Christopher Li wrote:
> 1. Use the Smart Boot Manager in the plex86.
This is one possibility (wich indeed should be looked at, if only to
check wether plex has any trouble booting SMB), however how do you get
SMB installed initially (before any operating system is installed).. ie,
it should be possible to boot from CDROM in order to install any OS, so
option (2) should probably be done for plex86.
> 2. Make a native plex86 cdrom boot.
> To make a CDROM boot, it have two part:
> I) CDROM access driver.
> In SMB, it use the ATAPI command to detect and access the cdrom.
> I think in plex86, we can use the host OS to access the cdrom and
> greately simplify this part, am I right?
As far as I know, plex86 has (ATAPI) cdrom emulation support (ie.. it
emulates an IDE CDROM drive in the plex86 guest environment). However I
do not know if this works ok at the moment (although I remember some
CDROM related emails passing by on this mailinglist).
> II) Disk Emulation and prove the BIOS api.
> In SMB, it take over the INT 13H. In plex86, we can make it part of
> the plex86 BIOS. It will change two part: INT 13H and the boot code.
> How is that fit in the plex bios?
I think this is "the way": modify the plex bios to support the Disk
emulation & BIOS api. I'm not sure if this can be easily done with the
current bios and how difficult it would be.
I have a christmas/newyear holiday next week (until 2nd januari), so
that will give me time at home to do some experimenting.
--
Best regards,
Jeroen Janssen
+++
"The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises
the
singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor;
the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite
prompt
side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case..."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)
+++
