From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Nov 8 17:24:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id RAA04731 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 8 Nov 1997 17:24:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from dog.farm.org (gw-hssi-2.farm.org [209.66.103.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA04725 for ; Sat, 8 Nov 1997 17:24:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dog.farm.org!dk) Received: (from dk@localhost) by dog.farm.org (8.7.5/dk#3) id RAA06763; Sat, 8 Nov 1997 17:25:12 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 17:25:12 -0800 (PST) From: Dmitry Kohmanyuk Message-Id: <199711090125.RAA06763@dog.farm.org> To: wghhicks@ix.netcom.com Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: x86 gods; advice? Suggestions? Newsgroups: cs-monolit.gated.lists.freebsd.hackers Organization: FARM Computing Association Reply-To: dk+@ua.net X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In article <34644944.A4C78319@ix.netcom.com> you wrote: > > > Well, in the bad old days, I would probably have reached for Forth. > > > There is some precedent for this approach over at Sun... > > > > OpenBoot is big and expensive. btw, the complete specs for OpenBoot are avail on http://docs.sun.com/ > > > I could probably whip up a Forth metacompiler for FreeBSD pretty quickly > > > using PFE as the host. Just a thought. > > > > If you can roll a bootloader that uses just the BIOS and has a > > footprint around 7k, you'll have our attention... > > > > mike > Sounds doable... (Sound of mad scientist trundling off to basement) hmm, I wrote my bootloader for msdosfs floppies (so I can run netboot.com) abpout 2 years ago, and it fits into 512 bytes. I was using direct threaded code. It is avail for ftp; search archives for dkboot. -- "Now is the time for the quick brown fox to jump over the moon." - rblander@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca