help for failed boot from all firewire volumes; repeating getty and signal 5

[Wayne Clodfelter]

Stranger than friction.
I recently moved--hopefully up--to an AGP Graphics G4/500 from my beige 
G3 (G4/467 ZIF) because I grew weary of massaging the system to jump 
through increasingly more sophisticated OS X hoops. My attempt to 
install Panther via XPostFacto 3 failed, and left me unable to boot 
back into my trusty and well working 10.2.8 firewire volume. Or any 
firewire volume, for that matter.

Come to find that the problem persists even on the AGP Graphics G4. It 
boots and runs fine on its ATA drive(s), but will not get past the gray 
Apple screen (with or without swirly time-thingy).

In verbose startup mode, I get the following repeating lines at the 
hang:
/usr/libexec/crashreporterd: crashdump terminated by signal 5
init/ getty repeating too quickly on port    /dev/console, sleeping

I have searched various list archives and Apple Knowledgebase for 
"getty" and "signal 5" but have found nothing. I look to the gurus on 
the list to enlighten me as to the nature of these obscure messages, 
hopefully to restore my ability to achieve firewire boots. I do miss 
them.
Many thanks in advance.

Regards,

Wayne

Wayne Clodfelter  wayne at troutnc.com
"Well, if you wanta talk fishin', I guess that'll be OK" ...Lynyrd 
Skynyrd in "Ask Me No Questions"
Visit our web page, TROUT, NC on the web, at www.troutnc.com