From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <ecde52925defb09862e0eac2b492550b@coraid.com>
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com>
Date: Sat,  7 Jul 2007 21:00:36 -0400
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Trouble starting Plan9 Installation and Live CD
In-Reply-To: <613a47210707071747o5d2e8828i78f164236f52f747@mail.gmail.com>
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the problem is not the usb stick, but the fact that plan 9 does not recognize
the usb stick as a floppy disk as it is not using the bios calls.  it is the bios calls
that map requests to the floppy disk and map them to the usb.

thus 9load cannot find plan9.ini.

the easy (but oh-so-wrong) might be to have 9load stay in 16bit mode long
enough to probe the "floppy" for plan9.ini.  and stick it someplace useful
before branching running 9load proper.

a better but more involved fix might be to switch to 16bit mode and call bios
for floppy access.  this is more complicated but could pave the way for 9load
using universal drivers (part of the pxe standard) to load the kernel proper
instead of modified versions of the cpu kernel drivers.

- erik