NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/unix/bsd/5086

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-03 | 1.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!convex!bcm!rice!fontenot
From: [e-mail] (Dwayne Jacques Fontenot)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: new boot roms
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 3 Sep 1992 23:46:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (News)
Organization: Rice University
Lines: 25

better yet, why doesn't somebody figure out how to make it work with those
flash BIOS machines (Dell, etc.). That would be totally cool!

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brett McCoy) writes:
>Okay, here's a thought.  Why doesn't someone write up some new boot
>room code that would make a PC act a lot like a Sun when you turn it
>on.  Get rid of all the gunky MS-DOS support.  Put in a nice little
>monitor to examine memory and various registers and i/o ports and
>allow easy booting from any device and any partition on that device.
>
>This would effectively disable the machines ability to run MS-DOS, but
>that wouldn't be a great loss anyway.  It might be possible to dump
>the ROM code before replacing the ROM's, and store it on the last
>couple, or first couple, tracks of a hard disk.  Then the new boot
>code could, upon detecting an MS-DOS boot, load the old ROM code,
>twiddle a few bits and bytes and jump to the old code and let it
>finish loading MS-DOS and provide the BIOS support that it needs.
>
>This is far, far beyond any skills I have, but it seems like it might
>be worthwhile and would solve a lot of the problems and workarounds
>that people are having and using now.  Maybe someone should get on
>AMI's or Phoenix's back and get them to add some support for other
>OS's than MS-DOS in their boot code.
>
>++Brett;