Installing YDL: First Drive is Now Inaccessible

[Joe Parker]

Hi all!

I've been shut out of my two hard drive G4 while trying to install YDL
3. 

I tried to install to my "b" drive, the install froze, and now my "a"
drive (which runs OSX) is inaccessible because its partition table is
missing or unreadable. Any repeat YDL installation attempts fail at
either the part where the 3rd install disk tries to install the
"Mac-On-Linux" package or, more recently, when the machine tries to load
the CD image to the hard drive before installing packages.

I've posted the "Full Story" below. What I'd like to do is re-enable
whatever is missing on the "a" drive so that I can at least get in to
OSX without completely wiping that drive. If I can get to that point I'm
pretty sure I'm back on track. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Joe
 

---------------
Full Story
---------------
My first installation attempt was to a newly-partitioned "b" drive where
the "a" (or "hda") drive is the one that runs OSX and contains my data.
This attempt froze when the third installation disc tried to install a
"Mac-on-Linux" related package.

During the original installation setup, I chose to repartition my entire
"b" drive, and as part of that process I made an Apple bootstrap
partition on the "b" drive (as prompted by the install dialogue - also
made a swap partition). Could this be the reason that the "a" drive
became inaccessible? I configured yaboot to give YDL or MacOSX as the
boot-up options, with MacOSX being the default.

On system restart, there is no yaboot menu and MacOSX tries to load but
fails (and switches from an apple icon to a circle-with-slash-inside
"not allowed" symbol). YDL is still not installed on the "b" drive.

When I boot with the YDL install disk, the installation dialogue tells
me that the "hda" (or "a") drive is missing a partition table, and in
order to make any new partitions I'll need to format that drive (losing
all the data).

When I boot with the OSX install disk, the install process fails when
trying to locate a destination disk for the install. So it seems Apple
can't read my "a" drive either.