On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Guy Santiglia wrote:

>   I have my quadra set to boot automatically after MacOS
> start up.  But if the power goes down and comes back up again
> it doesn't work because I have my netbsd boot partion on
> an external disk drive. (and a minimum MacOS on the internal)
>  That external drive needs a few seconds more to 
> start up and doesn't get mounted under MacOS when power is restored.
> So the netbsd booter starts up and can't find my boot partion with 
> the kernel.  (At least that's what I think is happening) 

Sounds plausible...

>  Now that I'm running this machine as my mail server
> I would like to have it come up on it's own after a power failure. What can
> I do to make the MacOS delay it's booting until the external hard drive is
> ready??

Well, I've read the other responses.  I don't know of any way to make the
external drive respond faster, or to make the Mac boot slower, but you can
of course make it look for the external drive by specifying that in the
Startup Disk control panel.  All I've got to add is that there are some
neat power control devices (basically programmable power stripts) 
available from Sophisticated Circuits (http://www.sophisticated.com/) for
managing power.

Although the control software is MacOS-based, the device itself can store
programming, and can do things like apply power in order, with delay, to
the different outlet groups.  I believe that you can program it to
automatically do this after a power failure, but I haven't done it. The
telephone-line surge-supression sockets also allow you to control power
outlet groups with a phone call.  Although I have one (the model 200),
it's not connected to my NetBSD machine, since I've got all three hard
drives mounted internally, and my other gear needs it more.  I use it to
make sure that my Zip drive and modem etc. get powered down automatically
when I shut down my PPC MacOS machine, and powered up when I startup.



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