Baslinux mailing list

[Ken Martwick <kenm AT surfbest.net>]

James Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Nov 2004, Ken Martwick wrote:
>
>  
>
> > I'm sorry I was confusing.  The boot floppy I mentioned is only used once
> > to get the clean BIOS interrupt vectors for a particular PC.  The 200k
> > size includes all the programs and source code.  My code is GPL and the
> > other programs are also open source.
> >    
>
> Thanks Ken.  I think I might be getting it now.  So, the floppy is used
> only to get a copy of the "clean" vectors as seen by the BIOS?  It somehow
> records them, e.g., in a file?  And it's necessary to do this first, I
> suppose, since, on each individual PC, the state of clean vectors might
> vary somewhat?  So, I'll conjecture that your program works something like
> this: prospective BL user (pBLu hereafter) first boots from the floppy
> which records clean vectors for his machine and puts them in some file.
> Is this the vectors.bin file you mentioned in your initial post?  Then,
> pBLu reboots into DOS, inserts that floppy and copies over the clean
> vectors file to his/er DOS partition.  Or perhaps s/he copies it over to
> the DOS partition while running from the booted floppy?  In any case, the
> clean vectors file gets put on the hard drive--in the same directory as
> your fix1f.exe.  Once pBLu has a copy of the clean vectors file, the boot
> floppy is no longer needed.  And once pBLu has a copy of the clean vectors
> file on his/er hard drive, s/he needs only to put fix1f.exe in the same
> directory as it, run fix1f.exe, then run boot.bat and fire up Xvesa--which
> should run just fine, despite the fact that memory mgmt programs were
> running in DOS.  Have I understood how this all works?  If so, is my
> assumption that vectors.bin is the file that recorded clean vectors from
> the BIOS (using the boot floppy) correct?  So your program relies on
> values in this file to write clean vectors so one can boot more cleanly
> into Linux?  This is what I deduce from your descriptions so far.
>
> And, within the 200K you mentioned, is there some diskette image one
> records to a floppy, or perhaps a batch file one runs to create the
> bootable floppy?  Further explanation of how the user gets or produces the
> bootable floppy will be appreciated, as will further feedback on my
> assumptions about how all this works, offered above.
>
> Thanks, James
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>  
Your understanding is generally right, James.  The situation is a bit 
complicated by the fact that the two programs used to create the boot 
floppy and to "capture" the interrupt vectors are part of another 
software package.  That is one reason the "package" is so big.  I have 
enclosed the "zip" file in a dummy zip file that contains complet, 
step-by-step instructions.
Ken Martwick