In message: <20020312.220229.56177410.imp@village.org>
            "M. Warner Losh" <imp@village.org> writes:
: In message: <Pine.WNT.4.43.0203121040440.320-100000@todd>
:             Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com> writes:
: : ** arc **
: : 
: : ROM uses MBR, but I don't know specifics.
: 
: The ARC BIOS loads files off a file system.  The file system can be
: either iso 9660 (for CDs) or FAT.  The FAT is described by an MBR.
: Some older ARC machines can only load off the pre-win95 FAT, while
: newer ones can load off of FAT with win95 extensions.
: 
: The ROMS are damn picky about the disks.  If you don't have the FAT
: just right, then the BIOS gets confused (at least on my ARC machine).
: 
: It is likely best to think of ARC as a mips version of i386 IBM-AT.
: It even has the 386 boot code in the MBR's :-).

Oh, and NetBSD/arc doesn't have a boot loader at all.  The port copies
the /netbsd kernel to the FAT partition after converting it to a
special flavor of ECOFF.  Writing a boot loader for this port is
hampered by buggy BIOS firmware that make it difficult to read raw
disks with the firmware on many machines :-(.

Warner