[X4U] Dual Boot (PPC/Intel) Firewire HD?

[Richard Hartman]

> From: John Baltutis <baltwo at san.rr.com>
>
> On 10/3/08,  "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is it possible to install Mac OS X on an external Firewire HD such  
>> that you
>> can boot either a PPC or an Intel-based Mac?  I want to build a new  
>> utility
>> disk that I can use to boot any of my families Mac's and run various
>> utilities against them.
>
> AFAIK, all you have to do is install Leopard (use the PPC machine or  
> put a
> bootable clone of your ICBM (Intel-chip-based Mac)) onto a FWHD  
> that's been
> formated with APM, not GUID, and it should boot either. Try it and  
> let us know
> how it works.
>

FWIW, I did exactly this, quite by accident, and it did work fine.

I was installing Leopard on an unsupported PPC eMac (the eMac was a  
bit too slow for "approved" status) using a hacked installer; the  
install image was produced by an Intel iMac and placed on an APM  
formatted FW drive. Once the emac install completed, (without issue, I  
might add; it has been running Leopard flawlessly since, acting as an  
in-house mail server) I noticed that the Leopard install on the intel  
machine was much smaller than the Leopard install, from the same  
installer, on the PPC machine. This made me wonder if I had produced a  
"universal" installer. I was stupefied to discover that the FW/APM  
install thus created indeed booted both the PPC eMac and the Intel  
iMac. Very cool.

I convinced myself at the time (because the Intel-only install was so  
much smaller than the PPC+Intel) that the installer disk had to find  
BOTH a ppc system to upgrade (in my case a Panther eMac) AND an intel  
system (in my case the installer partition on the FW drive I used)  
amongst its system update candidates before it would spit out a  
"universal" system. Dunno if that's true or not, though.

Richard