You can create a forth word to dual boot easier on macppc

[izder456]

I found a neat hack for open firmware if you dual boot multiple systems on macppc hardware.

If you setenv auto-boot? false it'll drop into open firmware right?

Well, you can usually either boot OS X with mac-boot (which will boot the partition marked as default boot set by the boot-device variable IIRC), but if you want to boot into OpenBSD/NetBSD, you need to remember a long and weird boot hd:,\ofwboot command. well, you can save that as a forth word bsd-boot actually!

type nvedit at your open firmware prompt then enter this:

: bsd-boot " boot hd:,\ofwboot" eval ;

then, Control+C will save the contents of your nvramrc script you just wrote.

this is just a forth expression that defines a word, bsd-boot which pushes that string to the stack, and then evaluates it with eval (make sure the spacing is exact. forth is picky)

to store it, nvstore


finally, to run this script at every startup and thus "save" this new word, do a: setenv use-nvramrc? true and a reset-all to reboot.

now you can just type bsd-boot to boot *BSD, and mac-boot to boot OS X!

[Onauk]

Nice find! I struggled with this when I installed OpenBSD on a eMac 1GHz. Now I shall try to revive my PowerBook with this but I have to find another IDE drive...