Subject: Re: What happens when the floppy's too big?
To: gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com>
List: current-users
Date: 03/24/2001 14:04:49
On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 03:20:23PM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> > Well, you didn't _have_ to drop it, did you? It's just useless w/o usb.
> 
> No, ohci.o won't link properly without the usb stuff. (The symbols
> usb provides are necessary.)

Doh!

> > No. I think what we should do is something like i386, where they have
> > INSTALL, INSTALL_LAPTOP, INSTALL_SMALL, and INSTALL_TINY. I don't think
> > we need 4, but more than one would be good. And they have provided prior
> > art on this. ;-)
> 
> Sure, except for the actual act of booting a multi-floppy image
> through OpenFirmware.

Hang on a sec. :-) The above was to show that there's art around on
how to support multiple install kernels. :-)

People who do CD boots need a full-blown INSTALL (the one we have
now). And they certainly work w/ OF 3. :-) So we can make for-floppy
(smaller) INSTALL kernels, and CD (general use) INSTALL kernels.

As for multi-floppy support, there actually is art in there too. In libsa,
there is support for ustarfs, the "file system" which uses tar files as
its storage. That's how multi-floppy kernels load.

> I'll let someone more qualified deal with this, though.

I'l admit some of this code makes me dizzy, but as long as either OF will
let us keep the floppy device open after we eject and insert the next
floppy, or we can close & re-open, we should be able to supprt mutliple
floppies.

Take care,

Bill