Thomas Huld writes:
>
> 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?
>
It sounds as though we have reached a stage where this feature is desirable
sgain, so I will have a look at putting it back in. I think the root device
is specified somewhere in the setup code, rather than the bootsector
itself.
Another way to do it would be to look in the System.map for the _ROOT_DEV
symbol, and then load the kernel into a hex editor, find the word and
change it by hand! :-)
Al
