First stage is bootxx_ffs (for ffs boot partitions) or bootxx_fd (for bootable
floppy disk). These locate, load, and execute the second stage loader boot.amiga.
The console screen is created and passed to the second stage loader.
The second stage loader uses loadfile() to load the kernel image, which can
be either a.out or ELF format, and can also be compressed. It will load a
kernel file from ffs file systems or the ustarfs used on floppy disks.
pass the block number of the boot partition to the kernel. The kernel
will use the block number to determine which disk device the kernel was
booted from and set the boot device based on that instead of the old
"generic" method.
- move the helper programs txlt and aout2bb to the topmost directory
- build the few files from libsa in the topmost directory
* while doing this, hunted down mysterious code expansion: It seems
that ld aligns code segments differently when linking .o's directly
than when using an archive consisting of the same files. Abuse this
effect to make the bootblock even smaller. The floppy boot block
"fdboot" is now small enough to build; add it back to the Makefile.
* while being here, remove a file which was committed by mistake.
along with toolchain enhancements.
aout2bb transforms a.out files with reloc information into bootblock format
files with a compressed relocation info.
bbstart.s relocates the bootblock using this compressed info, before jumping
to C code.
txlt changes some more of the absolute references to pc-relative ones (we know
we have a single code + data address space).
If you ever try to change this: don't even dare to change the compiler options;
they were found in weeks of trial and error as the ones producing the smallest
(not necessarily fastests) code.
installboot is just a script around dd, for now.
Some ideas by Michael Hitch, Leo Weppelman and Jason Thorpe; bugs added
by myself.
mhitch