Re: Can you boot a IIGS from a Mac w/ IIe card?

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <3i873o$9st@onyx.southwind.net>,
Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:
> Dave Althoff (dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us) wrote:
> : Why not go one better?  Wouldn't it be possible to have a loader on a 3.5"
> : disk to start up the machine, establish an AppleTalk link with the Mac,
> : then load the rest of GS/OS from the remote hard drive?  A bit unorthodox,
> : perhaps, but this is the Apple ][ world...it CAN be done, even if nobody
> : has figured out how just yet ;-)
> 
> Well from all accounts, the IIgs' network hardware differs from that of the
> workstation card in that not all code is present until the system software is
> running. So this makes it a chicken-and-egg situation.

That should be firmware, methinks.  :-)

This is certainly the case for the ROM 1 IIgs - it doesn't have enough
ROM space for all the AppleTalk protocols, so it only implements the
bare minimum needed to boot over the network.  From a quick mental
scan of the protocols, this would be:

LLAP (LocalTalk Link Access Protocol) - almost full implementation
DDP (Datagram Delivery Protocol) - almost full implementation
NBP (Name Binding Protocol) - bare minimum, name lookup only
RTMP (Routing Table Maintenance Protocol) - bare minimum, to find a router
ATP (AppleTalk Transaction Protocol) - requester only

The ROM 3 has full implementations of the above protocols.  Higher
level protocols (AEP, PAP, ASP, AFP, ZIP) are loaded from the system
disk.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand