This extension patches out the Macintosh boot sequence with a more PC-like sequence.
How it works:
“Bill Boot” is an 'scri' file, allowing it to come in fairly early in the boot process (before INITs, for example). When it installs, it takes over the main display device by slowly scrolling the contents of the screen off the right while an animated picture of Bill Gates appears to be pushing it. This is all done synchronously with delay loops to keep it from going too fast.
The next portion of the extension all runs at VBL time until the _DrawMenuBar trap is called for the first time in the Finder. Everything is driven off a state machine which begins by printing a BIOS copyright message to the screen. The extension also prints the PowerPC processor speed and type and several bogus driver loading messages. It then monitors the low-mem location which contains the currently executing INIT and prints the names of the INITs to the pseudo-text screen as they are loaded.
Finally, when the INIT loading process hits the first INIT starting with an "S" (I needed some trigger), a Win95-like startup screen is displayed, and the bottom portion is animated.
Limitations:
The code for this was written over the course of about 24 hours. It has not been very thoroughly tested. Known limitations include:
• Only works in 8-bit mode
• Doesn't work on monitors less than 640x480
• Optimized for 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768
• Win95-like startup screen may not have correct palettes if something during the boot process switches the clut of the main device.
• Has never been tested on a multi-monitor system, but should work
To Build:
The included Code Warrior project builds the entire “scri” file. But there is one more step after it is built. You need to change the “INIT” 500 resource to a resource of type “WnBt”. I couldn't get Code Warrior to put a native MixedMode header on any resource type besides “INIT”.
