On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Michael Wolfson wrote:

> Yet another reminder:
>
> ofwboot.elf is deprecated.

Uhm, when did this happen?

See below for why I find this statement very confusing.

> Use ofwboot.xcf -- it has all of the functionality of ofwboot.elf *without*
> the confusion.  ofwboot.xcf works on *all* supported models, ofwboot.elf
> does not.

Or just understand what the files are and when they are apporpriate. (This
is mostly for folks other than Michael) ofwboot.elf is great for OFW 3
systems, and unusable for OFW 1 & 2. ofwboot.xcf is excelent for OFW 1 &
OFW 2, and ok for OFW 3 (I personally think ELF is a nicer file format
than XCOFF).

Don't advise someone with an OFW 1 or OFW 2 machine to use ofwboot.elf -
it won't work.

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, Michael Wolfson wrote:

> This is A Bad Thing.
> 
> Tsubai-san, do you have any ideas about this?  I'd really like to direct
> everyone towards a simple solution ("everyone use ofwboot.xcf"), but
> exceptions like this make it difficult.  Had you updated ofwboot.elf but
> not ofwboot.xcf, or is Apple doing something weird on the iBook (Dual USB)?

It is impossible in principle to update ofwboot.elf w/o updating
ofwboot.xcf. They are the same program! That's why saying one is
depreciated strikes me as odd - they are the same thing!

There is one program, ofwboot. We build an ELF version of it, ofwboot.elf.
We also build an XCOFF version of it, ofwboot.xcf. We also build ofwboot,
which installboot uses on NetBSD-only disks. The only differences are ones
mandated by differences between the XCOFF file format, the ELF file
format, and the binary format we use with installboot. If you really care,
I can tell you the difference.

Take care,

Bill