A week or two ago, I read a post about whether it is possible Mac x86 system that runs completely off a CD, similar to a Live Linux CD. One person mentioned a program called BootCD, which automatically made a bootable Mac CD image, with working Dock, Finder, etc. This had me thinking, as to whether this app could be used on an x86 system. Problem is, this program only supports Jaguar at the moment, so I emailed the program's creator (Charlessoft) and he was able to supply me with a beta version that had Tiger support. It was pretty buggy running under Rosetta, in adittion to its being a Beta and all, with frequent lockups, and image creation problems. I was finally able to get a proper image though, that I could succesfully mount. I added in the appropriate patches, plus Rosetta, a couple of Apps, and a modified RC script. There were a couple complications though, that rendered it unable to boot. I'm hoping that some people in the community can help with a couple things...

>> Creating/Fixing the RC startup script to properly handle booting from a CD/DVD. I already attempted to use an rc script I found on the internet that handled such a thing. Obviously, it was for a mac, but the two platform's script's didn't seem all to different, so I attempted to integrate it with the normal RC script. It obviously didn't work, and dumped me to the command line, stating something along the lines of "/etc/master.psswd is not a directory". I don't believe this is the only problem I'll have, so help with making a proper script would be appreciatied.

>> Adding the Darwin Bootloader to the image. The image I created did not contain the x86 Darwin bootloader, and I've so far been unable to add it to my image. I've simply used the bootloader from my Desktop install, and pointed it to the CD as an alternate boot device. At one point, I was hoping to be able to simply use the Darwin 8.01 image as a shell, keeping the bootloader intact, but the image is too small to hold what is required off the CD. Help with this would be aprecciated as well.


So those are my problems....anyone willing to help is welcomed!

BootCD works with Mac OS X Panther.

Dunno how useful this is, but UltraISO seems to work under darwine, I've done some minor testing, & it looks like it can swap out the "guts" of, say, the darwin install CD..

Maybe having a "mac-blind" app like this might help?

I tried using the beta version of BootCD which works with Tiger, but the resulting CD is not bootable. The bless command (used to make a partition bootable) is probably disabled in the developer transition kit.

Iampivot....I believe it doesn't boot because It is trying to Make a CD usable with a normal Mac. But you *can* still boot the CD by pointing the Darwin Bootloader to it from your x86 installation. But the result is simply the paswd error I get above. I haven't really bothered with it lately though, But I may start again If i get some free time...

how bout http://www.bombich.com/mactips/bootx.html