If memory serves me right, Joshua Goodall wrote:
> I came up with a very similar solution independently (although I chose a
> "reserved" partition number). You may also wish to (I did) patch boot0 for
> the cosmetic fix.
Thanks. I was thinking about a patch for boot0, but decided I had to
fight other fires.
> It is possible to rescue a 165'd [ATX] series thinkpad
> by booting an install floppy without an installed HD and hot-inserting the
> HD before the kernel loads - allowing you to change the partition number
> (have a fixit.flp or live CD handy). This is probably not very good for
> the HD, but it works.
Been there, done that with my bricked T20. I'm not recommending
that anyone do this, mostly because I don't want to take responsibility
for frying someone's hard disk if something goes wrong. That's why I
didn't add this to the text that Nik turned into the FAQ entry.
> There's not reason why sysinstall can't come with a tool to change the
> recognised partition number, is there? Apart from being pig-ugly nasty and
> implying another line in make.conf and patches to anything using
> disklabel.h or hardcoding values. Architecturally revolting.
> /usr/src/sys/boot/thinkpad/, anyone? :)
I haven't had my caffeine yet this morning, so I'm not really thinking
clearly, but my first reaction is that this is going to cause more
problems than it solves. boot1 and boot2 as written will look only for
certain partition types (normally just 0xa5), and unless we go around
patching binaries from within sysinstall, it's going to be real hard to
change these on a first-time CD-ROM (or network) install.
Bruce.
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