No i just want something that every time it starts up it will take me into a boot menu and yes i do know u can do that by holding alt but i dont have time for that every time i boot up my ppc mac
So all i want is something like a boot menu every time i boot this old emac
Selecting the boot partition can be postponed until the code common to all OSes is executed: firmware in chips, if, 'Alt' pressed, pause and display screen in NVRAM; then execute the first byte on the first boot partition pointed to by the partition table on the drive selected in NVRAM (changed by 'system preferences').
Boot Loader:
Firmware executed, then first byte on default boot drive. This has 'boot loader' with text menu offering OSes. Pause. Marks boot partition on selected drive, and sometimes copies first record of this boot partition over itself (the boot loader) and changes the CPU pointer back to first byte of new boot drive (chain loading). Very clean.
Other methods 'shoot' to permanent boot loader (with spiffy graphic menu shown) and back. All that matters is that first byte on drive where OS should continue is eventually the first byte of the OS you want.
Snow Leopard (HFS+) and GNU/Linux (ext3) make a qood pair. Both can read and write HFS+ natively. Still, if you kept eMac with Ubuntu and Firewire cable, drive damage on either could be fixed.
MacOSX comes as one big package of a dozen partitions, to fill a boot disk. It doesn't play well with others. Check various distributions of Linux for instructions on how to dual-boot MacOSX (installed first) and GNU/Linux. Documentation is generally very poor, though Debian's is very good.
GNU/Linux distributions have forums. Your photo I've not seen in years. Very knowledgeable people use Debian (simplified by Ubuntu): post your photo there.
