Re: CD-ROM booting staus update

[Alex Roman]

On 07/07/07, Robert Millan <address@hidden> wrote:
> Since we're on free software, we can do better.  Instead of sticking to an
> obsolete interface, we can define our own in both sides.  E.g. define how
> a CD layout has to be to be bootable by BIOS-less GRUB.

Well, the ElTorito standard is used all throughout the world as *the*
standard for bootable CDs. A really good thing about it is that it
does not break a CD's compatibility with the ISO9660 standard.

Another great thing about it is that it is very flexible: you can
specify all sorts of parameters to your boot image, such as computer
architecture, load address, size and you can have more than one boot
image, among other things that are outlined in the spec.

Writing our own means that only our CDs will be bootable on our
interface... I personally don't think there is a need to move away
from the ElTorito standard. It's been proven by years of usage without
much complaint, from what I can gather.

However, we could work on defining a new interface to accessing the
CD-ROM drive that doesn't rely on old constructs. However, like I've
said, current software relies on the Int 13h interface to continue
booting. So, although we would use a "nice" interface to read the boot
image, load it in memory and boot it, the boot image itself wouldn't
work until we provided the Int 13h interface.

Just my opinion...

--
Alex Roman <address@hidden>