[G4] Firmware and BootROM

[Steve Adams]

BootROM and firmware are the exact same thing, just a different way  
to say it. A computer chip has no idea what is around it or how to  
find anything. Every computer requires a BootROM to determine things  
in the hardware and where to find other software and hardware.  
Whatever is on a ROM (Read Only Memory) is called firmware because it  
is un-changeable. Nowadays the ROM chips have been replaced with  
EEPROM (Electrically Erasable and Programable Read Only Memory) and  
the firmware can be changed. It's confusing to newcomers but makes  
since to those that have been around since the early days of computers.

I'm not condemning or belittling newcomers but much of the computer  
lingo has survived through 25+ years of evolution. BootROM is one of  
those words from the old days that needs to be laid to rest with all  
the Fat Macs and original IBM PC's. It is only adding confusion and  
frustration to those that are trying hard to understand an already  
hard-to-understand computer world.

If you are getting to the stage of seeing a desktop, I would not  
suspect the BootROM. I would suspect extensions or something in the  
OS. The BootROM mission is to find the OS and it looks like it did  
that. And the fact that it boots fine from the CD tends to prove the  
BootROM is okay. It also tells me all of your hardware is fine  
(mother board, memory, CD drive, etc.) with the possible exception of  
the hard drive. I also doubt the hard drive is bad. First, if the  
hard drive is under 1 gig in size, make sure at least 10% of the  
drive is free. If over 1 gig, make sure 300 meg is free. If the drive  
is too full you will see exactly what you what describe. If the drive  
is over 5 years old, with a lot of hard use, it can have bad sectors  
that are no longer readable and causing the problems you are seeing.  
But, I think bed sectors would bring up an error screen telling you  
the system found sectors that are bad.

I've not worked with OS9 in the last 5 years. Since you can boot with  
a CD, others can tell you how to disable extensions and other  
software issues.

Steve Adams






On Mar 11, 2006, at 2:08 AM, nagable at comcast.net wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I appreciate all the great advice, but I'm still having trouble  
> booting into OS 9.  If I change the Startup Disk in the preferences  
> panel I can start it booting into 9 but it freezes when the desktop  
> comes up.  I have a gig of RAM and am wondering if the system is  
> simply taking a lot of time to check the RAM.  That's what my old  
> 8600 did when I installed OS 9 on it.  I had to command-control- 
> startup button (restart) to get it to skip the RAM check.
>
> It starts up OK from the OS 9.2.1 CD. I ran Disk First Aid, Disk  
> Warrior, and then did a clean install, but each time I rebooted it  
> froze.  I suppose I could just start up from the CD and do the  
> firmware upgrade from there.
>
> No one mentioned the relationship between BootROM and firmware.  Is  
> there any?  And are there any other ideas to help with my OS9  
> problem?  Classic runs fine, but will not boot successfully.
>
> Nate
>>
>>> The info on Other World Computing website says that I need to boot
>>> into OS 9.2 to do the firmware update.  My Quicksilver model will
>>> not boot into Classic.
>>
>> Perhaps you do not have a complete installation of OS-9 to boot to?
>> You should have done a clean install of OS-9 after installing OS-X
>> and then selected it as your Classic environment provider. That would
>> give you an active OS-9 system folder on your drive to boot to.
>>
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