On Sat, 13 Mar 1999 12:13:03 +1100 (EST) David Murn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> > I was excited to hear about the 8086 listserv. Is there somewhere that I
> > can find a complete distribution for the 8088/8086 PC's? I have both
> > an IBM XT and a NecV20 laptop that I could use for light duty.
>
> No. There isn't really a distribution since there aren't enough programs
> to make a distribution yet. You can make a harddisk installation from the
> boot/rootdisk though. There was talk of a distribution called bluebell,
> but I can't remember if that actually got released or only had preliminary
> releases or chatter about it. Anyone know?
>
One little thought here: it's true that you can use the boot/root
floppy combination to make a file system on a hard disk and mount it.
However, you can't make that file system the root partition, unless
you recompile the kernel. If only ELKS could use the information in
the boot sector of the kernel to read the root partition, then the user
could make a root partition on the hard disk without getting the
whole Dev-86 and ELKS source distributions. All you would need is 'rdev'
which actually compiles with bcc and works under elks (it changes the
kernel boot sector, but of course it hasn't any effect).
I've tried to understand how this information is read, but unfortunately
my assembler knowledge is next to nil, so I never figured it out.
Can anybody tell me if it would be feasible to read the root device from
the boot sector information in ELKS? From the comments in the code, it
almost looks as if it was taken *out* for some reason. Anybody know why?
Next step would be a boot loader.....
Thomas
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Thomas Huld
European Commission - Joint Research Centre - Ispra Site(IT)
T.P.723
I-21020 Ispra | Insofar as my employer has coherent
Absurdistan | opinions they are unlikely to be mine
tel. +39 0332 785273
fax. +39 0332 786198
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bureaucracy is like a wheelbarrow. You have to push it all the way.
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