"X" Trick to Force Boot into OS X

[bunnspecial]

I'm well acquainted with the above trick. In fact, it's saved my rear end a few times when I got stuck in the "OS 9" trap on a computer that didn't have OS 9 drivers on the disk or had some other configuration change that prevented booting into OS 9. I have, however, had a few occasions recently where it didn't work.

Specifically, I was playing around with my new Cube last night which has a CPU upgrade. I don't know the specifics, but I think it's 7447A based(it's 1.5ghz). In any case, I stupidly tried to boot it off of OS 9, which hangs near the end of the boot process because(I assume) it doesn't have the correct extensions to boot off the CPU(my Sonnet dual 1.8 upgrade "tricks" the computer into thinking it's a different processor than it really is to allow OS 9 booting).

It seems, however, that the "X" trick doesn't work on the Cube. I probably will need to boot off a Tiger CD(there's no DVD drive in the computer) but am also afraid that I'll run into other issues with not having the correct CPU drivers...it looks like I may end up having to go in and do a TDM boot and manually "unbless" the OS 9 system folder, or otherwise pull the drive and boot off it in another computer to rebless the OS X system.

Does anyone know when the "X" shortcut was introduced?

 

[eyoungren]

I don't know when it was introduced, but I've had about a 10% success rate with the 'X' key. So little success that I long ago abandoned using it at all and just use OPTN now.

If you can't use OPTN, then boot from an installer disk and in the Utility menu there select the startup disk. The OSX disk should appear and you should be able to boot from it then.

PS. I've had even LESS success with the 'C' key!

 

[bunnspecial]

Normally I put OS X and and OS 9 on the same partition, but this one has them separated. Option should work. Thanks!

I generally have a good success rate with "X" on portables, but it seems to be hit or miss on desktops.

And, yes, I'm well acquainted with booting from an install disk to get out of the OS 9 "trap." Don't ask why

 

[bunnspecial]

BTW, the Cube does not seem to recognize startup commands from the A1048 KB-this isn't the first time I've run into this issue with various Macs.

The M7803 is fine.