From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <8dba46082b2110cd9e6b0217906817e8@proxima.alt.za>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] ld.com
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:54:20 +0200
From: lucio@proxima.alt.za
In-Reply-To: <20080218015853.1CEA01E8C26@holo.morphisms.net>
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> ld.com should be tossed away.  you're supposed to use 9load these days,
> which doesn't have those limitations.

Maybe, but at the time I hoped that ld.com would allow me to overcome
a problem with formatting a Compact Flash card I kept getting wrong (I
have got it right eventually, now I need to document how) and secondly
it doesn't help to have documentation that conflicts with reality.  I
think it is a privilege other OSes can't afford to be able to say in
the documentation "Ld.com has grown beyond 64K and therefore can no
longer be used, but it may be possible to strip it further, feel free
to contribute fixes".

That said, I have managed to get 9load into place in a 9FAT partition,
but now I cannot run 9pc.gz kernels newer than
/n/sourcesdump/2005/1106/plan9/386/9pc.gz on the SiS 550 processor.
I'm not sure what broke, but of course some of the guesswork:

term% grep -n SiS /n/sourcesdump/2005/1110/plan9/sys/src/9/pc/devarch.c
619:  * SiS 55x
623: 	{5,	0,	23,	"SiS 55x",},	/* guesswork */
678: 	else if(strncmp(m->cpuidid, "SiS SiS SiS ", 12) == 0)

may be at fault.  Suggestions welcome.

++L