Dual boot ydl and OS X

[Greg Hamilton]

OK, well that was interesting.

I tried the discussed configuration on an old 400MHz CRT iMac before 
risking it on my iBook because I wasn't too worried about trashing the 
iMac. An interesting trap for young players:  The CRT iMac requires a 
firmware upgrade before installing OS X >= 10.2. If you haven't applied 
the update then not only can you expect the OS X install to fail, but 
when you reboot video on the built-in monitor will be completely hosed. 
Fortunately I had a spare VGA monitor handy and a moment's Googling 
turned up a description of the problem and a link to the firmware 
update. That problem solved I gave up on OS X and went to bed.

So today, despite that debacle, I installed 10.3 on the same partition 
as OS 9 on my iBook. As expected the machine now boots straight into OS 
X, or OS 9 if I change the 'Startup Disk' in System Preferences. If I 
hold 'option' while booting I can select the Linux partition and it 
boots fine.

Running ybin in Linux should get my yaboot prompt back though I think 
yaboot likes to distinguish b/w OS 9 and OS X. That should be 
interesting since they're both on the same partition. I think I'll just 
leave them out of yaboot.conf and use the 'option' key at startup to 
select whatever's set as the 'Startup Disk' on that partition.

MOL works with OS 9 though I think I need to have the 'Startup Disk' 
set to OS 9. I tried it once with the 'Startup Disk' set to OS X and it 
didn't get very far. I need to try this again to be sure.

My cheap 'Laser' brand five button optical mouse doesn't work in 
Panther. Of course it doesn't work in OS 9 either. But it works in 
Linux and it works fine in OS 9 in MOL. Oh well.

Now I wonder if I'm ever going to be able to run Panther in MOL. The 
MOL web site doesn't mention Panther support. I don't have high hopes.

Greg

On 18/02/2004, at 1:35 PM, Norberto Quintanar wrote:

> I've never tried your set up, but I'd say GO FOR IT!!  Then post you
> results.  Good or bad.
>
> --- Greg Hamilton <gregh@object-craft.com.au> wrote:
>> The machine is a 500MHz dual USB iBook. I replaced the ailing
>> original
>> 10Gb HD with a 40Gb drive. I installed OS 9 on a 10Gb partition and
>>
>> then installed YDL 3.0 on the remaining 30Gb. So I now have a big
>> ext2
>> partition, a Linux swap partition, an HFS+ partition and all those
>> other weird little partitions OS9 seems to depend on.
>>
>> I'm sure OS 9 and OS X can live on the same HFS+ partition provided
>> you
>> have all those other little partitions for OS 9 to do it's thing
>> and OS
>> X should fit comfortably on the OS 9 partition. The only thing I
>> use it
>> for is playing Civ III, I don't think there's anything else
>> installed
>> there other than the OS.
>>
>> I'd totally forgotten about the Option key. That should do the
>> trick.
>> I'm feeling pretty brave, I might give it a go.
>>
>> Greg
>>
>>