[rescue] Mac Hints needed

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, James Birdsall wrote:

> A genuine question: why did Apple go to so much trouble to make sure that
> Macs can't boot anything but MacOS?

They didn't.  The bootloader in the toolbox is just very, very
simple/stupid.  It expects to see an Apple disk driver on drive 0
starting at sector *mumble*, and the driver expects to see an HFS
partition starting at sector *mumble* with a bref to a blessed folder
containing a bref to a System file.

Or it expects to see an HFS-formatted floppy with similar characteristics,
as mediated by the floppy drive logic.

Keep in mind that the original Mac had even less memory than the
original IBM PC, and that most of the actual magic was set in stone
(from compatibility's sake) due to being in ROM.

> Trying to make this make sense and failing... :/

Never attribute to malice that which may be explained by insufficient
computing resources. ;)

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  ) "Earth works.  That's proof positive that Mother
Elgin, TX         (   Nature isn't a suit."            --Dave McGuire