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

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

On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 09:06:57AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> 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.

Err, thanks to you that is, didn't notice it was you posting :)

Friendly,

Sven Luther