On Sat, 16 Dec 1995, Shawn Pearce wrote:

> >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
> >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?
> 
> Yes, and since the mac will _NOT_ boot to anything other than an HFS
> partition with a blessed system folder, this is the closest way to boot
> without making a "fake" macOS.  Way to hard - I'd never ask for that do be
> done.

I disagree.  In the process of developing a simple, small OS on the Mac, 
I disassembled the boot code, and actually, a disk WILL boot without a 
system folder, and even without an OS.  THe only requirement is that the 
first sector on the disk has some opcodes as well as the assembly code to 
load the OS, or whatever.  We could write something to boot from floppy 
or even a BSD partition, but it will take a little bit of work.  I'd be 
happy to help!  :)

> Basically, if someone could find a way to make a floppy boot as many macs
> as possible, or write a manuel on how to make a boot floppy for your
> machine, we could provide a finder/booter that you'd just copy over the
> finder the installer placed there.

If I could somehow get ahold of a bootable system disk for an old system 
(to cover the macs that won't boot w/ 7.01 or 7.5), I could probably 
patch some code or rewrite the boot blocks to load whatever.  Surprising, 
I would even enjoy writing the code!  ;)

> I'm trying to get the info on how to make an app into a "finder" that could
> just overwrite the existing one.  (Like a MacTools/Norton emergency disk).
> When I do, i'll fix up a booter that will do this.

Probably your bst bet is to make a "fake" finder which will run an APPL.  
But then, you lose your finder, unless you make it possible toexecute the 
system file "Finder".  Could easily be done, even with system 7.  The 
only problem I can see is:  What system will this program be designed 
for?  Different systems handle the Finder differently.

--Rick C. Petty,  aka Snoopy
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