> On Jun 6, 2020, at 9:45 PM, Eric Auer <[email protected]> wrote: > > >>> The 8086 kernel can be compiled with FAT32. > > The question is whether the floppy installer should use > an 8086 FAT32 kernel. Pro: It works with FAT32 partitions > which people may create even for 250 MB drives because > they believe smaller clusters would always be great. And > almost everybody has harddisks larger than 2 GB now, so > if they are foolish enough to use the floppy installer, > or simply lacking CD and afraid to use the USB installer, > they WILL run into problems with FAT16 kernels. But then, > it would be a lot better to use an 386 FAT32 kernel even > for the floppy installer! > > Contra: The 8086 FAT32 kernel is even worse than the 8086 > FAT16 kernel on real 8086 if you use FreeCOM with XMS SWAP > because the 8086 has no XMS to XMS SWAP!
I do not disagree. There was EMS, but it was rare and generally only useful as a RAM drive. > > I think the floppy distro should be tailored for 386 PC :-) > Which means it should have a 386 FAT32 kernel. > > You already mention the functionality on the floppy distro to > INSTALL the 386 kernel on 386, but it does not USE the same > kernel. Which is a big problem, because the user will still > be RUNNING the 8086 kernel from the floppy while they FDISK > and FORMAT while preparing to install something on harddisk. It installs KRNL386.SYS on 386+ machines. It installs KRNL86.SYS on 286 and lower. Install Diskette boots KRNL86.SYS. So, yes. without FAT32 support in the 8086 kernel, it will prevent a 386 user from partitioning a FAT32 drive for the install. > You can always make an alternate 8086 boot floppy as add-on > with 8086 FAT16 (!) kernel and FreeCOM with DISK SWAP, for > the few real 8086 hardware people. Yes, Maybe. We will have to see if demand dictates an additional BOOT diskette. > I think it is nice that the distro tries to dynamically adapt > what gets installed, but having separate boot floppies for > different hardware just works better. Even Ubuntu has that > server installer option with different hardware requirements. > > Of course you can in PRINCIPLE use a special boot menu on the > floppy which selects either 386 or 8086 kernel at boot, but > there is no need to make things that complicated. The few XT > users will be experienced enough to manually decide to use > that special 8086 boot floppy which I suggest to exist :-) > > Good night! Eric > > > > PS: No, not really. An 8086 kernel which dynamically drops FAT32 > support still is larger and slower than a 386 kernel on 386, so > you are just needlessly tempting 386+ owners to run extremely > retro-compatible, less optimized kernels ;-) Also, FAT32 is not > just a module which could easily be unloaded, it is the entire > set of MS DOS 7.10 compatibility things compared to MS DOS 5/6 > and using 8086 FAT32 kernels wastes a lot of memory on the 99.99% > of PC-XT which have less than 2 GB disk size, while using 8086 > kernels of any type on 386 or newer CPU is generally not cool. > Oh, I just meant for the 8086 kernel. And yes, without that being the intent prior to creating the support for FAT32, it would probably be a major pain to restructure it into an easily loaded/unloaded driver. Good Night :-) Jerome
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