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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.misc:2447 comp.os.386bsd.development:2079 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gumby!andrews-cc!gillham From: gillham@andrews.edu (Andrew Gillham) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Ok, somebody with facts speak out! (CD booting) Date: 10 May 1994 22:09:56 GMT Organization: Andrews University Lines: 31 Message-ID: <2qp0nk$fua@orion.cc.andrews.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: edmund.cs.andrews.edu I am quite intrigued by the idea of booting a PC from a CD-ROM. Some friends and I have talked about it in the past, but we were thinking along the lines of a supplemental BIOS that had a boot monitor similar to Sun Workstations. i.e. Burn code on a ROM, and install the rom in the supplemental BIOS socket that *some* mainboards have. While I would prefer to use a boot monitor type of program, with CD-ROM and tape booting support (via the SCSI BIOS, not direct if possible) since many mainboards don't have that extra socket, it wouldn't be universal. If someone has actually *BOOTED* a PC from a CD-ROM and can discuss it intelligently, could you please post? I am interested in the disk layout, etc.. especially the possibilities of booting multiple platforms from the same CD-ROM. i.e. installing NetBSD/i386 as a bootable system, and having NetBSD/Sparc installed as a bootable system, with a shared source tree. I imagine it wouldn't be to difficult since you can specify the boot info on the sparc. Or, if anyone has info on a supplemental ROM for a PC boot monitor that would be cool as well! Think about it.. a BIOS based monitor that can read in boot loaders for NetBSD/Solaris/Linux/etc.. from CD's or tapes, and then execute them, possibly passing in info. A standard boot interface that could even be used with *DOS*, but designed to work with *all* i386 unixes... -Andrew -- #!/bin/sh - ============================================== echo "Andrew Gillham gillham@andrews.edu" echo "Winix Hacker" #=========================================================