Installation on Yet Another Netbook

Matthew Dillon dillon at apollo.backplane.com
Sat Jan 17 22:42:38 PST 2009


:I have no clue what exactly packet mode is (boot loaders are all ugly 
:legacy stuff), but it it works on more machines than without packet 
:mode, I'd argue to turn it on in the img target by default and have an 
:option to generate a non-packet-mode image.
:
:Regards,
:
:   Michael

    Packet mode is a BIOS extension for read and writing sectors on the
    disk that allows you to pass a logical sector number instead of a
    cylinder-head-sector triplet.

    Unfortunately, numerous BIOSes implement packet mode by translating
    the logical sector number back to CHS, then translating the CHS
    back to a logical sector number, which can cause a mess.  So packet
    mode isn't always the best solution even when the BIOS supports it.

    Blame the BIOS writers.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at backplane.com>





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