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Re: Booting to floppy



On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 02:48:40PM -0800, Andrew Sharp wrote:
> Um, yeah, that must be what I meant.  Actually, what I meant is
> this: the docs constantly talk about booting the rescue floppy for
> this that and the other.  But the "rescue" floppy for the powerpc
> port is an ext2 file system, and doesn't boot at all on old world
> macs, and I just assumed that it must be for new world macs.  If
> not, then the rescue floppy image is a complete hoax for powerpc. 

the rescue floppy has only one purpose on powerpc, and that is to
provide the kernel image that is installed in the `install OS and
kernel modules' step.  the bootable rescue floppy for oldworld macs is
the hfs-boot.img (or whatever its called).  

> Maybe it is anyway.  Obviously the constant references to the rescue
> floppy in the docs are because the docs are just recycled i386 docs,
> which is fine, but really, there should be something that says that
> there is no real rescue floppy for powerpc.  At least, there isn't a

there is one, boot-hfs.img, except its broken in current boot
floppies...  there is no boot floppy for newworlds since no newworld
has a floppy drive.  

> single floppy that boots to a prompt, unless you count "Insert root
> file system floppy now and hit return".

that is exactly how x86 rescue floppies work.  

> So what I'm saying is that if you have an old world mac, the docs
> and the install procedure are quite broken, and yes, I've already
> volunteered to fix them.  One thing at a time, though.

unless someone figures out how to fix the oldworld boot floppies im
not sure there is a point in documenting them :(

> You lucky newworld macs can just boot from the CD.  Sigh.

yup, newworlds actually have a implementation of OF that works (for
the most part).  

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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