Re: Building a macppc bootable USB image

On Thu, 18 Jan 2024 at 02:52, Adam Russell <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I have booted off of a U.S. drive on a G4, for installation purposes. As far as I know it still requires manually setting the boot device in open firmware no matter what, right?
>
> Is the idea to still have that, but then drop them into a fully functioning system with a gui and a base set of applications?

The initial goal could be to provide an installer USB image,
replicating the current install CD image functionality, and document
the boot process.

In fact dd'ing an existing ISO to a USB key may Just Work

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-new-method-booting-from-usb-on-powerpc-macs.2403368/

It may involve hitting Command-Option-O-F at startup, and typing
different semi-arcane commands, but people are more likely to have a
USB stick than a writable CD

Once we have booting a writable USB image, it should be relatively
straightforward to extend than to a full live image, with a desktop,
browser and suchlike. That would make it easy to test NetBSD/macppc
without overwriting anything already installed (albeit with slower USB
disk access).