> >Since Hauke Fath made available floppy drive in NetBSD
> >(Cool!), it's not impossible to make self-contained native
> >NetBSD boot floppy.
> 
> Right; but you'd have a hard time telling the Macintosh ROMs to seriously
> look at your FFS floppy...  it does not help you here.
> 
> Some time ago, someone pointed out that the ROMs want a HFS partition out
> there.  So you have to have a MacOS style partitioning on your boot disk,
> at least.

Yes, or at least they want a MacOS style partition scheme on the boot
device.

> Comes to mind: Why waiting till Macsbug is loaded and executed? I'd think
> the hard disk driver is loaded and executed much earlier. As I see it, the
> big road block is still setting up the hardware ourselves the way the ROM
> code does it. Way to go...

I think Scott was toying with the idea of using the disk driver. We could
do that with NetBSD side build tools. If we did a fake system file that
might require building with CodeWarrior though that might not be entirely
true.

However, hard disk driver booters only work on hard disks. We could do a
boot blocks loader. That would require a NetBSD installer to make a fake
HFS paritition and then put the boot loader into the boot blocks of the
partition. Though my reservation with this scheme is that MacOS virus
protection programs will likely have a fit over such code.

I'd say the disk driver idea would be great for hard disks and if a fake
system could be done using the gnu tools under BSD that might be even
better.

On an unrelated note:
BTW, I haven't fallen off the earth. I'm slowly but surely moving in to
a new apartment. I've just moved to Massachusetts for my new job.