On Dec 22, 2007, at 3:32 AM, Bruce Cran wrote:
AMD64 CPUs are backwards compatible with i386; they boot in 16-bit
real mode and only get switched into 64-bit 'long mode' by the kernel
later on. Since both i386 and amd64 start booting in the same way,
there's no need for separate bootloaders.
--
Bruce
I've thought about this too, but do wonder why the boot loader couldn't
go into long mode in one of the loader stages. I don't know if there'd
be any significant improvements or drawbacks other than duplication of
some code(which I imagine isn't changed often).
Somewhat offhand, can the OpenBSD loader chain boot FreeBSD? Due to my
dvd drive being sata over atapi, it wasn't recognized by the 6 branch
until recently(many thanks to whoever committed the change). But I
recall that the boot cd for FreeBSD wouldn't boot, but the boot cd for
OpenBSD would. Of course that does primarily relate to cdboot and not
boot0.
_______________________________________________
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
