Subject: Re: /dev/rom?
To: Michael R Zucca <mrz5149@cs.rit.edu>
From: Henry B. Hotz <hotz@jpl.nasa.gov>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 11/14/1997 12:07:05
At 2:33 PM 11/14/97, Michael R Zucca wrote:
>> Really?  Is that a *minimum* System 7.1?  My IIcx boots a full-up (not
>> minimum) System 7.1 in under a minute and I have to manually cancel the PPP
>> connection.
>
>Well, it's not a minimal 7.1. I still have some things I haven't quite gotten
>off that machine so I need to fire up full MacOS every once in a while.
>
>I'm just spoiled by my PowerMac that has almost made it ot the rc scripts
>before the phosphors on the monitor even have a chance to display the
>console. :-)

That's MkLinux?  I tried to load it, but I couldn't free 300MB of staging
space in MacOS to get it installed from the 'net (at least not and still
have enough room to *run* MkLinux afterward).  They put *everything* in a
single stuffit archive which you have to unstuff before you can do the
install.

I could have done it if I decommissioned my MacBSD machine to get another
disk, but I *use* that machine sometimes.  Instead I took the disk I was
going to try MkLinux on and added it to the MacBSD machine---thus my
earlier posting about partitioning.

>Even with a minimal MacOS, a booter that ranks in at maybe 100k it going
>to boot the machine faster than the 700k MacOS which still has to init
>a bunch of managers and load the finder and the booter. This is a very
>signifigant problem on slower 030 machines. Plus, it would be nice to
>have a "free standing" OS alternative just for aesthetic reasons :)

Numbers aside I agree that a quicker-booting alternative to the current
booter would be nice.  It should have some way to get back to MacOS for
when we need it though.  For an example of how it can be done Norton
Utilities creates some bootable floppies that contain NU, a special system
enabler, and an empty, blessed system folder, but nothing else.

How hard would it be to create a MacBSD version of the startup disk control
panel?

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