OT: Mac Booting & Open Firmware Options

[McMark]

For all you Mac techs out there. Here's the situation:

I have an original generation iMac that I'm trying to rebuild. It has an internal IDE drive, an internal CD drive, two USB ports, and an Ethernet hookup. The owner deleted everything off the hard drive and then copied the system files off of a Mac OS 9 install CD. The system files on the Mac OS 9 CD will only boot off the CD, so the computer won't boot off the HD. The CD drive also has something wrong with it, so it won't spin up and read data before the ROM times out and tries to boot from the HD. So booting off of a CD is out. I can drop into OpenFirmware and see all the files on the HD, but as far as I know I can't delete files. If I could get in and erase the system files off the HD then it would only try to boot from the CD which will work, but it will only work if the CD is the only available source of valid system files. Make sense?

So..... is there any way to delete files in OpenFirmware?

OR

Is there a way in open firmware to remove the HD as a valid boot device, but still have it show up once the machine has booted off the CD?


I really don't want to pull the HD out since it's such a PITA on these machines. Plus I'm curious about the other options. I've never really played with Open FIrmware, so this is a chance to learn something.