From mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Sat May 29 08:35:36 2010 Message-ID: <4C010987.6090809@atari-source.org> Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 08:33:11 -0400 From: Mark Duckworth User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Thunderbird/3.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mint@lists.fishpool.fi Subject: Re: [MiNT] boot manager References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Errors-to: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi X-original-sender: mduckworth@atari-source.org Precedence: bulk List-help: List-unsubscribe: List-Id: X-List-ID: List-subscribe: List-owner: List-post: On 5/29/10 8:14 AM, Miro Kropacek wrote: >> If yours was designed to allow easy extension, suitable for a >> ACP/FireBee, ie it had graphics+mouse (extensions), could boot on any >> current OS (TOS included, even if it had to be compiled specifically), >> then I think it is definitely needed >> >> The big question is: >> "what are your ideas on functionality" >> "what did you want it to look like" >> > I think you're missing the point here. My question wasn't about new > XBoot but about boot manager (second stage loader if you want) > handling disk partitions as we can't currently choose from what > partition / OS boot process should continue, as it's hard-wired in > hddriver.sys. > > GGN, you've got a point, it's certainly easier to make a few bytes big > boot loader for netbsd from AUTO than create boot manager in MBR for > it :) But anyway, let's hear if anyone else has something to say, > personally I like this as developer, it could be quite fun to code, > especially when making partition scheme compatible with Windows/Linux > (so called MBR partition scheme), in that case you could have Windows, > Linux, TOS, NetBSD/atari and Linux/atari on the same disk and only > thing needed to boot on PC and/or Atari would be to rewrite MBR itself > (to bootstrap each of OS). In case of PC with Lilo or Grub, in case of > Atari with my futuristic boot manager :) > > Sounds good but I'm not sure about practical application, especially > in a world with CF<->IDE/SATA adapters... > > I'm going out on a limb here and I assume you know about hd-driver's feature to change boot drv on the fly by holding the drive letter. For instance if you wanted to boot off D: you just hold the D key in (or tap it repeatedly anyway). Again, I do see the practical application but hd-driver does offer some of this already. Thanks, Mark