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| Quadra 950 — Maximum bootable partition offset |
Posted by: robin-fo on 2025-08-21 03:11:12
My Quadra 950 refuses to boot a partition which lies at an offset of several tens of Gigabytes. Before it are some A/UX partitions. The first partition is bootable.
Is there a limitation of the offset of bootable volumes? Can this be mended with some special disk driver? I tried Apple and HDT with no difference, FWB makes it crash… |
Posted by: Unknown_K on 2025-08-21 14:05:13
What OS are you using other than A/UX?
System 7 allows 2GB partitions to be bootable, 7.5.2 to 8.x allow 4GB bootable partitions and I think 8.1 allows 2TB partitions but not bootable on 68K. |
Posted by: robin-fo on 2025-08-21 22:14:04
The partition in question is 1GB sized and Mac OS 8.1 is installed on it |
Posted by: volvo242gt on 2025-08-22 07:52:02
I'd be tempted to put the 8.1 partition first, then have your A/UX partitions afterward. My old Q660av would not boot a partition larger than 2GB, no matter what OS. But, once booted, it could read and write to Mac OS Extended (HFS+) formatted media, since 8.1 was installed. |
Posted by: Realitystorm on 2025-08-22 08:44:07
I've never seen anything documented about an offset limit...what I gave noticed is issues with too many partitions (more than 12). When you say, "before that there are some A/UX partitions", how many do you mean? There may also be a limit we don't know about, we a blowing well past the available storage sizes of the period |
Posted by: MrFahrenheit on 2025-08-23 10:26:02
From the research that I did a few years ago, the hard disk driver AND the system folder must exist in the first 2GB of a drive. I'm unsure if that's truly 2048MB (or 2,097,152 KB) or what.... Generally I create a 1.9GB partition as the first, and use that for the system folder.
Power Macs I think have the ability to boot Mac OS beyond the "first 2GB" rule, but I can't recall for sure. I do know that 68K Macs have this limitation. |
Posted by: volvo242gt on 2025-08-23 10:39:18
Yup, PowerMacs are fully HFS+ compatible and can boot partitions larger than 2GB. |
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