On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 1:20 AM, Russell Whitaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Fri, 12 Sep 2008, Joseph Smith wrote: > >> >> >> >> On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:24:32 -0400, "Corey Osgood" >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> wrote: >>> >>> On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 12:19 AM, Joseph Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> >> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:13:18 -0400, "Corey Osgood" >>> >>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>> >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Peter Stuge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Joseph Smith wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> So for Linux do you mean reading /etc/fstab to find the /boot label >>>>>>> and going from there??? >>>>>> >>>>>> No, that is a much later problem. >>>>>> >>>>>> We are at the stage when all we know are physical hard drives, and we >>>>>> want to look up where an operating system is, and how we start it. >>>>>> >>>>>> The how may be answered by multiboot. >>>>>> >>>>>> The where is your mission, should you choose to accept it. >>>>>> >>>>>> Where in this case means which physical drive, which partition and >>>>>> which file. >>>>>> >>>>>> Look at the different existing solutions for this problem to see if >>>>>> one of them will work for us, or if they can be improved upon to fit. >>>>> >>>>> Alright, this is an entirely honest question, how complex is the mbr? >>>>> And how standardized is it? What's required to access it? And the big >>>>> question, would it be possible to create a new mbr that could be >>>>> easily parsed by FILO, but still compatible with fuctory BIOS, >>>>> possibly by using a method similar to windows chainloading? Just >>>>> throwing this out there, no idea if/how it would actually work. >>>>> >>>> It is pretty darn simple, it tells a few bits about the drive and where >>> >>> to >>>> >>>> find the first boot sector of the Active partition. But it is a 16bit >>>> binary blob normally executed in real mode. We could create our own FILO >>>> MBR, but I don't know if that would be the right solution eithor.... >>> >>> Why not? If legacy free is the way we're gonna go, why not get rid of >>> the legacy MBR while we're at it? >>> >> Hmm. You got me thinking, the gears are turning. We would have to deal >> with >> a binary blob though instead a simple text file. pros vs cons? > > A while back Seagate announced they are stopping production of the ATA hard > drive. In a few short years the MBR will have gone the way of the > 5.25 inch floppy. Even now there are some live-cd distros that don't > need a hard drive.
I call bullshit. I found one news article on it, not linked to a press release or any substantiating evidence. Can't find a PR on Seagate's website or anywhere else. And I can't honestly imagine that there's so much of a difference between PATA and SATA hard drives that no longer manufacturing PATA drives would have any considerable impact on their bottom line. 5 1/4" drives were around when only geeks and secretaries had PCs, that's just not the case today. If you know where there's an official announcement, please, send me the link. -Corey -- coreboot mailing list: [email protected] http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
