Hello
Jeroen Janssen wrote:
> 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.
>
SBM can be installed into a floppy. If plex86 can boot a floppy, so can boot
SBM.
>
> > 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).
This should be the most important thing that must be looked at.
>
>
> > 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 don't know whether the CD-ROM booting code of SBM can be ported into
plex86's BIOS. Because it was written in 16 bit real mode asm.
>
>
> 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)
> +++
