*BSD News Article 30159


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From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0
References: <jmonroyCp6wpE.7yG@netcom.com> <2q63q2$927@dearg.cuillin.org.uk> <wright.86.000DC700@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov> <2q8qqr$q96@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: PE1CHL
Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 19:01:06 GMT
Message-ID: <1994May6.190106.1752@pe1chl.ampr.org>
Reply-To: pe1chl@rabo.nl
Lines: 63

In <2q8qqr$q96@spool.cs.wisc.edu> jcargill@oka.cs.wisc.edu (Jon Cargille) writes:

>In article <wright.86.000DC700@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov>,
>Ted Wright <wright@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>>In article <2q63q2$927@dearg.cuillin.org.uk> guy@dearg.cuillin.org.uk (Guy Dawson) writes:
>>>Todays dumb question - how do you make a CD bootable on a PC?
>>
>>You copy part of it to a floppy. :)
>>Ted Wright (wright@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov)


>I was confused by this too; I thought PCs weren't very good at booting
>off of CD-ROMs, since that requires BIOS support in the SCSI card.
>And I thought most SCSI card BIOSes didn't handle it.  But I may well
>be wrong.

>At any rate, I was curious enough about it that I sent some email to
>Lynne Jolitz about it.  Here's what she said:


>> Date: Tue, 3 May 94 10:31:00 -0700
>> 
>> Yes, it does boot off the cdrom, and it does work with ADAPTEC 1540 series
>> controller cards or mitsumi cdrom.
>> 
>> Lynne
>> 


>I then wondered whether it required a floppy as a boot-assist, and
>followed up to ask her that.  But Lynne replied:


>> Date: Wed, 4 May 94 10:24:21 -0700
>> 
>> It does not require a floppy -- just the CD itself.
>> 
>> Lynne.
>> 


>I didn't know you could do that; sounds interesting at any rate.  I'm
>curious to hear a report when someone receives the actual disc...


Well, there actually is quite some room on a CDROM at block 0 where one
could store a bootblock that probably would be loaded by the SCSI BIOS.
However, it would not boot when there is another device 'ahead' of it
in the list of drives scanned during boot...
That would mean you should have no IDE disks in the system, and the
CDROM should be the lowest numbered device on the SCSI bus.  All unless
the IDE or lower numbered harddisk contain no valid bootblock.  But they
usually do...

Booting from mitsumi is a different matter.  Do Mitsumi drives have a
BIOS ROM at all???   Never seen one...

Rob
-- 
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| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   rob@pe1chl.ampr.org           |
| e-mail: pe1chl@rabo.nl     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
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