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.