Just curious

[GDB-B&W-YDL3.0.1]

In an effort to understand what is happening when yaboot starts my 
computer, I have looked at the partition map of the HD (80 Gb Maxtor 
IDE)  and found the following.  hda1-8 are all less than 1 Mb and take 
up the first 2 sectors of the HD.  Next there is a 128 Mb free space. 
 hda10 is an hfs+ partition and is 31011 Mb in size.  This is my OSX 
partition.  Then another 128 Mb free space.  hda12 is also an hfs+ 
partition and is 5997 Mb in size.  This is my OS9 partition.  hda9 is 
the yaboot hfs partition and is 1 Mb in size.  hda11 is my 1000 Mb linux 
swap partition and hda13 is my 10000 Mb ext3 YDL partition.  This leaves 
29901 Mb of free space at the end of the drive.  Below is my yaboot.conf 
file:

boot=/dev/hda9
device=/pci@80000000/pci-bridge@d/pci-ata@1/@0/disk@0:
init-message="Welcome to Yellow Dog Linux!\nHit <TAB> for boot options.\n\n"
partition=13
timeout=30
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
default=yellowdoglinux

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.22-2f
    label=linux
    root=/dev/hda13
    read-only
    append="hde=ide-scsi"

image =/boot/vmlinux-2.4.22-2g
    label = yellowdoglinux
    root=/dev/hda13
    read-only
    apend="hde=ide-scsi"

macosx=/dev/hda10
macos=/dev/hda12
defaultos=macosx
delay=10
enablecdboot

My question is, shouldn't the yaboot partition be at the very beginning 
of the drive?  In other words, what makes the computer go all the way 
down to the hda9 partiton to start?  I feel this is part of the reason 
why I can't boot out of OS9 once I boot into it, but don't understand 
why this doesn't happen when I boot into YDL or OSX.  Sorry if this is a 
newbie type question, but I'm used to PC drives where the MBR resides at 
the beginning of the drive.

Just a message from Doug...