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BootROM

Updated visual summary of the Mac boot process

Adds details of the sequence of screens displayed at each stage, to help diagnose boot problems.

September 17, 2018 Macs, Technology

Booting the Mac: Will my Mac boot from this disk? A visual guide

You want to boot your Mac from an external drive, but it doesn’t work. A diagram to explain what can go wrong, and how to fix it.

September 1, 2018 Macs, Technology

Booting the Mac: bless, and what makes a volume bootable

The command bless used to be able to control all things to do with booting, but has become steadily less useful with the advent of SIP and others.

August 30, 2018 Macs, Technology

Booting the Mac: Visual Summary

Single-diagram summary of how a modern Mac starts up in macOS 10.12 or 10.13, from pressing the Power button to running the kernel.

August 25, 2018 Macs, Technology

Booting the Mac: EFI ‘firmware’

What boot.efi does to prepare to load and run the kernel: building the hardware device tree, handling startup key commands, and more.

August 21, 2018 Macs, Technology

Booting the Mac: loading boot.efi and Secure Boot

The Mac has completed its self-test routines, and now prepares to load the EFI firmware or ‘boot loader’. Where it finds it, what it needs, and how Secure Boot changes this.

August 10, 2018 Macs, Technology

Before boot.efi: the Mac’s initial self-test routines

What happens in your Mac when you press the Power button? Before it loads the EFI firmware, it goes through self-testing, and initialising key chips.

August 8, 2018 Macs, Technology
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