Just possibly the coolest program ever written, Ephemerboot allows
PowerPC New World ROM Macs to join in on the fun of their Old World
ROM counterparts of booting off RAM Disks. Oh, and it also creates the
RAM Disk via Open Firmware, meaning that it bypasses the [1.5 GB RAM
limit of Mac OS][1], so you can very well have your 2.0 GB MDD using
100% of its RAM completely normally with a 512MB (bootable!) RAM Disk!
There is however one catch: Although the author sees no reason for why
it would not work on any given New World ROM Mac, from its limited
testing from way back in 2002, it only worked on a Lombard PowerBook,
but failed to work on other PowerBooks and PowerMacs.
The good news? Source code is fully available with the download! The
concept that makes the program possible is applicable to any New World
ROM Mac, possibly even G5s technically-speaking, so we have the
ability to change or improve it as needed.
Even if just for curiosity, the included Read Me and other text files
are worth a read! It's really fascinating how this program works, and
the way that it is made possible, and what people participated in the
process of making it.
Please note: If you actually plan to install it and give it a try on
your Mac, backup ALL of your data from it first. Do expect to need to
reformat your drives, maybe even via OS X, in case anything goes
wrong, and to reset NVRAM via Cmd + Option + P + R.
=====================================================
Links:
Discussions over at Mac OS 9 Lives!:
\- [Ephemerboot][2]
\- [Booting OS 9 from RAM disk?][3]
\- [1.5GB Limit (some answers)][4]
David "Potatoswatter" Krauss websites and accounts:
\- [Ephemerboot & other software (archive)][5]
\- [FaceBook][6]
\- [Blog (archive)][7]
\- [StackOverflow (last active in May 2023)][8]
\- [Twitter / X][9]
\- [everything2 (abandoned account)][10]
Compatibility
Architecture: PPC
Mac OS 9.
New World ROM PowerPC Macs.
Currently only known to boot on the Lombard PowerBook, but the source
code may be fixed to allow any other New World ROM Mac, as well.
[1]:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-9-roms-without-15-gb-limit
[2]:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3842.0
[3]:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=5562.0
[4]:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2860.msg20538#msg20538
[5]:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050407100138/http://homepage.mac.com/potswa/source/
[6]:
https://www.facebook.com/Potatoswatter
[7]:
http://web.archive.org/web/20161118103923/http://www.potswa.org/
[8]:
https://stackoverflow.com/users/153285/potatoswatter
[9]:
https://twitter.com/Potatoswatter
[10]:
https://everything2.com/user/Potatoswatter
