Re : Newworld OF boot

Marius Vollmer recently released "poof", an OF bootloader for NewWorld
that apparently can read the kernel from ext2. I didn't test it nor I
remember the URL, but a search on the linuxppc-usr mailing list archive
should work.

Poof loads and boots perfectly on BlueG3, so it seems there's nothing more
to do.
It doesn't read the kernel from ext2 but from an OF-readable disk, or the
kernel may be included in poof's file.

I think the new OF actually _can_ do raw block i/o since MacOS X Server
bootloader will load and link the kernel from an UFS partition (which is
obviously not supported by OF natively). I suggest you look at Darwin's
SecondaryLoader source code on publicsource.apple.com. It contains a
bunch of OF calls from the C code, some of them may give you some light
on the matter.

It seems that the modified secondary quik bootloader doesn't really crashes
when using OF for raw disk access but in the middle of ext2fs'partition
opening code. And MacOS X server bootloader loads the kernel from the UFS
partition (even if the bootloader is on an HFS partition). But where is
Darwin's SecondaryLoader source code ? I've downloaded all Darwin files
containing the word "loader" but it doesn't seems to be here...

I have included an os chooser written in Forth that works with poof (you
must first install it). It's written for my configuration but it should be
easy to adapt since it's plain text and there is nothing else to do than
changing the partition numbers (and erase MacOS X from the list for those
who don't have it) To use it, you must first install poof, then copy
blueboot into an OF readable folder (like MacOS System Folder) and then
change the boot device (setenv boot-device hd:X,\\blueboot  where X is the
partition number containing blueboot, usually 5 if you put it into your
MacOS System folder).


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