Ben Stoltz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Sigh... When I said "any" I really meant Linux, Windows NT, and Windows > 2000. Ideally, the solution would also allow *BSD, and some of the less > likely OSs. Not that the less likely OSs would be used, the ability to boot > them just gives one confidence that the boot system is complete.
The part missing for booting any OS are the x86 BIOS 16bit interrupts/entry points. My gut reaction is that implementing a large enough subset to boot Windows NT is within a month or twos worth of work. Things like bochs and plex86 have booted windows so there is a knowledge base of what has to be implemented out there, and windows attempts to document which BIOS services it uses, which is another source of information. That plus keeping KISS in mind and starting from what the original PC had (which is simple and fairly well documented) instead of trying to figure out every buggy half functioning feature that has maybe sort of been added since then. >From LinuxBIOS's perspective the code would just be a bootloader. Not a part. As LinuxBIOS doesn't leave any code resident in memory. I'm not certain how you would want to organize the pieces but that is up to you. Eric
