<no subject>
I'm happy to hear the oldworld keyboard problem will soon be fixed.
In the meantime, I've been scratching my head wondering how I can manage to
install Debian on my NewWorld iMac 350, unless I get a CD. I was sort of
avoiding buying a CD because I wanted to learn more about how the whole
thing goes together as I install.
My machine is floppy-less, so I don't know how to initiate the boot process.
I thought of copying the floppy image contents to the Mac OS RAM Disk, then
setting the RAM Disk as startup. But MacOS 9.1 won't allow me to use the RAM
Disk for startup like the earlier versions did.
I also tried using one HFS partition as my floppy-substitute, and copied the
floppy image contents there. The 9.1 Startup Disk utility doesn't recognize
it as a valid system, so won't allow me to boot from it. Even if I got past
that hurdle, I know the next thing it would ask for would be the root.bin
floppy.
I looked at netbooting, but the MacOS idea of netbooting is really limited
to getting a boot image from a MacOS Server on the LAN. It sure would be
cool to be able to point MacOS at an internet install file, and have it boot
directly into the installer online! Maybe, someday... Right now it looks
like there is no support for netbooting an initial Debian installation.
I finally hit on the idea of downloading and installing Darwin on a separate
partition, in order to have access to a Unix system with which to install a
Debian system. It'd be great, someday, for Mac users, to be able to double
click an installer file to get Debian installed. I did successfully boot
into Darwin, but I'm totally clueless about how to proceed. I know I need to
run dbootstrap somehow, and I need to have a kernel to run it with. Or maybe
I could just run it from Darwin? Or if I put the right files in the right
places, can I start a boot from OF *without* floppies?
I used the Drive Setup utility to partition my drive as follows:
A/UX Free (to be eventually used for Apple_Bootstrap): 1M
A/UX Root: 128M
A/UX Swap: 128M
A/UX User: 1000M
HFS+: 500M (for MacOS system)
HFS+: 2000M (for MacOS apps/data)
HFS+: 1500M (for Darwin)
Thanks for any help you can give, I'm willing to experiment.
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