Re: beta status
On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 08:04:22AM -0700, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> It is an AmigaOS binary, built from free source with free compilers. So we just have to
> include all the free AmigaOS software to be able to ship a precompiled amiboot? As I said,
> no problem with me, maybe we include all free TOS and MacOS software as well, ataboot and
> Penguin have to be compiled somehow as well. So why not include aminet, and what ever are
> the counterparts for atari, mac, maybe C64, Pet2001, those were nice machines as well,
> and maybe we still use something that was first developed on one of those machines. Would
> be a big boost for the emulator packages that are already in debian, and free software is
> free software...
>
> In case you did not get it yet, I think this would be a stupid thing, debian is about
> Un*x, Linux, *BSD software. Do we have DOS compilers as well? What about loadlin?
> The source(!) package contains a compiled loadlin.exe, but it also contains the source.
> The makefile says: To compile with Borland TASM 3.1. In case that assembler is still
> available, is it free software? Don't you need to run DOS to use it?
bcc = dos compiler included in debian. I have used it and it works. Of
course it has no libs so you have to implement all the bios calls
yourself to print output and such. Not sure if it is easier to use dos
calls than bios calls since at the time I was more trying to write
something I could run between the bios and the boot loader. In the end
I added my code to grub instead. It was simpler.
> But I guess thats what the "editorial" changes were about, lets throw out all the
> documentation, that should free up lots of space which we can fill with useless (for
> debian) software. And while we are at it, let's shoot ourselves in the other foot as
> well by throwing out all the boatloaders... isn't loadlin used on every bootable i386 CD?
No, syslinux/isolinux is. loadlin is for booting from dos, not
directly. lilo is mostly assembly, and compiles fine from linux. grub
is c and a little bit of assembly, and compiles fine from linux.
loadlin is a dos program and does not compile fine from linux, unless
making it work with bcc isn't a bit deal (which may be the case
actually).
Len Sorensen
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