Re: Debian-installer, older hardware, boot loaders, miboot & amiboot & ..

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 10:56:21PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>
> > On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 12:52:12AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> 
> > > Huh? Is the bootsector use written in a kind of machine language that
> > > the regular as(1) for the architecture does not support? I thought
> > > that i386 was the only platform with *that* problem.
> 
> > I suppose that the boot sector may contain a bit more than the standard
> > elf or coff format. Not sure though.
> 
> In the absence of other evidence I'd assume that it's a short fixed
> header followed by raw machine code, designed to be loaded at some
> magic address and executed immediately. It *may* take a custom ld(1)
> script to produce quite the right setup, but after that, getting it
> into a usable format should be a simple matter - use objdump and a
> short piece of perl if everything else fails.
> 
> Google "macintosh boot block" turns up official Apple information that
> seems like it might be what you're looking for. (And which it would be
> OK to look at for a cleanroom implementor).

Mmm, i found it : 

  http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/Files/Files-101.html

I have a fear suspision that this may be more related to newworld, than
the oldworld stuff needed for miboot, which may probably be varying
between the different models we may need to support.

Friendly,

Sven Luther