>At 09:12 -0600 01/01/2003, Gary Gorbet wrote: > >>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. > >I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Ryan is a very smart guy, so >he might manage it, but it seems unlikely. The reason is that at ><snip> >Adding a ROM to a firewire card would probably add less than $5 to >the cost of the card (in large quantities, of course), but someone >would still have to write the Open Firmware driver for it and that's >where the expense comes in. Since users of older Macs (those without >built-in Firewire) are the only market, it probably isn't going to >happen. > >Jeff Walther > According to what John Albert (offine), Robyn and Jeff have been telling me, my hopes of ever being able to boot from a firewire drive on the S900 are slimming. I am still glad I'm getting the card and drive as a fast backup destination sharable (via sneaker connect) by two machines. My hopes for a kind of bootability are not completely dead, either. Ryan's strategy, apparently, is to allow the designation in XPF of a "helper disk" whereby the boot begins on one volume, then - once enough (like drivers) has been pulled in - to switch to the other (firewire) drive. I don't have a good sense of how feasible such as scheme might be, but - as you say, Jeff - Ryan is a clever guy. So, I guess I won't _count_ on being able to boot from the FW on S900 and will just wait and see what the next months bring from XPF.
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