On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Wonko the Sane wrote:

> so we're booting MacOS to boot NetBSD because
> 
> a) there is no native NetBSD loader for mac68k.
> 
> b) we need Mode32 to twiddle the bits.

Right now, both.

Some of the things I'm doing for macppc will help with a) (like making it
so that boot loaders can deal w/ MacOS partitioned disks). But the real
problem is, AFAICT, that we'd still need Mode32.

NetBSD boot blocks would work, but they'd kick in at the time when the
ROM's are looking at disk drivers. The problem is that on these older
machines, we're in 24-bit addressing mode at that point. We've not figured
out how to get out of 24-bit into 32-bit addressing, previously depending
on the ROM's to do it for us. :-)

> i don't think i said what i said well enough.  this is what i meant, just 
> figure out which bits are twiddled by Mode32 and do that.

We've been playing with it on and off for years, with no luck. :-(

Take care,

Bill