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...boot from an external USB drive that is, for some reason I had it in my head that that couldn't be done.
I had just copied my sons OS 9.2.2 install on his iMac to an external (connected by USB to IDE cable & a power brick) drive so that I could install it into an even older 233 MHz iMac (replacing the 4 gig drive with a 30 gig) for someone.
I happened to be in the startup disk control panel when I noticed the external listed with the boot-able system folder, so I thought what the heck, I guess I'll give it a skeptical shot.
Lo & Behold, it worked...I didn't know that, or maybe I had forgotten...but it worked....
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I'm pretty sure that it didn't work for you.
You chose that option, but it in fact booted from the original drive (that is exactly the same - yes?)
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no, it booted from the external
I formatted the drive and installed OS 9 drivers via my iBook running 10.4.8
then I copied over LaCie SilverKeeper 1.1.4 for OS 9
went upstairs to my sons room, cleaned up his computer a bit, plugged in the power brick, plugged that into the drive and spun up, then I plugged in the bare drive to the USB port with a IDE to USB cable, it mounted.
I installed SilverKeeper onto my sons iMac, deleted it from the external and emptied the trash, then used SilverKeeper to copy everything over to the external drive, and then walked away and did a few other things.
When I came back it had finished, checked it out, mucked around a bit deleting things, ran Diskwarrior and TechTool on it, while I was in the Control Panel menu I clicked on startup drive because my sons iMac kept getting the blinking folder w/? ( wanted to make sure that the drive was selected), that's when I noticed that the external was there too.
So I tried it, it worked, I think that after all this time I can tell what drive I'm booted from, and I ran DiskWarrior and TechTool on the iMac's drive while I was booted up on the external via USB.
I"m just as surprised....
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Yes, booting from USB is possible on some older Macs and 9.x. It went away, but returned with the Intel Macs of 2006.
-Finney
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G3 500 slot loading iMac booted to OS 10.4.8 on external WD FW drive.
Works fine!
As I always say, "that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
GeneL
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FireWire boot support has never been an issue with any of the SL iMacs (models 500MHz or faster) or the PowerMac G4 AGP and later timed models.
USB bootability - it first came with the Intel Macs... there was no prior support.. and it's very interesting to hear that it's also working/supported on some of these older Macs. Guess it was always there and the just a matter of Apple putting the OS support in. If it was there before - I'd love to see a reference to it being done.
Anyway - another interesting tidbit is that FireWire boot works with our FW800 PCI card and 10.4.x. I had never known of ANY FireWire bootability via add-on PCI card prior to a customer's accidental discovery. This is not documented or supported anywhere by Apple.
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If I hadn't already installed it into the old iMac I would take pictures of it booted up off the external USB, maybe tomorrow I'll try with another drive.
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Congrats!
Somewhere there is an Apple tech library document showing that one can boot slot loaders off USB...
I have not been sucessful at it, however....
Now I've finally gotten a NetBoot to work, so I no longer need to.
Nice to have options though!
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THAT"s that damn tech info library document!
Me and Apple's "search" in the tech info don't get along so good
