From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Apr 21 11:24:08 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA07045 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Tue, 21 Apr 1998 11:24:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA06855 for ; Tue, 21 Apr 1998 18:23:53 GMT (envelope-from kline@tera.tera.com) Received: from athena.tera.com (athena.tera.com [207.224.230.127]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA21918; Tue, 21 Apr 1998 11:22:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Gary Kline Received: (from kline@localhost) by athena.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA27407; Tue, 21 Apr 1998 11:22:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199804211822.LAA27407@athena.tera.com> Subject: Re: Free BSD and Windows In-Reply-To: <199804211804.LAA00981@dingo.cdrom.com> from Mike Smith at "Apr 21, 98 11:04:06 am" To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 11:22:49 -0700 (PDT) Cc: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no, mike@smith.net.au, lrios@ziplink.net, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL23 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk According to Mike Smith: > > Mike Smith writes: > > > > Is there a way to boot windows (on a seperate disk) from FreeBSD's > > > > booteasy?? It seems to recognize the 2nd disk but will not boot from it. > > > > Any help would be appreciated.... > > > MS-DOS does not support being booted from anything other than BIOS disk > > > 0x80 (the first disk in the system). > > > > It will (should) work if BootEasy sets DX to the number of the drive > > DOS is being booted from (0x81 in this case). I wrote an OS loader > > once which could boot DOS from arbitrary drives, I'll see if I can dig > > up the code. Modifying the DOS boot sector should not be necessary. > > I've done this before. 8) > > Unless Microsoft changed their sector-0 bootloader (which is possible), > it still has 0x80 hardcoded. The symptoms would tend to indicate that > they haven't - FreeBSD boots correctly from the second drive using the > value in %dx, but Windows does not. > I've been meaning to ask the entire group the following questions(s) about OS bootloaders, since it seems that FBSD lacks a very powerful one. How hard would it be for someone who understands this problem to write a loader that would be powerful and configurable? It probably requires an in-depth understanding of how PC's work with DOS; how the BIOS talks to the disk(s). Writing a loader that worked with any PC-Unix would be a major win. After 5 weeks of trying to dual-boot FBSD and Debian, I gave up. Shouldn't be this hard, but is. gary kline To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message