[Coco] OT: Ping: Mac users

[James Dessart]

On 25-Aug-04, at 8:50 PM, Ray Watts wrote:

> James,   Please clear me up on this.  I thought that there was 
> OpenFirmware differences in the various Macs, both G3's and G4's.  I 
> know I've installed upgrades for the iMac when none was available for 
> other models.  Is it that OpenFirmware is independent of the software 
> booting process that allows the same boot CD for all models?

OpenFirmware provides a basic IO mechanism for booting. There are 
OpenFirmware differences, but the whole point of OpenFirmware is to 
abstract from the underlying hardware. However, like Java, sometimes 
little hairy differences can crop up, and older OpenFirmware Macs have 
somewhat broken OpenFirmware, because Mac OS 9 was the only OS Apple 
supported on the machines.

>  Also,  I have read that, sometimes, when a Mac wierdly goes 
> flat-assed dead like Bob's did, the battery, PRAM zap, CUDA 
> combination will restore it. Have you any experience in that area?

I have a bit, and yeah, those things can fix it up. Some really old 
Macs (early-90s, without the keyboard power on) don't die from having 
their batteries die, their clock and settings just get reset every time 
they unplug the computer.

James