Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 17:43:08 +0000 From: Keith Jones <keithj@sse0691.bri.hp.com> To: stable@freebsd.org Subject: BootEasy and PC-XT partitions [was Re: Dedicated disks...] Message-ID: <20001120174308.A14723@moose.bri.hp.com> In-Reply-To: <200011201003.eAKA3RS01865@possum.os2.ami.com.au>; from summer@OS2.ami.com.au on Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 06:03:27PM %2B0800 References: <grog@lemis.com> <200011201003.eAKA3RS01865@possum.os2.ami.com.au>
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On a slight side-note to this thread: If PC-XT based architectures require a boot sector and partition information at C0/H0/S0, but reserve the whole of C0/H0, what are the other 62 (or 126?, for the SCSI oriented) sectors used for? Specifically I'm thinking that BootEasy could do with expanding quite a bit - knowledge of more partition types than it currently handles would be a good start (e.g. Compaq diagnostics, Solaris x86). Prettifying the display would be another bonus. Unfortunately, 512 bytes is hopelessly inadequate for storing information about all known partition types, let alone anything else. Would it be safe to have a simple bootstrap in C0/H0/S0 to load code from the rest of C0/H0 and execute it, or are some OSes/applications (e.g. fdisk, disklabel) likely to hose particular parts of it? (Aside from the partition table itself, naturally.) Additionally, how many sectors can we actually *guarantee* are there if we were to include support for legacy IDE disks? (I'm guessing some of the older ones had less than 63spt, though all mine ended up in the skip long ago so I can't tell anymore...) Keith -- Keith Jones E-Business Service Introduction, GBIT-E (Bristol) E: keith_jones@non.hp.com T: [+44 117] 312-7602 I don't speak for Hewlett-Packard. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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