The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of StevenLogicOT, 10/18/01:

>How about having a boot option for 10 or so different Apple opperating
>systems?   I've seen alot of chit-chat about an OSX, OS9, etc  We really
>need to test each possibility.

In principle you can't have different OS's on one and the same drive, 
but you _can_ have different boot systems on different drives.  The 
Control Panel "Startup Disk" simply lets you choose which disk to 
start from.
If I'm not mistaken, "different drives" in this context includes 
different partitions as well, although I never tried that myself.

However, the Mac uses a so-called system of "blessing folders" to 
determine what the startup system is: as soon as a folder contains 
the System file and the Finder file, it's assumed to be a System 
Folder, and is "blessed" -- i.e. the folder is designated as a 
possible "system startup folder".
This makes a workaround possible allowing you to have multiple 
systems on a single disk.  Say you have 2 system folders, one with 
OS8.6 and one with OS9.2.  Then simply remove the Finder file from 
the 8.6 folder (i.e. drag it outside the folder).  Since there's now 
only one folder containing System and Finder, the 9.2 folder will be 
the blessed one.  To start with OS8.6 version, just move the 8.6 
Finder file back, and remove the 9.2 Finder from the 9.2 folder. 
Restart and presto.

I wouldn't know how well this works with OSX however, since I don't 
use OSX yet. I've heard OSX allows you to do a parallel install of 
OSX and OS9, and provides a way to choose which system to boot from, 
so my guess would be that you could indeed also have OSX one the same 
drive, although a slightly different procedure might be needed to 
pick one of the systems.

Hope this answers your question...


cheers,
HJ
-- 
     Hendrik Jan Veenstra
     email: mailto:h@...
     www:   http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html