Greetings!

>I guess what I was wanting to do is make my own "base.tgz" in fact that's
>what I called it, I want to burn it to a CD, if I want to remake the
machine
>for some reason, I can use the standard mac tools to build the MacOS stuff,

OK.  I was looking for a solution that woul dhave skipped
that step...

>Once I've got it booting, I can then use the "hacked" Apple HD SC, to make

"Hacked"?  Oh, to work around the "non Apple" issue?  (I use
the HD SC from A/UX to do that since it appears to work with
non-Apple disks)

>the disk partitions, then use the MKFS tool to format them, then use the
>Installer to push my version of base.tgz onto the machine.

OK.  "Sounds like a plan..."  :>

>I assume that the making the standard base.tgz must be documented
somewhere,
>I would like to get hold of that information so I can replicate it for my
>version of base.tgz.

I think the only "special" things in the building of base.tgz
are *limiting* the files that are present in it.  I.e. base.tgz
doesn't include all the sources, X, etc.

It was my understanding that you want *your* base.tgz to
basically contain *everything*, right?  So, the tarball
you proposed should do the trick...  I would get the system
as quiescent as practical before doing that

>Does this make some form of sense? I'm not trying to package the
>partitioning or boot blocks.

OK.

>I've got a spare disk floating around, I might just test my theory.

If you have a spare disk, you might also consider just buiilding
a backup "system" on that disk *now*.  Set it aside for when/if
you need it (so you don't have to remember the installation
steps later...)

--don