>Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 21:22:42 +0100
>From: Leo Weppelman <leo@wau.mis.ah.nl>
>
>On Tue 15 Dec 1998, maximum entropy wrote:
>
>> Should we start thinking about going to a 3-stage loader scheme (boot
>> sector + bootxx + /boot)?  Right now, my bootxx text+data is 6468
>> bytes, which leaves only 188 bytes for future growth.  I very quickly
>> "outgrew" that remaining space, even with only a few simple changes.
>
>That is an option... I would rather avoid it if possible... This brings me
>to the interesting question: what 'extensions' are you thinking about ;-)

The first thing I was playing with involved making the boot loader
look and feel more like the i386 loader.  Specifically, it was
printing out the sizes of various segments as they were loaded from
the kernel.  However, just adding those few printf()s made the code
too big to fit in the exsting space.

I was toying with that just to feel my way around the boot code and
make sure I understood all the issues involved with changing the code.
I didn't, but I think I've got a better idea now.  What I'd eventually
like to work on are things such as adding the glue code to access
different filesystems besides ffs (msdos/TOS, nfs, and cd9660 for
example).

I'd also like to add the same type of countdown/keystroke interrupt
stuff that the i386 booter has, instead of the right-shift to get to
the boot blocks, along with friendly informational messages saying
what's going on.

Cheers,
entropy

--
entropy -- it's not just a good idea, it's the second law.