[ECOS] Re: Loader and Disk Geometry (x86)

[ECOS] Re: Loader and Disk Geometry (x86)

[Roman Khvatov]

Hi!

> 
> I'm getting some information about problems with the bootstrap loader
> from my hardware vendor.  It turns out that the disk geometry of their
> flash isn't that of a floppy, and therefore, the int13 code doesn't
> work correctly. 

It doesn't work at all - HDD is not a floppy, and STUB configuration (as used
for floppy config) doesn't suite for big application.

> 
> I'm going to make some changes to the loader to handle this as long as
> no one else has already done it.
> 
> Anyone fixed this problem yet?

Yes, I'd make a pack of loaders, but I can't send it on list (archive is a
big enought to not to post it on list), so I can send it directly to anyone
who can place it in some public accessible place.

Roman.

Re: [ECOS] Re: Loader and Disk Geometry (x86)

[elf]

Even requiring a FAT16 partition is inconvenient.  All I do is write
the ecos boot image to the partition I want to use and I'm good to go.

From Linux booted on my target system:  

  dd if=gdb_module.bin of=/dev/fla2

I'm using Lilo on /dev/fla.  I'll probably move to GRUB, eventually.

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 06:49:19PM +0400, Roman Khvatov wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> 
> > Interesting.  I'm wanting to boot to an arbitrary hard drive partition
> > without a filesystem.  The MSDOS requirements are a problem as I don't
> > have it.
> 
> You won't need to have a MSDOS installed to use this kind of boot, only
> MSDOS based file system (FAT16) must exists. If you need to boot from
> raw partition (without any file system at all), you need another one kind
> of boot loader - some kind of original boot, adapted to read not from start
> of disk but from start of partition.
> 
> BTW - fmt.exe utility can create FAT16 file system on HDD (but only with
> it's own partition table)
> 
> Roman.

Re: [ECOS] Re: Loader and Disk Geometry (x86)

[elf]

Does one of your loaders read the partition table?  I want to be able
to boot from a hard drive partition so I can multi-boot several
operating systems.