On Tue, 19 Dec 1995, The Great Mr. Kurtz <davagatw@mars.utm.edu> wrote:

> Don't forget that you can also force the internal hard drive not to mount 
> by holding down command-option-shift-delete (forgive me if that's an 
> extra key in there, but it works, anyway).

Thank you.  You don't know how long I've been searching for that keypress!

> It's actually based upon the order the partitions fall in the partition 
> table.  The system automatically boots from the first partition marked as 
> bootable in the partition table.  This partition must be one of the first 
> two (3?) partitions in the table in order for the Mac to recognize it as 
> bootable.

I don't think that the # is a restriction, because I booted once from my 
external on partition #5...  (it was an accident, and I couldn't figure 
out why I had System 7.1 running, when I just installed 7.5 on my internal)

> If the idea is to have a booting partition on the hard drive, make sure 
> it's on an external if you want to boot MacOS without a floppy or 
> CD-ROM.  Then you can just switch off the external drive until halfway 
> through the boot.  Chances are the finder will mount it anyway.

Nope.  My external takes to long to warm up, and every time I turned on 
my machine, it wouldn't recognize it.  I installed SCSIProbe to fix the 
problem.  It's free somewhere, I think.  Hacking at the ROM's, it looks 
like the ROM's SCSI Manager takes a look at all the drives that are 
online, then somewhere early in the boot, it mounts everything, so 
anything not mounted early won't be recognized.  Just get SCSIProbe and 
all your problems will be solved!

> That still doesn't eliminate the need for the kernel to be able to figure 
> out the amount of real memory, though.  Also, I still say a 
> compartmentalized kernel would be a Good Thing(tm)*.  Kind of making use 
> of external hooks like the current MacOS.  Basically, if you need to 
> upgrade the serial code, you'd release ModSerial31.  If you need to 
> add support for a new module, of course, you'd still have to rerelease 
> ModMain26.  However, users would still be able to keep that one patched 
> ADB code module ModADB17 that happens to work on your system when none of 
> the others do.  Although that make every system different, the 
> functionality *shouldn't* be affected.  Basically, though, every user 
> could customize his/her system using code for each section that work on 
> his/her system.
>
> Thoughts, comments, suggestions, anyone?

Great idea!

> * Good Thing(tm) is a trademark of somebody else.  All other trademarks 
> and registered trademarks are trademarks of their respective holders, 
> whoever they are.  All opinions expressed here are not my own.  They are 
> those of somebody else.  All other opinions are the opinions of their 
> respective writers, whoever they are (maybe).  This is a recording.

(you should put a BEEP at the end)

--Rick C. Petty,  aka Snoopy
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