Subject: The bootselector
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Andrew Steven Ball <kb9ylw@cyberspace.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 05/02/2001 11:12:48
Hello!

  MB> You can also hit F5 (or maybe F6 I don't remember) to
    > boot secondary disk. Press enter and it'll boot the
    > default (in your case, the second disk). No need to
    > wait 10s :)

Yes, I think it was F5 on this machine.  Thanks for the tip
about hitting Enter.  I'm glad that there's the timeout
option, enabling unattended re-starts when necessary.

  MB> But I agree that the boot selector should print
    > entries for others disks when present

In my case it's not an issue.  It prompts me with the key to
hit if I need to access DOS.  If I don't, it boots NetBSD. I
don't know how many people boot NetBSD from their secondary
ATA drive anyway.

  FvdL> One of the goals of the bootselector was that it
      > would fit into one sector (512 bytes). Sector 0 is
      > the only one guaranteed to be available, as it
      > contains the MBR (though most systems default to
      > leaving the first track available now).
      >
      > Believe me, it now has all the functionality that
      > can be crammed into 512 bytes..

I can believe that, 512 bytes fills up pretty quickly even
when you're programming in machine code.  The existing boot
selector is working well for me.

Regards,
  - Andy.