So if I "dd" the ISO to a CF, I can boot from it, correct?
If that works, I'd be surprised and also pissed at myself for not trying it earlier.
There are a couple of ways to do this.
This is the method I recommend if dd doesn't work. It involves booting a Disk Tools floppy on the Powerbook and using that to partition and format the CF card, and then moving to a modern system for the rest of the preparation.
Things you'll need:
- USB CF card reader
- Linux/OSX (I'm more familiar with Linux for this, and you can do this with Linux in a Virtualbox VM if you're on Windows)
- Mac OS 8.0/8.1 iso
- Disk Tools floppy+floppy image
- Working BasiliskII setup on Linux/OSX - I assume valid boot ROM and system configuration. I recommend using the 5300 rom, in your case.
Things nice to have:
- USB floppy drive (or real floppy drive.. USB works just as well in my experience)
Procedure:
- Format the CF card with Disk Utility floppy on the 5300
- Use a USB card reader to plug the CF card into a modern Linux/OSX machine.
- Start up BasiliskII
- First disk you add should be the Disk Tools disk image.
- Add the CF card directly*. Just type the path /dev/whateverthecardis into the filename field. Raw block device, not partition.
- Add the OS 8.0/8.1 ISO as a disk.
- Make sure the Disk Tools image is FIRST in the list.
- Start BasiliskII, it should boot the Disk Tools image.
- When the virtual Mac boots, it should mount the CF card and OS8.x ISO
- Install OS8 to the CF card.
The resulting CF card should be bootable via PCMCIA.
I've done a lot of this lately between SCSI2SD for the PB160 and CF/PCMCIA/2.5" adapters on my 190cs, and this is generally the easiest method to use. If you can't boot a floppy for some reason, it gets a lot more complicated.
Note that if you create more than one partition on a CF card, only the first will be visible in BasiliskII when using the USB CF adapter. The rest should show up when you boot in the 5300.
* diskutil list I think on Mac to discover the drive naming, if on linux I just use dmesg and look for the drive mount messages (or run mount to see what just got automounted). You'll want the raw block device, not the partition (e.g. in Linux it'd be /dev/sdb or so, not /dev/sdb1 or sdb2, etc. MacOSX it'll be /dev/disk2 or some such, not disk2s1 or disk2s2 and so on).