Entering Mac equivalent of BIOS - running ubuntu OS - HELP!

[csmail]

So the title says a lot. Here is the background of my question:

I have a macbook. I was running v 10.4 until recently. Now i'm running Ubuntu version 8.04.
I'm trying to enter the mac equivalent of BIOS in order to disable my trackpad/mouse (its broken and causing some problems while trying to use an external mouse). I know that the Mac equivalent of BIOS is "open firmware", and that to access it, you press command-opt-o-f while booting. However, I've tried this and it still seems to boot normally. I'm wondering if there's a different set of keys I need to press in order to access open firmware now that I'm running a linux Operating System.
Can anyone suggest how to do this?
Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you!!
-Charlotte

[negatv1]

Intel Mac's use EFI, and you can't access open firmware as you did on PPC macs using 'cmd-opt-o-f'. There is 'rEFIt' (http://refit.sourceforge.net/), that allows you to interact with EFI.

[fwhh]

I don't think you can disable the trackpad in the EFI.
The trackpad is internally connected to an usb-port, together with the keyboard (at least this is so in a MBP). So disabling this port will also shutdown your keyboard.
You could try to unload the driver for the trackpad in Linux.
Maybe a google search for: "ubuntu disable trackpad" can fix your problem.