Haalp! Wiped out Mac OS Partitions from Hard Drive, Now cant boot!

[Rick Thomas]

Isn't the 9600 an "OldWorld" Mac?  If so, you need a MacOS 
partition with a minimal system folder and the BootX app/extension 
in order to get it to boot.

Borrow a MacOS-9 CD-ROM (MacOS 8.6 works OK too) from somebody. 
Boot it by holding down the "C" key during the "bong" on power-up.  
Use the apple disk setup utility to re-partition the disk with a 
small HFS partition (not HFS+), and the rest "unused".  Install a 
minimal version of MacOS in the HFS partition. Boot it into MacOS 
and install BootX off the YDL install CD.  Use that to boot from 
the YDL install CD. Use the YDL disk partitioning druid to divvy up 
the "unused" part of the disk. Don't erase the MacOS-9 partition -- 
you'll need it.  Complete the Linux installation.  You're home and 
dry.

When you reboot it will briefly go into MacOS and run BootX before 
loading the Linux kernel.

The minimal Mac-OS partition can be as small as 50 MB, but that 
takes a lot of effort throwing out unused junk not directly 
applicable to the task of booting Linux.  I'd recommend you allow 
at least 200 or 300 MB for MacOS.  Then you've got a functioning 
MacOS to use for debugging things when/if you suspect hardware 
problems later on down the road.

Enjoy!

Rick

PS -- This is just a sketch.  The details are all in the README 
documents.  Come back here and ask the list if you run into trouble.

On Sunday, July 20, 2003, at 05:46 AM, Santa Klaus wrote:

> Hiyas,
>
> Was playing around with a friends old 9600/200, with
> OS 9 on it. I was trying to install Dayton, and was
> going great guns .. Or so I thought.
>
> Im new to macs, so when I got BootX to work in text
> mode, I thought ok, Id get some kind of Xconfigurator
> to work with the video hardware and that I was home
> and dry... Wrong!
>
> Install went fine, from a Ramdisk .. But when it
> rebooted, all I got was a nasty gray screen with a
> floppy icon with a question mark inside it.
>
> It appears that I partitioned the Mac's Hard drive
> incorrectly. I should have made one /boot partition
> with at least 10-50 mb on it, w/ an HFS file system ..
> I thought that it would be just like Linux so I
> formatted all my nre partitions for ext2! Just like
> Linux on a x86 :(( My bad.
>
> Any ideas? Can I boot into the CD ISO I have? Isnt
> working though .. I tried .. Should I reburn the ISO
> onto a 650 MB CDR? Some of the psts on the list
> suggest that this might work ..
>
> Well thanks in advance, be nice, get a virtual present
> this (OS) X-Mas.