Re: 2.4.0-test11: arch/i386/boot/bootsect.S incompatible with Vaio C1VE (Crusoe) floppy

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Followup to:  <Pine.LNX.3.96.1001202131716.1450C-100000@mandrakesoft.mandrakesoft.com>
By author:    Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.mandrakesoft.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Wolfgang Spraul wrote:
> > 2.4.0-test11, arch/i386/boot/bootsect.S has a probe_loop: to determine the
> > number of sectors that can be read at once (i.e. in one track).
> > 
> > This routine does not work with the Sony UDF5 USB floppy disk, mapped as an
> > Int13 device by the Vaio C1VE (Crusoe) BIOS.
> > Therefore, a bzdisk floppy will not be bootable.
> 
> The bzdisk code is used so infrequently compared to the normal
> bootloaders, lilo, grub, and syslinux, that I'm not surprised it has
> problems with many edge cases.
> 
> Although I imagine this is an unpopular opinion, I think that we
> should remove all bzdisk-type code from X86...	syslinux and other
> boot loaders handle weird BIOS quirks much better, simply because
> they are used in far more situations than bzdisk.
> 
> syslinux especially is quite nice for loading kernels from floppy.
> It's very small, and "syslinux -s" adds in some wonderfully-paranoid
> sanity checks which make boot loading works on many a quirky BIOS.
> (don't use '-s' unless you need it, of course, it slows things down...)
> 

I concur, but I'm biased :)

	-hpa
-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
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