Jope wrote:
bloodline wrote:
I've just remembered that all PC BIOS chips use FAT to read the boot disk... this really is a bad bad thing...
Whu..?
The PC BIOS code reads the first sector of the media, which in turn contains the bootloader that loads the OS.
Either the bootloader can know FAT (grub) or it can just know the sectors it needs to read to find the OS image (LILO).
If the bootloader doesn't know FAT, then the OS is finally the one that may or may not be able to read FAT disks.. Depending on the OS and it's configs of course.
Basically you can boot a PC without it knowing a thing about FAT, if you use LILO and leave FAT support out of the Linux kernel.
On a PC, the bootblock (boot sector) always takes control of the entire machine once it's loaded and run.. On the Amiga, multitasking is already going by the time the OS starts thinking about searching for a boot volume.
Some PC BIOSes might have the ability to fix themselves by reading the BIOS image in from a FAT formatted disk, but that's a special case and isn't in any way related to the booting procedure.
Boot linux, and format a floppy using ext2 file system.
Now put the standard MSDOS shell command.com on that disk.
pop that floppy disk in the drive and rest your machine. it will come up with an error.
Now format the disk using FAT12 and put the command.com program on there... now rename the program foobar.com.
Reset the machine, and when it boots, it will promt you for the file name of the command interpreter... which can be entered and it will boot.
Hense the BIOS can read the FS...
But more interestingly, tell me more about this booting from a disk if the BIOS is dead?
