Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 11:56:26 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: uhclem%nemesis@fw.ast.com (Frank Durda IV) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: three-stage boot Message-ID: <199510160226.LAA05631@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <m0t3kRB-000IwuC@nemesis.lonestar.org> from "Frank Durda IV" at Oct 13, 95 08:46:00 am
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Frank Durda IV stands accused of saying: > > [0]Speaking of the three-stage boot stuff, I'd like to hear from some/anyone > [0]that has a set of screen, serial and disk libraries that interact directly > [0]with the BIOS in the state that it's in when the bootsector is loaded. > > Yeah, I have some of this stuff from the XENIX days. The filesystem > stuff would have to be replaced, but I assume all you are interested in > is mainly the stuff for getting the BIOS to read the hard disk > and maybe keep the user informed on progress, right? Er, no. In the short term, the idea would be to dumb down the second-stage bootloader, and shift the bloat into the third stage, which would probably be in a file called /boot. This tool should eventually be able to absorb userconfig and a kernel selector, and be able to decompress kernels as they're being read, as well as growing any number of other features. This would need some disk and console support, and it's not going to have an OS behind it to provide it, just the BIOS. > I'll dig this stuff up if you want it. Any resources are welcome. > Frank Durda IV <uhclem@nemesis.lonestar.org>|"Remember, Bill is getting -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] My car has "demand start" -Terry Lambert UNIX: live FreeBSD or die! [[
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