Re: potato boot-floppies for powerpc uploaded
On 19/10/99 Joel Klecker wrote:
The problem is that most powermacs have horrid Open Firmware, and
the input-device and output-device are set to ttya (so bootvars is
the only way short of attaching a serial console to get to OF).
None of this applies to post-iMac systems, which actually do have
decent OF with sensible defaults (however, those will not boot Linux
kernels because the images lack the .note section that the new OF
requires).
they also seem to refuse to load boot blocks which makes it
impossible to boot a linux system unless you keep a dos or (ack) hfs
partition laying around.
if anyone has managed to get quik to work (completely) on blue G3s
please let me know.
I have done quite a bit of experimenting with booting these machines,
I have not been able to read files from ISO filesystems but can read
files from DOS filesystem IF you have a DOS style partition table
like we use on intel machines, OF refuse to look at partitions that
are not of type Apple_HFS or Apple_BootROM on a apple partitioned
disk and refuses to use those if they are not real hfs or hfs+
filesystems (yuk!)
in short BrokenFirmware just sucks :-(
Best Regards,
Ethan Benson
To obtain my PGP key: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/pgp/
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