Instructions to make a bootable CD-ROM for Mac OS X:

1. Launch BootCD.

2. Choose a name for the CD, and enter it in the “Volume Name” field.

3. If you will be burning to a CD of a different size than 650 MB, enter the size of the CD in the "Disk Size:" field. If you need a larger RAM Disk than the default size, enter the size you want in the “Ram Disk Size:” field. Otherwise, you can feel free to leave these fields alone.

4. Click the “Create Bootable CD Image” button.

5. When prompted, enter an administrative username and password.

6. Choose a location to save the disk image in the Save dialog box that appears.

7. Wait while BootCD creates and prepares the image. This can take anywhere from about 8 to 15 minutes.

8. Eventually, a dialog box should appear telling you to choose the applications you wish to have on the disk. Choose as many applications as you wish via the Open dialog box that appears.

Note: This method works best for stand-alone, self-contained applications such as Drive10; it will not work for Norton, which leaves files all over the hard disk that need to be copied to the image and will not be copied simply by copying the app itself.

9. BootCD should finish with a message telling you that you now have a bootable CD image. The image should dismount. Quit BootCD.

10. If you wish to make any further modifications to the image before burning, such as adding command-line tools, frameworks, etc., feel free to remount the image, make your changes, and then dismount the image.

11. Open Disk Copy. Choose “Burn Image...” from the File menu.

12. Choose the image created by BootCD in the Open dialog box that appears.

13. Wait about 15 minutes for the image to burn.

14. You should now have a Mac OS X bootable CD!

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Instructions to boot from a Mac OS X bootable CD:

1. Insert the resulting CD in your internal CD drive, and restart your Mac while holding down the ‘C’ key.

2. Wait for the CD to boot.

3. When the login panel appears, type ‘root’ for the username and ‘bootcd’ for the password. Both the user name and password should be typed in lower case, without the quotes.

4. Wait a minute or so, and the Finder should appear with the Dock and all the applications you chose while running BootCD. Your disks should be mounted on the Desktop.

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Notes:

The root password in this version of BootCD is ‘bootcd’ (lowercase, without the quotes).

BootCD automatically includes these applications on the CD image: System Preferences, Terminal, Disk Utility, and Console. It's not necessary to manually include these applications.

If you want to add additional files such as preference files, command line tools, etc. to the disk image after creating it, all that is necessary is to mount the disk image and copy the files using either the Finder or the Terminal.

The location of files that will be put on the RAM disk at boot time is at this path on the CD image:

private/etc/RamDiskContents

The location of root's user folder on the boot CD is:

private/etc/RamDiskContents/private/var/root/

The problem BootCD used to have with Old World machines such as beige G3's has been fixed. If you own one of these machines, the boot CD you make with BootCD should now work.

BootCD requires that the BSD subsystem be installed. If you do not have the BSD subsystem, please install it from the OS X Install CD before running BootCD.

Booting from a CD is inherently slow. Optimizing the disk image with a disk utility such as Norton Speed Disk, Alsoft PlusOptimizer or Micromat Drive10 may improve performance.

This version of BootCD creates a RAM Disk for various purposes. You can choose how large the RAM Disk is via the “Ram Disk Size:” field in BootCD's main window. If you want to add things to the RAM Disk, drag them to the folder etc/RamDiskContents on the disk. Obviously, you shouldn't put enough files in there that the size of the folder exceeds the RAM Disk size that you have chosen in BootCD.

Some users have reported that the they have been able to burn a bootable CD with Disk Copy, while it did not work with Toast. Some other users have reported the opposite. If one does not work for you, try burning the CD with the other. I recommend trying it with Disk Copy (choose Burn Image... from the Image menu) first.

In any case, do not try to burn the CD using the Finder's standard CD burning features. You must burn the image directly through one of the applications designed for this purpose, not by dragging files on to a CDR icon.