> What do you mean by "native?" I see an advantage to skipping the MacOS
> boot time, but isn't MacOS the native operating system (the one the
> ROMs are built to support)? Also, why do we need a MacOS licence? The
> only computers our port runs on came w/ Apple ROMs and a version of MacOS?

Native as in when the Mac reads the disk, it reads NetBSD/mac68k code,
and nothing else.  Just like a Sparc/i386/Sun3/HP300 does.  The MacOS
license is perhaps a moot point as system 7.0.x is downloadable from
Apple.  Maybe I was thinking about the formatting software license.. :)
My reply was to the question of whether to get Booter working under
System 6.  My impression of the Mac ROMs is that a major part of System
6 is _in_ the ROMs, and getting native boot capabilities might be almost
as easy (ha!) as getting Booter to run under System 6.

> From what I'm learning about the variability of hardware configurations,
> we'd be duplicating a lot of work the MacOS does now. Without
> documentation. Problems like the apparent power control stuff on
> the PowerBooks might be quite nasty.

Perhaps NetBSD/mac68k should run _under_ MacOS like MachTen, then we
don't duplicate so much work?  I don't like the duplicating work
argument, 'cuz the whole idea of a free OS _is_ to duplicate work, but to
make it _free_.  I agree that hardware differences are an issue, but I
don't think the issue is clarified much by booting MacOS first.  The
unusual hardware is still there, and MRG is _not_ the answer for
it. 

> Maybe we could just steal the Sun port's partitioning stuff? A few months
> ago I started a long thread on current-users about being able to read
> other ports' disklabels. Everyone hashed out a lot of problems, and
> then nothing got done. Maybe this would be a time to start on that road,
> seeing as we'll need to be able to read "native" (NetBSD-modifiable)
> and MacOS-based disklabels.

This certainly sounds reasonable to me.  I would assume that the code
would need to recognize native disklabels _and_ mac partition maps,
so the boot drive would have MacOS, and other disks can be native.

> I don't really care about booting w/o MacOS, but I agree it would be nice
> to boot to NetBSD quicker than presently. One intermediate solution might
> be to work to squeeze everything onto a floopy. Doesn't System 7 still

I would be happy with native boot support from a floppy only, it that
would be easier...

> respect the "first-launch" parameter of the boot block even though the
> Finder is a special program for the OS? If we made a boot floppy w/
> just the system file and Booter, couldn't we get the system to run Booter
> automatically?

What about the MODE32 extension, or the 32bit memory config?  Wouldn't
that all need to be on the floppy? (how does the Memory control panel
work?)


-Andrew
-- 
============================ Real 32bit multi-tasking UN*X System
Andrew Gillham             | TCP/IP,NFS,PPP,4.4BSD-lite,multi-user
gillham@andrews.edu        | i386,sparc,alpha,mac68k,amiga,others
LAN/WAN/NW/UN*X specialist |   ---> http://www.NetBSD.org <---