On Mon, 4 May 1998 rgfischer@mail.hac.com wrote:

>      I'm curious what part the Mac OS plays in running MacBSD.
>      I know you want virtual memory off, video set to 1 bit, etc...  but 
>      how much of the OS stay's in RAM once NetBSD is booted up and running 
>      on the machine?

None of the MacOS stays in RAM.  Actually, we rely mostly on having the
machine set-up completed by MacOS ROM-resident initialization code;
this takes care of things like finding the video frame-buffer address,
mapping RAM, etc.

Unfortunately, the ROM code also takes care of loading the operating
system from disk, and that part of the code assumes (requires) that
there be a bootable HFS partition.  It doesn't know anything about
UNIX's ffs.

>      I'm running NetBSD on a relatively slow Centris 610 that has OS 8.1 
>      loaded on it.  Would it make sense to put a minimal System 7.5.1, 7.1 
>      or even 7.0 System folder on the system?  These OS's take up typically 
>      2MB of RAM instead of 8MB.  Does it make a difference?

Makes sense - 7.1 boots a lot faster than 8.1, and if you put a copy (or
alias) of the NetBSD booter in your Startup Items folder, you make it
auto-boot NetBSD as soon as MacOS startup is complete.


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