runbootblock.README revision 1.1
1Some Amigas are incapable of booting from partiton utilizing a bootblock. One 2example is the PPS Zeus accelerator. The Zeus has two major problems with 3booting from a bootblock. The first (and fatal) one is the driver is just 4plain buggy and will not work. The second problem (if the first problem 5didn't exist) is that the Zeus memory is normally configured during the 6execution of S:Startup-Sequence using a supplied utility program. Even if 7the Zeus would boot from a bootblock, it's memory would not get configured. 8Another example I've run into is the GVP GForce-40. It will boot from a 9bootblock, but it appears to only work if there is a filesystem in the RDB 10blocks for the bootable partition. I've gotten the GForce-40 to boot directly 11from the bootblock by installing the BFFSFastFileSystem in the RDB. 12 13When I was developing the two-stage boot for NetBSD, I wrote runbootblock. 14Runbootblock will load and execute an Amiga bootblock program from a disk partition, 15similar to the process the Amiga ROM will do when booting from the bootblock. 16This allows "booting" from a NetBSD bootblock when the Amiga is unable to actually 17boot from a bootblock. 18 19runbootblock [-d PPSscsi2.device] [-u 1] [-p root] 20 21 -d scsi.device Select device driver name, default PPSSscsi2.device. 22 -u unit Select SCSI device unit, default 1. 23 -p partition Select partition name, default is root partition. 24 25The following command will load and execute the bootblock on SCSI drive 262 from the partition named "swap" (which contains the miniroot filesystem 27for installing/upgrading NetBSD) on my Zeus. 28 29 runbootblock -u 2 -p swap 30