Is there, then, a way for the bootloader to print out the list of
disks it's able to access on request, and then we just use 'hd' and
completely throw out the sd/wd stuff, since it's superfluseless?

...or is that along the same lines of complexity?

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Todd Vierling wrote:

# Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 13:22:30 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
# From: Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>
# To: Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
# Cc: David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk>, port-i386@netbsd.org
# Subject: Re: booting wrong partition (1.4.1)
#
# On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Greywolf wrote:
#
# : Is there any way that we could force 'sd' or 'wd' to apply to the proper
# : kind and order of disk?
#
# Not easily (...at least, not without probing devices before booting, which
# would basically involve booting a NetBSD `kernel' whose purpose is to boot
# a NetBSD kernel 8-).
#
# It's possible to differentiate between drives that are simple BIOS drives,
# and ones with INT 13 extended commands, where the latter are typically
# either SCSI or pciide-addon-cards.  However, this is all guesswork, and the
# BIOS really has only a sequentially numbered set of accessible devices
# starting at 0x80 (fixed disk device 0).
#
# --
# -- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi & NetBSD:  Run with it.
# -- CDs, Integration, Embedding, Support -- http://www.wasabisystems.com/
#
#


				--*greywolf;
--
Hack on NetBSD, and your code runs on over 40 architectures.