OpenBIOS as a boot manager

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

I've got OpenFirmware as a boot manager on a couple of machines (i.e. 
resident on its own partition on disc), but is it possible to use 
OpenBIOS for this on a PPC Mac (specifically, a beige Old World G3?).

Is there any chance that this would drive a DVD drive sufficient to 
install OS X? I'm not intending this for heavy use, but simply to 
provide a test target for another open-source project.

I try to keep an eye on this mailing list, but please could somebody 
point me to the current homepage and download location. Google, Wp etc. 
links to http://www.openfirmware.info/Welcome_to_OpenBIOS which is well 
out of date.

[Programmingkid]

On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:06 AM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> I've got OpenFirmware as a boot manager on a couple of machines (i.e. resident on its own partition on disc), but is it possible to use OpenBIOS for this on a PPC Mac (specifically, a beige Old World G3?).

I'm going to guess that it isn't possible because you would have to make OpenBIOS run as or on top of Apple's OpenFirmware.
> Is there any chance that this would drive a DVD drive sufficient to install OS X? I'm not intending this for heavy use, but simply to provide a test target for another open-source project.

Probably not. Every attempt to boot Mac OS X fails. But I am still working on this problem. Hopefully a solution is in our future. :)

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Programmingkid wrote:
> On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:06 AM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> > I've got OpenFirmware as a boot manager on a couple of machines (i.e. resident on its own partition on disc), but is it possible to use OpenBIOS for this on a PPC Mac (specifically, a beige Old World G3?).
>
> I'm going to guess that it isn't possible because you would have to make OpenBIOS run as or on top of Apple's OpenFirmware.
> > Is there any chance that this would drive a DVD drive sufficient to install OS X? I'm not intending this for heavy use, but simply to provide a test target for another open-source project.
>
> Probably not. Every attempt to boot Mac OS X fails. But I am still working on this problem. Hopefully a solution is in our future. :)

Thanks, I'm here for the long term :-)

It was only a minor thought anyway. I was rather clutching at straws, 
since somebody who believes that Macs are the best thing since sliced 
bits tells me that the way to get OS X onto that machine is to stick in 
two different types of USB card etc. at which point the whole thing 
sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth.