Hardware boot manager?

[FXGuy3369]

I am about to start building a dual boot hackintosh. I saw one somebody else had, and asked him what boot manager he used, and he told me it was a piece of hardware doing the boot management. I have done some google searching and can not find any such device. Anybody know what I am looking for lol?

 

[mpilchfamily]

He obviosly doesn't have a clue. Boot loaders are always software not hardware. When you go to install the MAC OS it should ID that windows is there and install a boot loader on its own. All modern OSes have there own boot loader.

 

[DaveSimmons]

There were old IDE hacks to toggle the cable select line back and forth, but I don't know of anything like that for SATA.

The SATA schemes I can think of are:
- eSATA external drives, one per OS, expect the plugs to wear out with all the swapping
- BIOS switching of boot order, or with a Dell BIOS the F12 boot menu

Then there are software schemes like Arconis' loader (corrupted boot files in my tests) or System Commander (reviews say not Vista compatible).

 

[corkyg]

Sometimes we have to think outside the box. I use a hardware BOOT SELECTION achieved through mobile racks in which different pre-loaded trays can be inserted so as to boot from Vista, XP, Linux, etc. It is really a simole key switch selection. I currently use Vantec EZ_Swap SATA racks. Each has a different OS.

Swap

No, this is not a "boot loader" in the software sense - but simply a hardware boot choice through switch selection.

 

[corkyg]

I almost forgot about Romtec's TRIOS devices for PATA drive selection. I used the TRIOS II for a couple of years - worked well, and allowed a push button selection of different HDDs for different boots.

Trios

Romtec went out of business shortly after SATA drives became the mode. Actually, SATA drives lend themselves to hardware selection better than PATA ones.