On 26 Nov, M Carling wrote:
Perhaps I'm confused. Shouldn't OpenBIOS be able implement the functionality of LILO?
Not necessarily, but of cause, we could.
I thought that LILO existed because BIOS16 are incapable of loading anything that isn't DOS-like.
No, the BIOS can't load DOS either. The BIOS loads the first sector of the first floppy if it ends with 0x55, 0xaa, if not it applies the same test to the first sector of the first hard disk. Then it tries to enter the ROM_basic :) There is a DOS boot loader the fist sector if a bootable floppy or DOS partition. In the first sector of a hard disk there is a master boot program which loads and executes the first sector of the active partition.
Doesn't LILO look to the BIOS like DOS?
No, the LILO boot sector looks like a boot sector as does the DOS boot sector.
That sounds right. So why have a new LILO? Why not just not need LILO anymore?
Because of flexibility? And we don't need to use LILO. We might tech the firmware of a (OS independent) boot FS that could hold the boot loader. Afaik. Sun does something like this.
/Daniel --