mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Guy Santiglia wrote:
> 
> >
> >   I have my quadra set to boot automatically after MacOS
> > start up.  But if the power goes down and comes back up again
> > it doesn't work because I have my netbsd boot partion on
> > an external disk drive. (and a minimum MacOS on the internal)
> >  That external drive needs a few seconds more to
> > start up and doesn't get mounted under MacOS when power is restored.
> > So the netbsd booter starts up and can't find my boot partion with
> > the kernel.  (At least that's what I think is happening)
> >
> >
> >
> >  Now that I'm running this machine as my mail server
> > I would like to have it come up on it's own after a power failure. What can
> > I do to make the MacOS delay it's booting until the external hard drive is
> > ready??
> >
> 
> There is a setting in the booter (don't remember where since my mac's only
> been booted a couple of times in the last few years, as it never crashes)
> that lets you set a delay before booting.  You might try this one.

I don't think that it's going to work, since it's MacOS that doesn't
give the disk time to spin up. The only thing I can think of is, if the
external disk had a MacOS partition but no System Folder on it, you
could make it the startup device. The ROM would wait for it to spin up,
find no MacOS in there, and then try the other disk in sequence.

But of course, that could mean reformatting and/or repartitioning the disk.

HTH,
Matías.

-- 
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes.