From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: <3CF7E7C1.1E704DFD@null.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <8af692a6aa5a1270aab459dd5945364d@plan9.bell-labs.com>, Subject: Re: [9fans] non-BIOS boot Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 09:54:56 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a593acd8-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Charles Perkins wrote: > You'd be suprised what a sufficently motivated person can do with 512 bytes. > [impressive hack deleted] I am reminded of the (perhaps partly apocryphal) story of the IBM 1403 card reader's LOAD button which would get just one 80-column card image into the 1410's core memory then start executing it. Unfortunately it took 79 characters to simply get the next card read.. The boot loader thus consisted of an initial section that accumulated one character of the second stage per card, followed by a branch to the second-stage image where a more useful boot loader now resided.