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From: barrett@lucy.ee.und.ac.za (Alan Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Boot selector for 386bsd?
Message-ID: <245ov8$obq@lucy.ee.und.ac.za>
Date: 9 Aug 93 19:03:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: lucy.245ov8$obq
References: <1993Aug9.130409.21433@ericsson.se>
Organization: Elec. Eng., Univ. Natal, Durban, S. Africa
Lines: 55
NNTP-Posting-Host: lucy.ee.und.ac.za
In article <1993Aug9.130409.21433@ericsson.se>,
etldncn@cato.ericsson.se (Duncan Cameron) writes:
> So I still have to use dross. What I need is a boot
> selector for 386bsd that will allow me to select either
> the dos partition or the 386BSD partition.
You might find my YAPED/YAPBOOT combination acceptable. Yaped is a
rather simple-minded partition table editor (doesn't do any of the
calculations for you, but does let you examine and modify everything),
and yapboot is a featureful partition boot program (I append part of
the documentation). Get them from
ftp.ee.und.ac.za:/pub/msdos/yapboo10.zip.
I use the stuff myself, but consider it alpha test code. Please let
me know what you think if you try it.
--apb
Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
RFC822: barrett@ee.und.ac.za
Extract from the YAPBOOT.DOC file:
-----
What are YAPBOOT's major features?
YAPBOOT uses the following data structures, which are stored in the
partition sector.
* A partition table that contains information about 4 partitions.
(Almost all partition boot programs do this.)
* A partition description table, with a 12-character description for each
partition.
* A set of menu parameters, including a flags byte, a timeout period, and
a default menu choice.
YAPBOOT usually displays a menu with the descriptions of the eligible
partitions, waits for the user to make a selection (or for the timeout
period to elapse, in which case the default selection is taken), and
attempts to perform the selected boot action. YAPBOOT may also write
an updated version of the partition sector back to disk.
The following selections are possible:
R Attempt to boot ROM BASIC.
A to D Attempt to boot from the primary boot sector on the
first or second floppy drive (A or B) or hard drive (C or D).
1 to 4 Attempt to boot from the secondary boot sector described by the
selected entry in the partition table.
Some of YAPBOOT's features are controlled by compile-time options and
others are controlled by bits in the menu flags byte. Any particular
compile-time configuration of YAPBOOT will support only a subset of the
available features.