Subject: Re: Installation on partitions beyond 4GB limit
To: Gunther Nikl <gni@gecko.de>
From: Ignatios Souvatzis <is@beverly.kleinbus.org>
List: port-amiga
Date: 10/20/2000 18:43:28
On Fri, Oct 20, 2000 at 11:45:49AM +0000, Gunther Nikl wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 07:58:02AM +0200, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
> > Let me check (or see yourself; the xstreamtodev and friends sources are 
> > somewhere on ftp.netbsd.org /pub/NetBSD/arch/amiga/misc)
> 
>   I don't think that the sources for xstreamtodev are there, at least I
>   wasn't able to find them. Furthermore, xstreamtodev is only present in
>   the release util(ities) directory of a distribution.
> 
> > Loadbsd uses the AmigaDOS calls to read the kernel off the Amiga filesystem
> > and should be safe.
> 
>   Since Loadbsd doesn't use the device directly I guess thats a safe bet :-)
> 
> > The bootblock will have problems even on OS3.5, as the bootblock calling
> > interface didn't change (and anyway, I don't know a single person with OS3.5
> > in ROM.)
> 
>   I think it depends on the device used to access the harddisk. If the
>   device can cope with disk > 4GB in a way, the bootblocks could probably
>   utilize the device support to boot from a partition above 4GB.

Not the current ones. They get a traditional trackdisk.device-compatible 
IORequest from the OS, pointing to the start of the boot partition, 
that is, 2^32 bytes maximum range.

>  The C=   scsi.device modules in _ROM_ cannot, but some Phase5 devices could.

Unfortunately, thats not relevant, because its not the device driver that
calls the bootblock.

Regards,
	-is