>Thanks Alan and Will for your suggestions. > >Actually, I already have the ATA/IDE set up on my original S900 and find it >an excellent solution. > >Guess I was more or less playing the "devil's advocate," to bring out the >facts about FireWire's non-bootability, before I commit to a strategy for my >second S900 (under construction). And I've pretty much decided to go with >ATA/IDE again. > >Adrian > I understand why ATA/IDE may be the best solution for you, Adrian. But there are reasons why a bootable FireWire is desirable.
In my case, I've ordered and am awaiting arrival of a FireWire card and 80gig FireWire drive from OWC. My main use will be as a fast backup destination for my two family machines - an S900 with PowerLogix G3/500 and a G4/500 Apple tower. Since any restore would probably be because your internal hard disk - the one with OS X on it - has somehow crashed, it would be nice to be able to hook up your external FireWire with both a bootable system and the backup set. On our legacy machines, a bootable X CD is no more viable than external FireWire. According to Ryan Rempel, the reason external FireWires are not bootable is that card manufacturers do not use the Open Firmware that is required for OS X. He says that he has a work around in mind that he hopes to include in XPostFacto version 3. So my hopes remain alive that I may someday be able to boot X from FireWire. It could also be that some future cards will employ Open Firmware. Meanwhile, I suppose I could create a bootable 9.1 emergency volume on the FireWire for purposes of repair and restore. I would just need to insure that my backups for the S900 were done with the OS 9 version of Restrospect. Am I correct in assuming that OS 9 Systems *are* bootable from an external FireWire? -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
