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From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: System in Classic ROM?
Message-ID: <1991Jan4.185136.940@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 4 Jan 91 18:51:36 GMT
References: <5128@optilink.UUCP> <1991Jan4.055534.6124@d.cs.okstate.edu> <2784581A.20126@orion.oac.uci.edu>
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Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
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In article <2784581A.20126@orion.oac.uci.edu>, bdugan@teri.bio.uci.edu (Bill Dugan) writes:
|> In article <1991Jan4.055534.6124@d.cs.okstate.edu> minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich) writes:
|> (...comment about smallness of ROM drive in Classic deleted...)
|> >... the AppleShare chooser panel is there and sure enough you
|> >can have it boot off the ROM disk and mount the fileserver of your
|> >choice. Now if sometime in the near (relatively) future, AppleShare
|> >supported some sort of switchlaunching or remote booting, then you COULD
|> >have a fully functional system. It is my belief that this is what Apple
|> >is planning. I suspect, but have not proven, the existence of similar
|> >ROM disk in the other new Macs.
[...]
|> According to the latest MacWeek, the Mac LC has a boot-off-the-ROM
|> capability already in ROM.  Apparently you must first set certain parts
|> of the PRAM appropriately and then it will look for places on the network
|> to boot.  We must assume that this will happen over Ethertalk rather than
|> LocalTalk due to speed requirements.  Also apparently (I have no LC to
|> prove any of this), the LC has a strange switch in the middle of the
|> motherboard that has *something* to do with this mysterious capability
|> of the future.
Of course, you don't _need_ a complete System to boot off a networked server.
All you need is a simple bootup monitor, capable of looking for a server and
downloading bootstrap code. Typical unix workstations are set up like this.
Presumably the almost-complete System was put in the Clasic ROM simply because
there was space for it, and this is a quicker way of getting the required
functionality.

So: don't waste your time looking for a version of the System in the LC ROMs.
There's a pretty good chance there isn't one. (I doubt very much that it would
fit: remember, the LC, unlike the Classic, has colour QuickDraw.)
-- 
Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu