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To: Linda Kaplan who wrote (22527)	1/14/1999 10:06:00 PM
From: Jonathan Bird	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213173

Why couldn't you boot from a SCSI drive if there's a converter to make it run from the USB? I believe that the BIOS doesn't think to check the USB for drives. What use is an adaptor if it doesn't adapt the thing to run properly? Wasn't my idea. Jon Bird

To: Linda Kaplan who wrote (22527)	1/15/1999 1:54:00 PM
From: Adam Nash	Respond to of 213173

Why couldn't you boot from a SCSI drive if there's a converter to make it run from the USB? What use is an adaptor if it doesn't adapt the thing to run properly? Not to turn this board into alt.mac.coolhardwaretricks but: People think of these converters and bridges as just fancy cables. It's a little more complicated than that. USB has a dynamic-driver system, where the product identifies what it is and asks the computer to load the driver for it. The catch is the driver must be on the computer for it to ever be loaded. If a device uses just the standard generic USB driver, it will work because that driver is bundled with the USB support in the System. However, if that device requires a custom driver, then it needs to be installed on the System. Since the Commercial Mac OS 8.5 CD does not have anything but the generic USB driver, you can't use a SuperDrive. Booting of a SCSI drive is not possible if it attached to a USB port because at boot time, the USB driver isn't enabled! In order to achieve this feat, you would need to have the USB driver built into the boot ROM. BTW This is why the New World architecture can boot of Ethernet - the driver is built into the Boot-ROM.