Hi all, [below the boring text there are some requests that you might help with]
I have been comparing the latest source of atari-bootstrap (3.3.4, Debian unstable) with m68kboot CVS. I wrote they differ simetime ago. I also said Debian was more up-to-date. I was kind of wrong. The debian version contains a fix for CT2 and one small simplification in cookie handling (compared to m68kboot). The source code hierarchy is flat and contains source code for atari only. It's also easier to build. The m68kboot CVS contains an important fix in evaluation of user specified memory size (compared to debian). The source code hierarchy is much more rich (3 levels of folders) and the source code itself looks much better modularized. It also contains code for LILO and Amiga support. This difference makes it very difficult to compare and with my close-to-zero knowledge of the boostrapping it's almost impossible to judge which further differences are fixes (one example for all: m68kboot loads kernel one page above a start of memory while atari-bootstrap doesn't skip the first page. what's better and why?) I have no idea what to use for the d-i bootstrap. I am tempted to go for the m68kboot as it looks a bit more current but it's ATM probably completely untested. And there is no time (before Sarge release) to throw a completely untested code at Atari users and wait what happens. What's even worse: there doesn't seem to be a compiler and library that would allow me to build the binary of the bootstrap that would be same as the one distributed in atari-bootstrap uuencoded. m68k-tos-gcc is not working anymore. And mine m68k-mint-gcc builds 2xlarger binary that prints staircase text because of LF/CRLF difference between MiNT and TOS. Now what I would need to know: - does someone have a working m68k-tos-gcc with TOS library suitable for building the atari-bootstrap? - if not, is it OK to modify the source code to add CRLF to get rid of staircase text? - can I remove the BOOTINFO compatibility #define to disable the 1.0 backward compatibility for kernels 2.0? AFAIK the bootstrap.prg in d-i was still using the 1.0. Who knows what will change when the 2.1 bootinfo is enabled. I read that kernel then skips the cpu/fpu and hw tests. Is it better or worse? I'd have more questions but I'll better stop here. Petr
