What about replacing NT's boot loader. Make a replacement for ntldr and ntdetect.com, that loads ntoskrnl.exe, hal.dll, and boot-start drivers (ie atapi.sys) possibly doing the runtime linking/relocation, (or does ntoskrnl.exe do this?), pass it the tables that ntdetect.com does, and kick off the kernel. Might be hard to do netboot though, since it probably expects to load from disk always. there is ntbootdd.sys, which is a protected mode driver (ie not BIOS), which it happily starts and uses for the rest of the booting. prehaps one could be created that does tftp...
ok pretty crazy stuff, but I like to think about the hacking potential of putting NT kernel in a little box... probably need an army of lawyers (oh no you can't do that it's reverse engineering). I may be interesting to note that for NT/w2k (probably XP as well), ntldr is described in MS NT resource kit as switching to 32bit flat memory protected mode very early. ntdetect.com basically does all the BIOS/hardware probing, but in 32 bit mode? So strike the 16 bit requirement? providing bios INT 13, etc api in 32bit mode should be a little easier... doesn't DOSEMU have code for a lot of this? (sure it calls linux kernel, not hardware, but it's a start.) of course w2k wants to get all the ACPI stuff from the BIOS... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stefanos Papanicolopulos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ben Stoltz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 4:25 AM Subject: Re: Advice appreciated... > Ben Stoltz wrote: > > > Sigh... When I said "any" I really meant Linux, Windows NT, and Windows > > 2000. Ideally, the solution would also allow *BSD, and some of the less > > likely OSs. Not that the less likely OSs would be used, the ability to boot > > them just gives one confidence that the boot system is complete. > > I don't get it. Even supposing LinuxBIOS (or whoever) provided the > necessary > interface to run Windows, how would you net boot them? > > The point is that besides a `BIOS' that would be able to access the > remote disk > and fetch the OS loader (e.g. NTLOADER) or the OS itself (e.g. the Linux > kernel), > you also need support from the loader/OS itself. > > I know one can netboot DOS and DOS-based windows (e.g. win95), but I > suppose (repeat: *suppose*) this is because they use interrupts to > access the disk and you `redirect' this interrupts over the network. > > But I've never heard of remote booting of NT/2000, neither through > ethernet or through another way. Can it be done? > > > Stefanos Papanicolopulos >
