miboot documentation? (really minimal BootX)

[Rick Thomas]

Well,

I've discovered a way to use BootX in a MacOS partition as small as 50 MB.

The latest version of Iomegaware from the zip disk folks (www.iomega.com)
has an option to create a "rescue disk" on a 100MB (or larger, of course)
zip disk.  It copies to the designated zip just the truly essential stuff
from the system folder and system file on your MacOS 8 or 9 hard disk, as
well as the "Disk FirstAid" program.  I added to this: pdisk v0.8 for MacOS
and  bootvars v1.3b for MacOS, and the MacOS "Drive Setup" program.
 
PPC Pdisk is described at the netbsd website at

    http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/partitioning.html

The code (source and executables) for pdisk and bootvars is at

    http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/BSD/NetBSD/arch/macppc/macos-utils/

The space on this "rescue disk" is mostly taken up by:

    the "System" file (14.2 MB), the two Linux kernels (6.7 MB --
        the "8dBOOT" version for doing YDL installs, and
        the regular "8d" one for normal use),

    the ramdisk image (0.9 MB),

    pdisk (0.6 MB),

    bootvars (0.1 MB),

    the Finder (2.3 MB),

    the Extensions folder (2.9 MB, of which 0.1 MB is BootX),

    the Control Panels folder (0.3 MB, of which 0.1 is BootX App),

    the Mac OS "Drive Setup" program (0.8 MB), and

    the MacOS "Disk FirstAid" program (0.2 MB).

I have successfully booted from this zip disk.  Next step is to copy it to a
small hard disk partition, and see if I can boot from there into BootX and
thence to Linux.

Unfortunately, I cant just make a ".sit" of this disk and publish it,
because it contains Apple's copyrighted code for the Finder and OS.
However, I will answer questions if you want to try to follow the above
recipe.


I'd still like to see if I can get miBoot running, but this is almost "good
enough"!

Peace and Love,

Rick