Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 30 Aug 1995 04:16:50 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
To:        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith)
Cc:        jkh@time.cdrom.com, jehamby@lightside.com, freebsd-hackers@freefall.FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Does fdisk work?
Message-ID:  <199508301116.EAA07944@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
In-Reply-To: <199508301019.TAA28508@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Aug 30, 95 07:49:51 pm

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> 
> Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying:
> > I'm working on this problem (really really!) for 2.1 and hope to
> > have this problem behind us.  For now, I suggest booting DOS and
> > installing BOOTEASY that way.  Really strange, BTW, that it doesn't
> > see your second drive!  It does mine, and I can boot DOS from
> > either drive using BOOTEASY..
> 
> How do you boot DOS from the second disk?  I was under the (mis?) 
> understanding that it read the partition boot code out of the first
> sector in the partition, and that has 0x80 hardcoded in it.
> (Or do you have DOS on both the first and second disk?)

Some, actaully very few, BIOS's get this chunk of code correct as
implemented by IBM in the AT BIOS.  You start searching for boot
devices at the first floppy, if no floppy is in the drive you look
at the partition table in the MBR, if there is not 0x80 flag partition
you look for at the next drive, if it has no 0x80 flag or does not
exists you go look for a second floppy drive with bootable media,
if no bootable media you drop to rom basic.



-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation Company                 Reliable computers for FreeBSD



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199508301116.EAA07944>