U211344@HNYKUN11.BITNET (Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert) (12/15/88)
Recently I got the 1.3 Kickstart disk. As usual, I tested it to see if
it works (and of course, it does!), so then came the time to make a
backup copy for daily use. Of course, I also have a daily- use-backup
disk of Kickstart 1.2 (and 1.1 for that matter).
Unfortunately, you need a _whole_ disk of 880K to store that 256.5K
worth of data... just a bit wasteful, I think. I did not want to tie up
an entire extra disk for that.
So, what I did was the following: I moved the original 1.2 Kickstart
image (on my daily-use-backup disk) 257K further on the disk, so I
still have a backup, and then copied the first 256.5K of the 1.3 KS
disk to the beginning of the backup disk. The result was that I now
have a working 1.3 KS disk, but still have not lost entirely my backup
of 1.2 (or used an extra disk). (Needless to say that I used my RDF:
for all this data shuffling).
This is an interesting situation. I have a disk with both KS 1.2 and
1.3 on it, but I can use only one of them. So I thought of the
following trick:
Suppose you wrote a simple program that you place at the beginning of
the Kickstart disk, so that it would be loaded and run. Then it would
somehow determine what kickstart you really wanted to use, and load
that in. Of course, there should be some default in case you dont
select anything.
I know that when this Kickstart selector starts to run, the system is
completely uninitialized, so the kind of interaction with the user that
is possible is very limited. But it should be possible to read (at
least) the left mouse button to select the first alternate Kickstart,
and something else to select the second alternate Kickstart. (You won't
be able to put more than 3 Kickstart images on a single floppy).
Would it, despite some problems like the one mentioned above, be
possible to make such a Kickstart selector? It would be a pretty neat
trick! Darn, if I lived in Germany I would do it myself :-) :-) :-)
Freely_Distributable=Greetings(Not_For_Any_Commercial_Purpose)->
Olaf.Seibert;
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Q: How many lines does it take to screw in a disclaimer? A: Only two.
--- Olaf Rhialto Seibert the Marvellous --- U211344@hnykun11.bitnet ---
Study safely - stop deets 7167 BYTES FREE
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