Can the Linux bootloaders like BootX or MkLinux Booter boot the mach_kernel of Mac OS X?

Anyone know?

Peace,
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!

As far as I know, no. They look for special lines of code (etc) specific to a standard linux kernel. I suppose you could try, but there is a really good chance you'll get an error.
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iMac G5, Powerbook G3/333, Beige G3MT, PM 6200CD, RS/6000

I actually have no idea, but just out of curiosity, what are you planning to do with that? Are you thinking of running a dual-boot Linux/Mac OS system with a nice GRUB bootloader to choose between the two?

Actually, no.

I was hoping to apply a lesson from the Linux world on my 6500. It's possible to get the L2 G3 upgrade working under Linux if you load the extensions in the right order. I was wondering if a similar workaround could be used to boot the mach kernel for OS X and thus enable the G3 upgrade under OS X on a 6500...

Far fetched, I know, but worth a shot. Is there anybody out there staged to give it a try?

Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!

I found this:

I love how Apple lets you download the source to Mach from their site. I always direct Winblows/open source geek friends of mine. They're rather impressed that a large company would put their OS core up for download
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PPC Macs:

• Power Macintosh G4
  
• B&W Power Macintosh G4
  
• Power Macintosh 6500/225

BootX is what you use for Old World PPC Macs (Macs that still have a hardware ROM in them). Yaboot is what you use for New World Macs (basically, any PPC Mac that uses USB since those were the first with a usable version of OpenFirmware).

Incidentally, there are some older Macs and Mac clones like the StarMax 4000 which are considered Old World Macs even though they do have an early version of OpenFirmware in them. However, the OpenFirmware in these particular Macs was so buggy that people trying to use yaboot would end up bricking their Macs/clones. What's funny is that this particular early version of OpenFirmware was only visible from the serial port if you were connecting through there using a terminal emulation console (like those used years ago to connect to BBSes using a modem).

Any information about Linux/ppc and their bootloaders can be found here:
http://www.penguinppc.org

All Macs w/ PCI have Open Firware. Whether or not the implementation is modern enough to support Yaboot is another matter. The distinguishing difference between Old World and New World Macs isn't the presence of OF (though you could argue the OF version is important) but rather the absence of the Mac OS ROM from a hardware SIMM. New World Macs load the Mac OS ROM from a file on the hard drive.

Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!

The defining line of NewWorld and OldWorld is ROM-in-RAM. That's it. The easiest way to tell the difference form an external hardware point of view is the all NewWorld machines have factory USB ports. It's that simple. iMac, B&W, Lombard and up are all NewWorld. All lesser PPCs that are not NuBus are OldWorld. The difference between NuBus and OldWorld is the use of PCI slots and OpenFirmware. All PCI Macs have OpenFirmware, of various versions.

There are two BootX boot loaders, so don't be confused by them. The first is the Linux boot loader that loads the Linux kernel from inside Mac OS. The second is the Apple OS X boot loader. Both are very different.