When can a Mac Boot Directly from a CD-ROM?
olcott
or does it depend upon how old the Mac OS is?
Can a Mac LC II boot Mac OS 7.5.5 directly
from a CD-ROM? (and why not if it can't)...
Feel Free to remove any of the cross postings
besides the group that you are responding from,
iff you want to...
Ernie Leimkuhler
The CDROM must be burned with just the right system version and driver.
Many of the bootable repair CDs from Norton and Techtool Pro have multiple systems on them to cover
a wide range of hardware.
Any of the newer G3 macs also have to have the correct ROM file in the system folder.
BTW try not to crosspost to so many newsgroups at once, as it is thought to be a bit rude.
--
Stagesmith Productions - Architectural Metal Fab - Renton, WA, USA
"Apparently if you play the Windows NT CD backwards you hear satanic messages"
"You think that's bad, if you play it forwards it installs Windows NT!"
Lord Apollyon
> Does this depend upon how old the Mac itself is,
> or does it depend upon how old the Mac OS is?
Neither. Even a Mac Plus can boot from a cd-rom if the drive powers up
in 512 byte block mode. Quality drives such as the Perfect Plextors
have a switch on the back of the drive, and the Apple CD-ROM drives also
power-up to 512 byte block mode.
> Can a Mac LC II boot Mac OS 7.5.5 directly
> from a CD-ROM? (and why not if it can't)...
It most certainly can. You'd need a fully RAM stocked MacPlus of
course. I believe 7.5.5 would be the last version you could safely run
on a Mac Plus, but any 030 machine would be able to run up to MacOS 8.1.
The key to bootability is proper preparation of the boot CD, and using a
driver that supports baseline data CD-ROM functionality properly on all
drives. Apple's is pretty good this way, and tools like TOAST allow you
to pick the Apple CD/DVD Driver to write out to the CD-R.
This was what made the Macintosh infinitely superior for over a decade -
it could boot from ANY attached SCSI device if it was correctly setup.
Devices I've written drivers to support for bootable SCSI include:
Hard Disk, CD-ROM, WORM (ablative), MO (PCE and organic dye types), and
SSD/Flash.
So long as there's a proper partition table and driver that will support
the hardware in question, any Macintosh from the Plus onwards will boot
from it. [*]
=R=
[*] Subject to some "sane" operating modes. The device must power up in
512 byte block mode, it must be able to spin-up and handle reads w/o
special commands, etc, etc. Certain Macintosh Plus ROM revisions could
make booting from any drive which returns UNIT ATTENTION errors when
RESET impossible without Mode page configuration [if supported] or a
wire-snip-and-tie job on the cable.
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