OK, so for some systems, it's possible to choose the startup partition holding the OPTION key at startup. Great! But, what is really annoying is the 30 second delay the Mac asks for each time I do a startup with OPTION key.
The other day, I started doing that, but at the same time I had my mouse button down, because I wanted to eject a CD I forgot to eject before shutting down. The CD ejected, and ... the usual partition dialog appeared without any delay!
So I verified again and again ... and it works! Pressing the mouse button while you press the OPTION key at startup brings the partition boot dialog instantaneously, with no delays!
Anyone else tried this? My machine is a 2000 iMac DVSE 500 slot-loading with OSX10.1 OS9.2.1 and 384mb of RAM...
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2001110411051383