> >I'm just spoiled by my PowerMac that has almost made it ot the rc scripts
> >before the phosphors on the monitor even have a chance to display the
> >console. :-)
> 
> That's MkLinux?  I tried to load it, but I couldn't free 300MB of staging

Nope. Linux-pmac. It doesn't use a booter extension, it just bootstraps
right out of Open Firmware. *Very* fast. 

> going to try MkLinux on and added it to the MacBSD machine---thus my
> earlier posting about partitioning.

Linux pmac isn't so ridiculous about the install. You get a base install
that fits easily on a ZIP disk and create a boot floppy. Then you can
download the rest of the stuff you want and install that too.

> Numbers aside I agree that a quicker-booting alternative to the current
> booter would be nice.  It should have some way to get back to MacOS for
> when we need it though.  For an example of how it can be done Norton
> Utilities creates some bootable floppies that contain NU, a special system
> enabler, and an empty, blessed system folder, but nothing else.

That's just a shrunken system and norton setup as the finder. No voodoo
there.

> How hard would it be to create a MacBSD version of the startup disk control
> panel?

If we use my system idea then we just need to mark the partion we want
to boot off of as bootable. Or you could throw the booter onto a floppy
and do that.