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cc: wghhicks@ix.netcom.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: x86 gods; advice? Suggestions? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 08 Nov 1997 17:25:12 -0800."
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Date: Sun, 09 Nov 1997 12:57:23 +1030
From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
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> 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/

Yeah, and you can buy it and training and whatnot from Firmworks.  It's 
not usable in the PC environment, and IMHO sucks pretty outrageously 
anyway.

> > > > 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...
> 
> > 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.

Yeah.  Now add UFS and bad144 support, serial and BIOS console support 
and the option parser.  It ain't gonna look too small then.

TBH, I'd *really* like to get the NetBSD bootloader building; it is a 
much nicer animal.

mike