2. Hold down Shft-Opt-Cmd-Delete keys during startup...

...until the "happy Mac" appears on the screen. Make sure the Caps Lock key is in the "up" position. Bypasses the startup disk. Be aware that, if you have another bootable disk connected and powered on, your Mac may startup from a disk other than the CD.

3. Select the CD in the Startup Disk control panel; then restart.

A CD must be mounted before you can select it in the Startup Disk control panel. For emergencies, have on hand a startup floppy which has the Startup Disk control panel and the Apple CD-ROM 5.3.1 extension installed. The Apple CD-ROM 5.3.1 extension has a universal driver which will mount third party CD-ROM drives.

I can boot my G3 from my Plextor UltraPleX or Yamaha CDR400c via method 3.

Until about Jan 98 Apple kept their CD-ROM boot code to themselves. The Toast developers did their best to provide a workable boot feature, but it was not a 100% match with Apple's code. Resulting disks would usually boot via methods 2 or 3 only.

Around Dec 97 - Jan 98, Apple provided the Toast team access to the official Apple boot code. Boot disks made with Toast v3.5.4 or greater should work fine via all boot methods and with IDE drives. During the process of creating a boot disk, Toast 3.5.4 needs to find, somewhere on one of your volumes, a copy of a current Apple CD-ROM extension. You are not required to be running your Mac under an Apple CD driver at the time.

In preparing the content of your bootable CD, you do not need to include any CD-ROM driver in the System Folder because a universal CD-ROM driver is included in the boot blocks of the CD when you burn it as bootable. This will boot third party CD-ROM drives as well as Apple drives. Any driver software you include on the CD will not get used during startup. Notice that the System Folder of Apple boot CDs do not contain an Apple CD-ROM extension and these disks will boot in third-party drives via methods 2 or 3.

You may have noticed in daily operation of your Mac that, if you have a bootable CD inserted during startup, the universal driver gets loaded and you get an message similar to this: "CD-ROM ToolKit will not be used for that drive because it already is using another driver."

If you do not have Toast v3.5.4 or greater, below is an alternative procedure which results in a CDR disk with actual Apple boot code.

This is from Adaptec Tech Support (Feb 98):

We do have some issues creating bootable CD's that work in IDE drives and SCSI drives not supported by the Apple CD-ROM driver. Even on Apple SCSI drives, the bootable CD's also do not always work exactly as we would like. This is because when we wanted to put the ability to create a bootable discs into Toast, Apple did not offer any assistance and we had to make some educated guesses as to how it should be done by looking at how the Apple CD-ROM driver worked. When will we make the boot code better?

To be blunt, as soon as Apple gives us enough information to make it work better.

We do have a workaround for IDE based Systems that has worked for some people and may work for you (it should also work for SCSI drives on Mac clones that cannot use the Apple CD-ROM driver)

First find a disc that already boots up your Mac (e.g. the MacOS 8 Disc). Insert it into a SCSI CD-ROM drive (if you do not have a SCSI CD-ROM drive, see below to find out how you can use your CD-Recorder as the source drive). Open Toast and select the CD-ROM as the source drive. Click the Options... button and uncheck 'Clear Driver Descriptor Map'. Click OK and confirm the number of blocks to copy (just click OK). Now select Save as Disc Image from the File menu. The entire CD will be saved to your hard drive (including the boot info). After the image is saved, select Mount Disc Image from the Utilities Menu. The volume will appear on the desktop. You can then modify the contents of the volume. After you have what you want on the volume (and discarded what you don't want, remember to empty the trash), unmount the Disc Image by dragging the volume icon to the trash. Find the Disc Image File on your hard drive and double click it. It will open in Toast. Toast will be in Disc Image Format. Write the Image to CD (click Write CD... then Write Disc. With luck, the resulting disc will be able to be used as a startup disc even on the IDE CD-ROM drive.

One important additional note: We have found that to make the above work properly, you need to take something from the disc image and move it to the desktop before burning the CD. If you do not do this, the invisible desktop folder on the image gets deleted and the disc will not startup your Mac properly. For the time being, having a file on the desktop before the disc is burned works around this problem (as a suggestion, you could make an alias of your main installer and have this file on the desktop). A fix for this problem should be in the next version of Toast. I can't say however when this next version will be released.

If you do not have an IDE CD-ROM drive then it should be working at least more consistently (We were able to get the bootable CD thing working fairly well on SCSI drives even without Apple's guidance). It's not always perfect but it's this or nothing. You may have to select the Disc in the Startup Disk Control Panel or you might have to hold down the C key while starting up or holding down the Option-Command-Shift and Delete Keys while starting up.

The more information we are able to glean from Apple, the better we will be able to make the bootable CD portion of it. Recently in fact, we did receive some info that should lead directly to better boot disc creation in a future version of Toast.

How to use a CD-Recorder as a source drive during a SCSI Copy (useful for those who only have their recorder and an IDE CD-ROM drive).

1) Turn off your CD-Writer.

2) Launch Toast, it will indicate that no CD-Recorder is connected

3) Select SCSI Copy from the format menu and click DATA...

4) Turn ON the CD-Recorder and then click Re-Scan

5) Insert the Source disc in the CD-Writer.

6) When the CD-Recorder finishes reading the disc (the LEDS stop flashing), select the CD-Recorder as the source drive and them click OK.

Now you can follow the remaining steps above to make the bootable CD disc image.

John Tessier
Adaptec Trillium Technical Support - Macintosh Specialist

Our phone! 800-783-8745 or 715-381-1900
Our address! support@trillium.adaptec.com
Adaptec Toast 3.5 info!http://www.adaptec.com/products/overview/toast.html
Adaptec Jam 2.1 info! http://www.adaptec.com/products/overview/jam.html
Adaptec Toast updaters! http://www.adaptec.com/support/files/toast.html