In article <Pine.LNX.4.05.9902230932170.25708-100000@drthunder.ml.org> fragermk@drthunder.ml.org (Mike Frager) writes:
>Hello everyone,
>
>I'm interested in developing a way to boot NetBSD without the MacOS at
>all. I think I've narrowed down two ways to do it:
>
>First, an imposter Apple_Driver partition: this would be loaded in early
>boot by the start manager and then would find a certain NetBSD partition
>then load and execute a second stage loader that would actually boot the
>kernel.
>
>The advantage of the imposter Apple_Driver is that it is loaded very early
>and would be simple to implement since the documentation for writing an
>Apple_Driver is easily available. The downside is that we would have to
>create a user space utility in NetBSD to manage it.
>
>Another way is to create an imposter System file: this would be loaded in
>late boot, again by the start manager. The code in this imposter file
>would need to locate the NetBSD root partition, load the kernel and then
>execute it. There would be no need for a second stage loader.
>
>The advantage of the imposter System file is that it could be managed from
>the MacOS. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea what in the
>System file gets called first by the start manager and how to get the
>start manager to think that our imposter System file is really a System
>file.
>
>Please respond on the list if you have any comments about these ideas,
>especially if you are interested in helping me create one of these
>booters.
>
>Also, I could use any and all information related to the start manager.
>Feel free to email me that info. directly.

The functionality that we might want to achieve here is to make NetBSD
self-hosting, i.e. not needing anything from MacOS to work [or install].
I believe that the Apple_Driver is the way to go for that. On the other
hand, it is not an easy taks from what I understand, because one has to
deal with all the hardware...

christos