You can boot a USB device on an imac g3!

[B'ichela]

The new Intel Macs are not the only boxen that can boot a USB
device! Here is how I get my Imac G3/400 slot loader to do it.
Please not I have the latest Apple firmware updates for my machine. If
your imac g3 isn't up to the latest firmware, no guarantee this will
work. click on software update under control panels in macOs 9.2.2
to see if your imac g3 is current.
I was bored today and I decided to look into open firmware on
my Imac G3. I found a web note that if you hold down the option key
when booting the imac will show you all of your bootable partitions.
Well I asked myself, can one boot a USB thumb drive?
To answer that I took a PNY 512MB USB thumb drive and using
slackintosh blew away the msdos fat-32 patitions and reinitizlized it
as a HFS device.
I rebooted into Mac Os 9.2.2 and reformatted it again as hfs
to make sure it was kosher, created a System Folder, copied the system
and finder files to said folder along with the rom file, not sure if
needed, copied to be safe. Noticing the folder was now blessed and I
rebooted holding down the option key. a few seconds later I see I can
boot the thumb drive! I chose it and clicked the arrow that goes to
the left and..... VROOM! up MacOs 9.2.2 on the thumb drive came works
like a champ! Now the bad news...
1. My Imac is only a USB 1.1 box.. almost as slow to boot as
my performa 6115Cd with MacOs 8.6
2. Not sure if this trick would work with the native fat-32 of
the thumb drive. someone else can help figure that out.
3. being it has HFS partitions I don't think most windows
machines would be capable of accessing files off of the thumb drive.
Slackware and slackintosh DO have the ability to work with HFS.
Slackintosh can do HFS+ as well.
Now I got a tiny insurance policy that fits in my desk drawer.
ready to go in the event my 10GB HD bites the big one.

[Johan W. Elzenga]

Post by B'ichela
The new Intel Macs are not the only boxen that can boot a USB
device! Here is how I get my Imac G3/400 slot loader to do it.

Any Mac that can boot in MacOS 9 can boot off an external USB disk. It's
booting in MacOS X off an external USB disk that is not possible.

[Mike Rosenberg]

Post by Johan W. Elzenga
Any Mac that can boot in MacOS 9 can boot off an external USB disk.

That's incorrect. You cannot boot from a tray-loading iMac G3's USB
ports, for example, while you _can_ boot from a slot-loading iMac's:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58471

[B'ichela]

Post by Mike Rosenberg

Post by Johan W. Elzenga
Any Mac that can boot in MacOS 9 can boot off an external USB disk.

That's incorrect. You cannot boot from a tray-loading iMac G3's USB

I surmised that in my own post that part of the ability is in
the firmware. If one had the latest apple firmware can a tray loading
Imac G3 do it? I don't have one of those here to give it a crack and
find out. I will also read your link posting to see what the scoop is.

[Király]

It's booting in MacOS X off an external USB disk that is not possible.

That's not entirely true. Some PPC Macs will boot OS X from USB if the
USB device is connected through certain third party PCI USB cards. But
no PPC Mac will boot OS X from a USB device connected to the built-in USB
port.

[B'ichela]

Post by Johan W. Elzenga

Post by B'ichela
The new Intel Macs are not the only boxen that can boot a USB
device! Here is how I get my Imac G3/400 slot loader to do it.

Any Mac that can boot in MacOS 9 can boot off an external USB disk. It's
booting in MacOS X off an external USB disk that is not possible.

I would have thought ... that MacOs X could do it too. Can it
boot a thumb drive that has the standard Fat-32 format? I haven't
tried it yet. Hate to ruin my work that I created just to find out
that it cannot boot a fat-32 formated thumb drive, I don't have MacOs
X here to try it out..
As for MacOs X.... has anyone figured out why it cannot do
this? How about one of the PPC linux distros?
Related to this topic. does this same technique work similar
with a firewire device? I was considering picking up a firewire case
and slipping in an old IDE HD to try it out.

[Fred McKenzie]

Post by B'ichela
Related to this topic. does this same technique work similar
with a firewire device? I was considering picking up a firewire case
and slipping in an old IDE HD to try it out.

B'ichela-

Booting from a FireWire HD can work if it has a recent Oxford chip set
in its interface electronics.

I don't know if there are limitations for older CPUs, but I made
bootable OS X backups for a G3 iBook, a G4 Powerbook and a G4 Mini.
Each is on a separate partition.

Fred

[B'ichela]

Post by Fred McKenzie

Post by B'ichela
Related to this topic. does this same technique work similar
with a firewire device? I was considering picking up a firewire case
and slipping in an old IDE HD to try it out.

B'ichela-
Booting from a FireWire HD can work if it has a recent Oxford chip set
in its interface electronics.

How in heaven's name is someone going to know what chipset is
in their external cases? not all manufacturs will tell you who made
their chipset, if they even know themselves.

[Jolly Roger]

Post by B'ichela

Post by Fred McKenzie

Post by B'ichela
Related to this topic. does this same technique work similar
with a firewire device? I was considering picking up a firewire case
and slipping in an old IDE HD to try it out.

B'ichela-
Booting from a FireWire HD can work if it has a recent Oxford chip set
in its interface electronics.

How in heaven's name is someone going to know what chipset is
in their external cases? not all manufacturs will tell you who made
their chipset, if they even know themselves.

Your best bet is to call the manufacturer (or email them) and simply
ask. Any decent manufacturer should be willing and able to tell you
what brand (and even version) chip set their Firewire device uses.

[B'ichela]

Post by Fred McKenzie
Booting from a FireWire HD can work if it has a recent Oxford chip set
in its interface electronics.

BTW under Mac Os 9.2.2 does this requirement still stand?

[Mike Rosenberg]

Post by B'ichela

Post by Fred McKenzie
Booting from a FireWire HD can work if it has a recent Oxford chip set
in its interface electronics.

BTW under Mac Os 9.2.2 does this requirement still stand?

It's a function of the Mac's hardware, not OS. A blue and white G3, for
example, is not FW-bootable whereas all G4 towers except the one
code-named Yikes! (which uses a G3 motherboard) are.

[tacit]

Post by B'ichela
As for MacOs X.... has anyone figured out why it cannot do
this?

Yes.

The PPC Mac OS X device driver for the built-in USB hardware issues a
'reset USB' command when it loads. This unmounts any USB device
connected to that port, hence causing the boot to fail.

I have heard apocryphally of a hacked OS X USB kernel extension that
does not reset the USB bus when it loads, and I have seen claims that a
copy of Mac OS X which has this hacked kernel extension will boot from a
USB drive on a PPC Mac. I do not know if these claims are true or not.

[B'ichela]

Post by tacit
The PPC Mac OS X device driver for the built-in USB hardware issues a
'reset USB' command when it loads. This unmounts any USB device
connected to that port, hence causing the boot to fail.

Sounds like this is done to prevent piracy. Very stupid if you
ask me.

[tacit]

Post by B'ichela
Sounds like this is done to prevent piracy. Very stupid if you
ask me.

I don't see how resetting the USB bus during boot would prevent piracy,
since the overwhelming majority of Mac users use FireWire, not USB, hard
drives. In fact, I utterly fail to see any connection between this
behavior and piracy whatsoever.

[Gregory Weston]

Post by B'ichela
The new Intel Macs are not the only boxen that can boot a USB
device! Here is how I get my Imac G3/400 slot loader to do it.
...

Yep. Booting from USB storage showed up with the Sawtooth G4 towers,
IIRC, and was rolled into every product line during subsequent updates.

When OS X showed up, for some reason _it_ specifically would not boot
from USB devices. When the x86 Macs showed up, though, they _could_. And
some time since then people have slowly discovered that PPC machines can
be made to boot OS X from USB devices, too.