Subject: Re: MacPPc again
To: None <eurohack@bofh.kyrnet.kg, green@unix.kg, port-macppc@netbsd.org>
From: Aaron Jackson <jackson@msrce.howard.edu>
List: port-macppc
Date: 10/28/1999 00:15:37
>Hello people..
>I'd like to thank all those people who tried to help me with installing
>NetBSD on my MacPPC.
>I installed it. finally. but.. how can I make it boot from the hard
>drive?
>I can see nothing but an image of a floppy and an X inside.
>I understand that those questions come from my not understaning how Macs
>are working, but still... I dont' know and I really want to know.
>so please do not flame me, I'm just a [l]user in Mac.
>I canmount those partitions : wd0a and wd0g if I boot from floppy.
>the question is how to make this MAc boot from the HDD.

My experience with running unix like OS on a power mac is limited to LinuxPPC,
(I haven't had the time or disk space to try NetBSD) so what I say might
not be valid.  Keeping that in mind...

You have to get into open firmware and issue the proper boot command.
This might not be such an easy thing to guess.  However, you should
be able to set your nvram so that it boots into NetBSD every time. I
suggest that you look at www.linuxppc.org to find some useful
information abouting booting macs and a very useful utility "Boot
Variables" which you should be able to use to set your nvram.  Of course,
LinuxPPC doesn't suffer from these problem because of the excellent
BootX utility.  Looking at the linux install docs:

...

OF obtains control early in the boot process after power-on self tests
have been run.  It scans the buses in the system and builds the device
tree.  Normally it then boots an operating system from the selected
boot device (specified by the value of the `boot-device' variable).
On most Power Macs this is set to `/AAPL,ROM', which causes OF to
transfer control to MacOS in ROM.  By changing this to some other
value, we can get OF to boot Linux instead of MacOS.  Some example
values are:

fd:installer.coff       Floppy disk (specifically, the file
                        `installer.coff' on the floppy disk)

scsi/sd@1:0             SCSI disk at ID 1
scsi-int/sd@0:0         SCSI disk at ID 0 on the internal SCSI bus
ata/ata-disk@0:0        Internal IDE disk

...

It lookst like `ata/ata-disk@0:0' or `ata/ata-disk@0:bsd' or something
like that might work for you. If not, remember to use the
command-option-p-r key combination after reset or power on to reset
your nvram.

Aaron Jackson