Julius Werner wrote:
If you really can't stand the idea of BIOS interrupts and real mode,
I for one can't.
I think your next best option would be to try to cram an as-small-as-possible binary recovery descriptor and the real mode code to parse/load/execute it together into the 446 bytes of MBR space you have.
I like this idea a lot. Backwards compatible is hugely important.
This way, your new payloads can just find and parse/load/execute the descriptor itself without having to provide any BIOS interface, but the thing is still compatible with existing legacy BIOSes as well.)
I am sold.
Ron, I will make you a deal: If we use Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR, RFC 7049) for the MBR data then its working format can be JSON.
I'd be interested in writing the x86 code.
//Peter