On Friday, April 5, 2002, at 08:11 AM, Donald Lee wrote:

>> Emiel Kollof wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>> Oh.. can't most macs boot from CD-ROM, btw? Maybe we should look in
>>> getting the NetBSD install cd bootable by holding 'c' during the 
>>> boing?
>>
>>
>> All of the iMacs, G3s (blue and white) and G4s can boot to CD and do 
>> not
>> have built in floppy drives.  Ironically, the most feasible method of
>> using a floppy with these is via USB floppy drive.
>>
>> Blair Stilwell
>
> Hold that thought!
>
> Would it be cool, or what, if we could boot from CD with the 'c' key??
>
> Do we know enough about how Apple does this to build a bootable CD?
> (NetBSD, or course)
>
> Along those lines, (and I know this has been discussed ad nauseum) it
> should be pretty easy to port the 68K install tools to PPC.  Is there 
> any
> good reason these tools could not be used to install NetBSD 
> installations?
> I know the booter would not work, but the install tools should be pretty
> close to a clean port.
>
> As it is now, it is *required* to boot a kernel to do an install, and it
> would be nice to do be able to do the install from MacOS in some cases.

I'd rather see an improvement of the sysinstall process.  The 
installation utilities used in the mac68k port have always been 
step-children and rarely kept up-to-date.  One of the main reasons for 
doing sysinstall on the mac68k port was to get away from having to 
maintain mkfs and the installer applications.

-bob