iBook G4.  It's one of the ones that had the
display fault which Apple wouldn't admit to[1].

The upshot of this is: the internal LCD does not work.  Being an
iBook, it also doesn't have a serial port.  However it does have wired
network, an external display and several USB ports.

Currently it is running Mac OS X, using the external display.

Here's a puzzle for you: how do I get Fedora PPC on this machine?

There is no visible way to get to the OpenFirmware boot prompt.  (I
mean, I can get to it, but I have to type blind, and I don't see any
messages).

It does seem to boot into the Fedora PPC CD disk 1, judging by the
noises it makes.  Of course it's not very much use because it won't
use the external display, so I can't see anything.

I have not been able to get it to netboot.  It sends packets to my
dnsmasq-based PXE server, and dnsmasq sends packets back, but nothing
further happens.  (This dnsmasq configuration can boot PC guests
fine).

Is there something I can type blind at the CD prompt?  (And what?)

Is there another boot method?

Serial-over-ethernet?

USB serial ports?  (I don't have one, but I could get one if you think
they would work).

A way to boot from within OS X?

Can I get OpenFirmware to use the external display?  The answer to
this one is, I suspect, 'yes', but I cannot find the right voodoo for
the nvram output-device parameter to make it work in reality.  Display
card is ATY,RV280M9+ and dmesg suggests the internal and external
displays are called ATY,Via_A and ATY,Via_B respectively.

Any other ideas?

I've spent several days on this, but I'm getting nowhere fast :-(

Rich.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/03/danish_consumer_complaints_board_claim_ibook_defect/

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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