Henry B. Hotz wrote:

>At 5:39 PM -0500 10/2/00, Eric Damien Berna wrote:
>>Failing that, theoretically, you should be able to make a bootable 
>>CD with the CD writer, then boot off the CD.  The problem is getting 
>>a bootable NetBSD/macppc CD image.  You can find plenty of i386 port 
>>bootable CDs offered by various companies, and even iso disk images 
>>available for download, but no macppc port bootable CDs.  Maybe 
>>somebody can make an image and make it available, or tell me how and 
>>I'll try to make it available.
>
>You could try talking to Bob Nestor.  He was working on the problem. 
>If you sent him a stack of CD-R blanks and lots of moral (and 
>test/diagnostic) support I'd bet you could get something.

I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can, although the more I dig 
into this subject the less I seem to know.  Right now I've pretty much 
convinced myself that the Openfirmware Apple uses is much like SCSI magic 
-- it only seems to respond as expected when the required number of 
chickens, goats and virgins are sacrificed in accordance with some little 
known ritual.

I added a second ATA disk to my B&W G3, even though Apple says you 
shouldn't.  The second disk works for MacOS and for NetBSD, although 
neither seem to be able to boot from it.  With the disk installed the 
DVDROM doesn't seem to be very reliable for booting anything either, no 
matter what it is, MacOS or NetBSD.  Since both it and the second ATA 
drive are on the same controller I suspect this may be a problem and the 
reason for Apple saying a second disk shouldn't be added to the system.  
Overall with the second disk installed my system has been pretty flaky 
for booting and it has become very unstable running MacOS.  I'm not sure 
if the second disk is the source of all the problems, but I'm about to 
take it out and see if things improve.

If the problem of booting from the CDROM is somehow tied to the presence 
of the ATA disk on the same controller I might be able to do some serious 
bootable CD testing when I get this thing reconfigured.

-bob