From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sun May 4 11:20:52 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D7BB537B401 for ; Sun, 4 May 2003 11:20:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cain.gsoft.com.au (genesi.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.161]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDA0F43FA3 for ; Sun, 4 May 2003 11:20:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from localhost (cain.gsoft.com.au [203.38.152.97]) by cain.gsoft.com.au (8.12.9/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h44IKeIW088740; Mon, 5 May 2003 03:50:42 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) From: "Daniel O'Connor" To: Duraid Madina , "Cliff L. Biffle" Date: Sun, 4 May 2003 20:20:39 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 References: <3EB3C118.6020203@octopus.com.au> <200305031509.19473.cbiffle@safety.net> <3EB44FD3.30601@octopus.com.au> In-Reply-To: <3EB44FD3.30601@octopus.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200305042020.39372.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> X-Spam-Score: -1.5 () CARRIAGE_RETURNS,IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,REFERENCES,SPAM_PHRASE_00_01,USER_AGENT X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.16 (www . roaringpenguin . com / mimedefang) cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Floppy Support X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 18:20:53 -0000 On Sun, 4 May 2003 01:25, Duraid Madina wrote: > > 1. El Torito. Last I checked, under emulation, 2.88MB was the largest > > boot image available, so fitting the bootloader/kernel/etc. onto two > > floppies is still quite significant. > > We could use El Torito's "type 4" hard disk emulation. Installing > FreeBSD from such an environment seems a little gross, but religiously > mangling kernels to fit onto 1.44Mb floppies seems worse. I think actually getting this to work is substantially more difficult than you make out. Yes hard disk emulation works but lots of BIOSen don't do it, or do it wrongly. They usually say they do it but only if you behave just like the NT installer (because NT mandated this feature for certification) I believe someone did work to try and get this to go but the basic point is that 1.44Mb floppy emulation works on a lot more systems and has been a lot more widely tested. -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 9A8C 569F 685A D928 5140 AE4B 319B 41F4 5D17 FDD5