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

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

On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 11:53:49PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>
> 
> > Worse case scenario, this could be clean-room reimplemented.
> 
> Before doing that, somebody ought to approach Apple and ask explicit
> permission to reverse-engineer the boot-block code and distribute the
> reverse-engineered source under a free license.
> 
> The worst that can happen is that the request ends up with some
> clueless corporate lawyer whose instinctive reaction is, "No way;
> that's *our* IP" - but if he has the slightest bit of clue he will
> realise that Apple does not really have any commercial interest in
> clinging to this particular piece of IP.

some 50 or so m68k assembly instruction to call rom functions on obsolet
and not supported anymore hardware, i seriously doubt even the
cluelesslest corporate lawyer will have a problem with that. But stay
tuned, something interesting may come out of this discussion, and thanks
to Henning Makholm for providing the link to the boot sector docs at
apple, altough it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as it seems to
contradict itself in many places.

Friendly,

Sven Luther