In message <122.844233295@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu>Chris G Demetriou writes
>
>Sane architectures typically read the first N blocks off the disk,
>or read something in a well-known format from the first block of the
>disk that indicates what other blocks to read.


>Yes, on a sun3 or DECstation, you're going to lose, but that's not
>that big a deal, at least to me.

Wrong, at least on DECstations.  They're ``sane'' by your description;
very like the TC alphas, in fact.

The lossage on DECstations is that there's no good way to set
anything in the PROM that indicates  to the kernel which
partition to use as root. 

We could always invent  a syntax for encoding root partitions
for  kernels that prompt for a root partition. It's getting
autoboot to DTTR, or specifying it to the PROM instead
of a generic-style kernel, that's problematic.

(The other lossage is that I haven't discovered a realiable, 
 sufficiently low-pain installation procedure, but that's another story).