CD-ROM booting staus update

[Alex Roman]

Thought I'd write a little status update on this project.

So far I can:
* identify CD-ROM drives
* read Eltorito descriptors off the CD
* parse Eltorito descriptors, and interpret them
* load bootable images from the CD in memory

Currently, the nag is that ISOLINUX at least uses Eltorito Int 13h
extensions which are not present on the QEMU/Bochs BIOS. And it seems
they may not be available unless booted from the CD on any system.

So, the only option I see at this point is to write a hook to Int 13h
which provides the Eltorito Int 13h extensions. I've looked at the
Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/) and I saw how they
do this. They actually use the direct ATAPI interface to talk to the
CD-ROM drive.

Their code is GPL licensed, but it is written for NASM, not GAS, and
also it is ~2000 lines of real-mode assembly programming. So, I don't
neccessarily know if it is desirable to port some of their code to GAS
so that we may use it...

Would there be any way to write 16 bit code, for real mode, in C, with
GCC, so that at least part of the Int 13h hook would be a bit more
maintainable? If not, is it acceptable to write that much code in asm?


Thank you!
.. regards!

PS: I know this has been a little slow going, but I have been doing a
lot of learning in the process...

--
Alex Roman <address@hidden>