Dual boot problems (RESOLVED)

[RW]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:46:18 -0800
Garrett Cooper <youshi10 at u.washington.edu> wrote:

> RW wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:51:52 -0500 (EST)
> > "Questions" <questions at totaldiver.net> wrote:
> > 
> >>> On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:44:03 -0500 (EST)
> >>> "Questions" <questions at totaldiver.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> However,  when I try FreeBSD/amd64, grub won't compile (it's
> >>>> architecture is forced to i386 only in the Makefile.  I haven't
> >>>> dug into why, but I'm confident there is a reason. Obviously,
> >>>> grub becomes a non-option.  Gag has the same limitation of being
> >>>> i386 only.
> >>>>
> >>> I'm not sure why gag is i386 only, all it does is install a binary
> >>> floppy disk ISO. You can also install it from many Linux live CDs.
> >>> Once it's installed it's independent of the original installation
> >>> medium.
> 
> Probably because architecture stuff and bit length in 32-bit is
> half :)? Instruction set's a bit different too. There are some new
> features in the new Intel processors like overflow protection, etc,
> so I wouldn't doubt there are differences in ISA at the assembler
> level.
>

No, at the point Gag runs, the CPU isn't even 32-bit, let alone 64-bit.

The port just extracts a precompiled ISO file. It won't run on
anything that isn't PC compatible, so it isn't actually platform
independent, but it should run on any CPU with a "real mode".