Re: VSTa boot

> The Linux boot loaders have a stupid 512K limit on boot image size,
> which is OK if you're loading _just_ a relatively small kernel and

Keep in mind PCs boot up in real mode, so >1Mb is impossible to load. That's
in theory, in practice >640K is a problem as well, as this is where a lot of
external memory (EPROMS, VGA ram etc) are located.

> It sounds like what you're planning to do at this point is essentially
> rewrite LILO to support multiple boot modules and to run under VSTa.

In fact what I had in mind is writing a simple loader for VSTa, one which is
small enough to live in a boot sector. It is then very generic, as ANYTHING
which knows how to boot DOS will be able to boot it up (default mbr, LILO,
OS/2 boot manager, and others).

> With a little planning, I think you could fairly easily create a boot loader
> that supports VSTa, Linux, Mach, and BSD at the same time in basically the
> same way, and could easily become "the definitive free OS boot loader". :-)
> There's also a lot of already-written free boot loader code I could point
> you to that might make your job easier.
>
> So, are you interested?

The question is - do I (or anybody else) need it?
I have all of the above up and running here, except for Mach; This is all
managed by LILO, which seems to handle this very good: It handles the
linux-specific bootup, and it knows how to load DOS (+VSTa) or BSD boot
sector and let their own loaders do their job.

-- 
yossi (yogo@math.tau.ac.il)