On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 05:06:17PM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:59:04 +0100
> Pavel Cahyna <pavel@NetBSD.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Are we afraid of BIOSes which can't
> > boot from "no emulation" bootable CDs and require the "emulated
> > floppy" method?
> > 
> That's the argument that's been used in the past.

I'd also suggest that there may be old systems that won't boot with
the acpi kernel, or need support for old devices.  In both cases its
seems sane to keep a sub 2.8MB install kernel+ramdisk.

This means that the acpi install kernel can probaly lose support for 
EISA devices and ISA network/scsi cards.

The non-acpi install will also be easier to cut down for really small
systems.

Also if we are doing a non-floppy-emualtion image - even one that
is a ustar filesystem - there is scope for adding alternate kernels
(may normal/laptop or i386/amd64), and posslbly (does it make sense?)
the install sets in the tar filesystem (possibly useful for copying
onto a USB stick).


	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk