Booting a Mac with a 3rd Party CD-ROM Drive

[Phipli]

I finally got it right and made a CD which will boot a mac from a 3rd party CD-ROM.

Currently I have made a Mac OS 7.6.1 CD...

I've put it here, and will follow up with some others. Not sure if the CD I picked was British or US English, I'll go and check and update the page to clarify.

Edit - just confirming that it is the US version of 7.6.1.

CD-ROM Images for Booting a Macintosh from a 3rd Party CD-ROM Drive

CD-ROM Images for Booting a Macintosh from a 3rd Party CD-ROM Drive Find in this page, disc images which when correctly burnt to a blank CD-R, will properly boot a Mac from a 3rd party (i.e. lackin…

stuffandnonsense.elephantandchicken.co.uk

@cheesestraws

 

[Phipli]

Please note you will need to burn a perfect copy of this disc image, and I don't use modern Mac OS or Windows, so I wont be able to help you get it right, but believe me that if you're having trouble, it is either the software, or the settings you are using. This image is Known Good.

If you use Linux, just use K3b and its default settings, this works for me. It will complain that it doesn't recognise the image type, but that's fine, just tell it to burn anyway. It is just because it doesn't recognise an old Mac HFS disc.

 

[cheesestraws]

I finally got it right and made a CD which will boot a mac from a 3rd party CD-ROM.

what is the trick?

 

[Phipli]

what is the trick?

Since you ask, you...

1. Find a clone 7.6.1 System Install Disk. I used the Motorola 7.6.1 disc.
2. Use Tome Viewer to extract "Apple CD -ROM" driver version 5.3.1 (I swear I tried this before with a copy of 5.3.1 that came from somewhere else and it didn't work). Install it in your current OS.
3. Use Disk Copy to make an image of the bootable CD you want to make Universal.
4. Mount the disk image.
5. Launch Toast (I used 4.1.3 68k specifically). Select "Mac Volume". Do not use the disc image burning option.
6. Drag the volume to the window. Under "Data", select "Bootable", and optionally "Don't copy free space" and "Optimize on-the-fly". I selected both.
7. At this point, either burn a CD using the "Write CD" button, or create a ".toast" file (an ISO in disguise). The latter is done by "File">"Save as Disk Image...". I burnt a CD so I could test it, and then made my image by ripping it on my Linux laptop.

 

[LaPorta]

Previously one could not start a Mac from a non-Apple external SCSI CD drive? (Amazingly, I never tried this).

 

[Phipli]

Previously one could not start a Mac from a non-Apple external SCSI CD drive? (Amazingly, I never tried this).

Other than extremely rare occasions when you either had a special disk that did it, or a drive that the driver recognised even though it wasn't apple branded.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

This is awesome!