Mac Boot Manager

[aspencer]

Hi.

I am currently setting up a Mac for testing purposes.

I would like to set up a system with a Boot manager that lets me select a partition to boot when the Mac is powered on.

It needs to be able to boot from a list of 5 - 6 different partitions containing a different operating system.

E.g.

Partition 1: Mac OS10
Partition 2: Mac OS10.1
Partition 3: Mac OS10.2
Partition 4: Mac OS10.3
Partition 5: Mac OS10.4

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

It's built-in to OS X and its called "Startup Disk" in your system preferences.

That is quite an ambitious set of partitions, Are you developing software or just messing around?

 

[yellow]

When you boot, hold down Option key.

The Firmware will then scan all the buses for any bootable materials and allow you to select and boot from them.

Be prewarned that this does take a while, because it litterally scans ALL the buses it can boot from.

 

[aspencer]

Yes developing software that needs to be tested on each OS.

I have a similar boot manager on my Windows machines that enables me to boot over 100 seperate partitions by altering the MBR values to any given partition.

In essence setting the selected partition to the master, but this is not available on Mac.

I have tried the option key, and this seems to have no effect, and the last partition set in Startup-Disk seems to boot everytime.

 

[yellow]

I have tried the option key, and this seems to have no effect, and the last partition set in Startup-Disk seems to boot everytime.

It's part of the firmware/BootROM, so it should work every time. Provided you have a "new world mac". You never mentioned which Mac you had.

 

[grabberslasher]

Yes developing software that needs to be tested on each OS.

I have a similar boot manager on my Windows machines that enables me to boot over 100 seperate partitions by altering the MBR values to any given partition.

In essence setting the selected partition to the master, but this is not available on Mac.

I have tried the option key, and this seems to have no effect, and the last partition set in Startup-Disk seems to boot everytime.

You must make sure then that you have a machine that is capable of running all of those OSes. No modern Mac will run anything less than the OS it came with.

For all that, you would need a first/second generation G4 pre 10.1.