"Soft" Deconfiguration via Status Property

To support a degraded boot capability, the OBP uses the 1275 Client Interface (via the device tree) to "mark" devices as either failed or disabled, by creating an appropriate "status" property in the corresponding device tree node. By convention, UNIX will not activate a driver for any subsystem so marked.

Thus, as long as the failed component is electrically dormant (that is, it will not cause random bus errors or signal noise, etc.), the system can be rebooted automatically and resume operation while a service call is made.