On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:14:53 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> True, but at the same time, that information being reverse-engineered
>> by Compaq really opened up the PC market;
> 
> I think the pheonix bios did more than Compaq did. The hardware was all
> very well documented by IBM before the clones started coming out, as was
> the BIOS. People didn't used to try to hide that sort of thing. :-) IBM
> wanted people building cards for it, just like Apple did for the Apple
> ][.

My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering, 
but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have 
been Phoenix.

>> Which in turn has moved PC sales from a low-volume high-margin sales
>> model to a low-margin high-volume sales model.  Seems to have worked
>> out fairly well for most PC manufacturers.
> 
> I dunno about that. Worked well for, say, manufacturing plants in China.
> I don't know that it worked well for people actually selling the end
> product.

I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some 
PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered 
the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.  For 
IBM, as I recall, that happened with the early PS/2 models (the price on 
the PC/XT/AT as I recall was still relatively high).

>> Eventually, clean room reverse-engineering would expose those internals
>> anyways, and arguably the type of process Compaq followed isn't
>> something IBM could have sued over - the guys developing the Compaq
>> BIOS were working entirely from specs drawn up by the guys who were
>> looking at how the BIOS worked.
> 
> Yeah. Except I think you're confusing Phoenix with Compaq. Compaq made
> the hardware. Phoenix cloned the BIOS first.  (Unless I'm misremembering
> something.)

That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I remember 
is probably closer to reality. :-)

> And yes, IBM *did* sue over it. That's why Phoenix followed the
> clean-room approach to start with. The original IBMs came with a
> complete commented source listing of the BIOS when you bought them.
> (Well, maybe it was an extra packet, part of the assembler or something,
> but it was an off-the-shelf purchase.)

I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned 
about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow the 
legal issues then the way I do now, either.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>> If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active
>> partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of
>> hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely switch
>> back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since day 0 on
>> the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only OS that can
>> be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard. ;-)
> 
> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was 
> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.
> 
> Jim

Its actually a bit complicated. Windows will, if it can't find, or finds 
a damaged Boot.ini simply boot the active partition, otherwise it acts 
like Grub, and basically gives a menu, which can "default" to a specific 
partition. As I understand it, there is no direct way, short of hand 
editing, to tell it which one you want "active" as the default, so you 
**need** the "boot from the active partition" behavior. lol GRUB.. Well, 
either it or LILO, or maybe both, can be set to be either in the MBR or 
in the root. I think, either way, they will look at the root to try to 
find the menu options to display. Anyone try to delete the menu and see 
what happens? It might default to booting the "active" if it can't find 
the menu. So, the only real difference would be the redirect to the 
linux partition, in the case where its installed there, instead of in 
the MBR, presuming it does boot the active in such a case. Its kind of a 
toss up then if you think the "Windows" MBR or the Linux MBR behavior 
makes more sense.


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering, 
> but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have 
> been Phoenix.

I think Compaq bought the reverse-engineered BIOS from Pheonix. That's 
my memory, at least.

> I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some 
> PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered 
> the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.

Oh, you're talking about selling end units. I was talking about selling 
it OEM. Kind of hard to make a good profit on commodity manufacturing, 
is what I meant.

> That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I remember 
> is probably closer to reality. :-)

Yeah. I'm pretty sure my first clone was indeed a Compaq, at least. But 
I remember the lawsuits about Phoenix, too.

> I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned 
> about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow the 
> legal issues then the way I do now, either.

They did, or at least went far enough into the discovery process to 
figure out they'd lose. I actually studied that one in one of my 
graduate classes.  IANAL.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D
> You'll have to video that one. ;-)

In my experience, the proper response is
    GIF! GIF! GIF!

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> YaST will let you do this.  I was just in there checking it out. :-)

Cool. Perhaps they improved that since I first tried it a couple years 
ago. I couldn't imagine nothing would do it. I'm pretty sure the 
command-line fdisk on Linux allows it too.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I'm now wondering if that's the case - if it uses ntfs.sys;

I might have been out of date. Maybe that was ntfs-2g or something.  I 
just know what I've heard people tell me.  My research (as of a day or 
two ago) tells me it's actually all native code, unencumbered by IP.

> Well, yes.  There was specific boot sector code in the MBR to do that, 

Yeah, but every MBR I ever saw does it that way. It used to be the only 
way to boot a different OS.

>> Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a
>> decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is
>> doing wrong here?
> 
> My understanding is that the Microsoft MBR (at least as included in 
> Vista, possibly with older versions as well) depends on that boot.ini 
> file, much as GRUB depends on the files in /boot/grub.

Maybe Vista, since it has a new boot record. I'll play with it to see.

But everything before that, from DOS thru Win95 through XP all just load 
the first sector of the active partition and jumps to it. Now, that 
said, the first sector of the XP partition relies on NTLDR and boot.ini 
being present. But you'd have to work really hard to fit NTFS into 480 
bytes, even if only to find boot.ini, you know?

> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.  

It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.

> But also, GRUB can be told to change the default for a single boot only - 
> at least I seem to recall there's an option to do that.

Again, my Linux sysop knowledge is probably out of date. The version as 
of a couple years ago doesn't allow that, and I can't afford to risk 
breaking 60 production machines to check if it's better now. :-)

> Installing Linux (at least openSUSE) on a drive with Windows on it, the 
> installer will set Windows up as a menu option so you can select either.  
> Installing Windows after Linux, though, Windows won't add Linux to the 
> boot menu automatically.  I guess that's what I was trying to say.

Oh, it's not automated, sure. But it's pretty trivial, compared to a lot 
of Linux things. :-)  If you wind up installing Windows after Linux, you 
probably are smart enough to type the two or three command-line bits it 
takes to get the Linux boot sector into Windows.

> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was 
> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.

I'm not sure what that means. I know *all* of GRUB doesn't fit in the 
MBR, any more than NTLDR does. It's just a question of whether GRUB's 
MBR does something necessary to make GRUB boot, or whether you can boot 
a GRUB partition off someone else's MBR. Right now, my tests (on SuSE 
10.2) are telling me GRUB needs GRUB's MBR. It might be better now, or I 
might be doing something wrong.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I think this is because GRUB is actually a more complex piece of software 
> compared to LILO. 

Yep.

> That's not how I remember it, but I generally didn't have multiple MS 
> OSes installed simultaneously.

Remember that MS was selling Xenix long before Linux was conceived.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:39:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering,
>> but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have
>> been Phoenix.
> 
> I think Compaq bought the reverse-engineered BIOS from Pheonix. That's
> my memory, at least.

That could well be.  I don't know that I ever heard the specifics beyond 
Compaq was involved and it was a clean-room reimplementation.

>> I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some
>> PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered
>> the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.
> 
> Oh, you're talking about selling end units. I was talking about selling
> it OEM. Kind of hard to make a good profit on commodity manufacturing,
> is what I meant.

Yeah, end units is my point.  Agree on the profitability on the 
components, you've got to sell a lot of them to make money, and that 
includes keeping production costs really down.

>> That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I
>> remember is probably closer to reality. :-)
> 
> Yeah. I'm pretty sure my first clone was indeed a Compaq, at least. But
> I remember the lawsuits about Phoenix, too.

Yeah, Compaq did have the first clone - that's probably what's driving my 
memory of it.

>> I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned
>> about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow
>> the legal issues then the way I do now, either.
> 
> They did, or at least went far enough into the discovery process to
> figure out they'd lose. I actually studied that one in one of my
> graduate classes.  IANAL.

Cool.  IAANAL. ;-)

Jim

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On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:38:15 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active
>>> partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of
>>> hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely
>>> switch back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since
>>> day 0 on the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only
>>> OS that can be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard.
>>> ;-)
>> 
>> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was
>> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.
>> 
>> Jim
> 
> Its actually a bit complicated. Windows will, if it can't find, or finds
> a damaged Boot.ini simply boot the active partition, otherwise it acts
> like Grub, and basically gives a menu, which can "default" to a specific
> partition. As I understand it, there is no direct way, short of hand
> editing, to tell it which one you want "active" as the default, so you
> **need** the "boot from the active partition" behavior. lol GRUB.. Well,
> either it or LILO, or maybe both, can be set to be either in the MBR or
> in the root. I think, either way, they will look at the root to try to
> find the menu options to display. Anyone try to delete the menu and see
> what happens? It might default to booting the "active" if it can't find
> the menu. So, the only real difference would be the redirect to the
> linux partition, in the case where its installed there, instead of in
> the MBR, presuming it does boot the active in such a case. Its kind of a
> toss up then if you think the "Windows" MBR or the Linux MBR behavior
> makes more sense.

Interesting, now I'm going to have to do some playing with Grub (in a VM) 
when I have some time. :-)

Jim

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:49:14 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'm now wondering if that's the case - if it uses ntfs.sys;
> 
> I might have been out of date. Maybe that was ntfs-2g or something.  I
> just know what I've heard people tell me.  My research (as of a day or
> two ago) tells me it's actually all native code, unencumbered by IP.

I've probably been one of those people telling you, because I thought it 
did use ntfs.sys.  :-)

>> Well, yes.  There was specific boot sector code in the MBR to do that,
> 
> Yeah, but every MBR I ever saw does it that way. It used to be the only
> way to boot a different OS.

Yeah, until we got to the fancy menus, which required additional code 
that wouldn't fit in one sector.

>>> Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a
>>> decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is
>>> doing wrong here?
>> 
>> My understanding is that the Microsoft MBR (at least as included in
>> Vista, possibly with older versions as well) depends on that boot.ini
>> file, much as GRUB depends on the files in /boot/grub.
> 
> Maybe Vista, since it has a new boot record. I'll play with it to see.
> 
> But everything before that, from DOS thru Win95 through XP all just load
> the first sector of the active partition and jumps to it. Now, that
> said, the first sector of the XP partition relies on NTLDR and boot.ini
> being present. But you'd have to work really hard to fit NTFS into 480
> bytes, even if only to find boot.ini, you know?

True, now you mention it, I do recall this.

>> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.
> 
> It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.

No, I mean in order to boot a different partition.

>> But also, GRUB can be told to change the default for a single boot only
>> - at least I seem to recall there's an option to do that.
> 
> Again, my Linux sysop knowledge is probably out of date. The version as
> of a couple years ago doesn't allow that, and I can't afford to risk
> breaking 60 production machines to check if it's better now. :-)

I'll have to see if I can find that one - I was sure I saw the option 
somewhere, but of course now I can't find it. :-)

>> Installing Linux (at least openSUSE) on a drive with Windows on it, the
>> installer will set Windows up as a menu option so you can select
>> either. Installing Windows after Linux, though, Windows won't add Linux
>> to the boot menu automatically.  I guess that's what I was trying to
>> say.
> 
> Oh, it's not automated, sure. But it's pretty trivial, compared to a lot
> of Linux things. :-)  If you wind up installing Windows after Linux, you
> probably are smart enough to type the two or three command-line bits it
> takes to get the Linux boot sector into Windows.

Probably, yes - though it's probably easier to modify the Grub setup at 
that point and just add the Windows install.  Most people I know who 
install Windows second, though, use a VM rather than a native boot.

>> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was
>> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.
> 
> I'm not sure what that means. I know *all* of GRUB doesn't fit in the
> MBR, any more than NTLDR does. It's just a question of whether GRUB's
> MBR does something necessary to make GRUB boot, or whether you can boot
> a GRUB partition off someone else's MBR. Right now, my tests (on SuSE
> 10.2) are telling me GRUB needs GRUB's MBR. It might be better now, or I
> might be doing something wrong.

It means that GRUB on my system here is using the active partition.  I 
don't know what's in the MBR on this laptop's hard drive, but the 
settings when I go into YaST and look indicate that it's installed to the 
first sector of the active partition.

Jim

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