Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwvax!puff!rt5.cs.wisc.edu!blochowi
From: blochowi@rt5.cs.wisc.edu (Jason Blochowiak)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: //gs Boot Blocks
Message-ID: <4145@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 89 00:17:25 GMT
References: <3388@sage.cc.purdue.edu> <0ZWjDCW00WAB00WG8F@andrew.cmu.edu> <4118@puff.cs.wisc.edu> <37432@apple.Apple.COM> <4136@puff.cs.wisc.edu> <37492@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@puff.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: blochowi@rt5.cs.wisc.edu (Jason Blochowiak)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 37

In article <37492@apple.Apple.COM> farrier@Apple.COM (Cary Farrier) writes:
>In article <4136@puff.cs.wisc.edu> blochowi@rt5.cs.wisc.edu (Jason Blochowiak) writes:
> [...stuff about not understanding why there would be incompatiblity...]
>	The point I am making is that if you depend on the machine booting
>	in a specific manner, then there's a reasonable chance that things
>	will change later and you will have to revise your software for
>	each new change.  What happens when say, a new FST which allows
>	booting off of that file system appears?  Are you going to revise
>	SB 8/16 again?  There is probably a more elegant solution to
>	the problem, perhaps intercepting the boot process at a later
>	step common to both P8 and GS/OS.

	Oh, now this is interesting - are you saying that ProDOS 8 will
allow for different file systems? If not, then paying attention to non-ProDOS
file system conventions would seem to be pointless for the boot block.

	As for a more elegant solution - I'd be interested in hearing about
it. The boot block installation is very minor surgery (remember all those
posts about getting Bird's [sp?] Better Bye into ProDOS 8?), whereas modifying
something else would be more of a pain, and would almost certainly be version
dependent. Besides, how many more steps are there that are common? As I
understand it, the (standard) boot block finds & loads *:ProDOS, which, in the
case of P8, is the entire OS, and in the case of GS/OS, is a loader of some
sort. If this is correct, then the ways the OSes boot diverges right after
the boot block, and a common intercept point would be rather difficult to
find.

	Please note that I understand the point you're making, but I can't
see a better way, and waiting 25 seconds per boot is horrendous when working
on a P8 program that crashes regularly... P8 loads nice & quick off my HD
with SB 8/16, and my cycle isn't stretched as much by waiting.

>| Cary Farrier				| Internet  : farrier@apple.com   |

--
      Jason Blochowiak - blochowi@garfield.cs.wisc.edu or jason@madnix.uucp
       "Education, like neurosis, begins at home." - Milton R. Sapirstein