Subject: Re: Increasing maximum partition to 16
To: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com>
From: Frank van der Linden <fvdl@wasabisystems.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 12/28/2000 21:56:38
It's unfortunate that NetBSD seems to have a history of unresolved
discussions. And when someone proposes a stopgap measure to not
alienate our users, everybody suddenly gets very opinionated. Oh well.

The comparison with ISA DMA bounce buffers isn't really a good one,
since that affected more code. Although it was mainly the aha-1542
ISA SCSI adapter. Yes, eventually it was done right, but at that
point the 1542 had become all but obsolete, so I'm not sure it's
something to be proud of in that sense.

This particular, simple, change needs to happen, and as i386 port
maintainer I'm saying that it should go in. It doesn't affect
any other ports.


If we want to finally get partitioning done right, read the
wedges thread. Not everyone agrees with the proposal, but most
people did think it was a good idea. I don't think it's hard
to implement, although booting needs thought.

Look at some messages I took out of the thread and put up about a year ago:

	http://www.science.uva.nl/~frank/wedge.txt

Or look it up in the mail archives. The thread is now almost 3 years old..
Someone should just do a sample implementation of it.

- Frank