Is it possible to load MorphOS on an External USB drive and be able to boot it. Reason being I have a 1GB External USB Hard Drive I could use.

Also given my G4 CD drive is failing I would need to use the G5 DP machine to install MorphOS to the External drive then connect it to my G4 where it will be used.

Can this be done?




[ Edited by zerohour 12.06.2015 - 07:02 ]

It should be possible if the USB stick is partitioned with the MAC layout and the first partition is a HFS one with the MorphOS' boot.img and regular startup files. Just remember to HFSSetMacBoot the bootinfo.txt file.

Hi jacadaps,
can You write little manual about bootig from usb flashdisc? I have Powerbook G4, v.58.
THX

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Yes, but it might be simpler to install using the G4 installing from a USB stick (see Jacadcaps excellent USB booting guide available in the morphzone library).

If you install using the G5 you'll have to manually change the boot.img file before booting the G4.

You'll also have to set some nvram variables to boot from USB by default.

I'd consider leaving the OS itself on the internal drive, and just putting your 3rd party applications, work, and media on the USB drive. Otherwise you're adding usb overhead (cpu) and lagginess to every system file access, as well as having the OS at the mercy of the usb stack. Fine for recovery or installation, but not wise for default setup imho.

I used a MorphOS only on fat32.
Without mac partition.
It possible



I'm waiting until mosteam add the boot partition choices not only hfs.

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Hi, it is poaaible make it with Unetbootin?

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You have to consider that there are essentially two stages to booting (simply speaking):

Stage 1: Mac powers on, boots into openfirmware, executes nvram command to load MorphOS boot.img. At this stage, the readability of partitions depends on the filesystem support built into openfirmware (hfs, hfs+, fat32 (on usb, not sure if fat32 is recognised on ATA)).
This is also why Linux requires a seperate (hfs) bootstrap partition.

Stage 2: boot.img is loaded, searches for bootable MorphOS partition (sys:), depends on boot priority (unless specified using the bi= or bd= options). At this stage filesystem support depends on boot.img (MorphOS team) inbuilt filesystem (and driver) support: ffs, sfs, pfs, fat, hfs, ntfs, ext, etc.
This is also why we can't boot from firewire at this stage - the firewire stack (rather that the filesystem) is not built in to boot.img.

[ Edited by boot_wb 30.06.2015 - 07:25 ]