Inside Macintosh: Operating System Utilities /

Chapter 9 - Start Manager

About the Start Manager

The Start Manager lets you set the Macintosh computer's default startup and video devices. The Start Manager also lets you get or set the timing interval for the startup drive.

The Start Manager provides routines that let you specify a default startup device, a default video device, a default operating system, and a default timeout interval for the startup drive. Because all Start Manager routines run under the Macintosh Operating System, you cannot execute them early enough in the initialization process to transfer control to another operating system. Start Manager routines constitute just a small part of the process required to boot another operating system on a Macintosh computer. Most programmers should have no reason to use these routines.

The next section gives an overview of how to use the Start Manager routines.