     [ Questions & Answers ]ķ
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  Q: I used another harddisk on my computer, all went okay, but a friend     
      needed the drive again, so I removed it. Now he is not able to boot    
      anymore. What shall I do ?                                             
  A: That's a problem with the partition table. Some systems need to be the  
      only "active" partition, so AiR-BOOT removes those flags on ANY        
      partition, BUT the one that was booted on.                             
      To be able to boot, you have to reget the harddisk, boot from the      
      partition your friend wants to boot from, switch your computer off,    
      remove the harddisk and you are done.                                  
                                                                             
      NOTE: If your friend would use AiR-BOOT, this problem would not occur. 
            occur. If he does have only one partition that is bootable and   
            does not want the menu, he can switch it off. AiR-BOOT will use  
            its definable default partition automatically.                   
                                                                             
  Q: Why did you force the user to have at least 62 sectors per track on his 
      harddisk. I looked at your code-image and it's using not half of it.   
  A: I did a more 'compressed' version (31 sectors required) before, but I   
      discovered that this was stupid. A stealth-virus killed part of the    
      configuration, so the user would have to re-setup AiR-BOOT entirely.   
      Now I save the configuration at a different point. Most viruses        
      should not kill the configuration. Note: The AiR-BOOT disc is able to  
      repair AiR-BOOT code *alone*, so you won't have to re-setup AiR-BOOT.  
      Just insert the AiR-BOOT disc, if you have problems starting your      
      computer. It will search&repair all missing parts of AiR-BOOT.         
                                                                             
  Q: I just looked at your MBR-code and I saw that you are doing some        
      strange things. Why did you do this ?                                  
  A: Here is the starting code that's in the MBR-code since 0.26b:           
      CLI (disables Interrupts)                                              
      JuMP Somewhere                                                         
      JuMP ToAnotherLocation                                                 
      STI (enables Interrupts)                                               
                                                                             
      Now why: It's because of Microsoft. A nice "greeting" is in the MBR    
                as well. They don't use any standards. Why should they.      
                Windoze NT/2000 is checking for the CLI instruction.         
                I don't know why. It's not a standard for MBR writing.       
                If it's not found Windoze 2000 gets berserk. The 2 jumps are 
                because at MBR-offset 2h, there is the AiR-BOOT signature.   
                I didn't want to change the detection, so I made the 'A' to  
                a part of the JMP instruction as well. So the thing jumps to 
                a specific location and has to jump to the actual start.     
                                                                             
     This had to be done JUST because of Microsoft. I can't stand this any   
      longer. There is no need for such checking. It's not documented        
      anywhere and the CLI is bullshit anyway, because one does not need to  
      disable interrupts to change stack or something. Any skilled assembly  
      programmer knows this.                                                 
                                                                             
  Q: Hey, why did you code this ? 'NT BOOT'/'OS/2 BOOTMAN'/'LILO' are great. 
  A: Yeah, sure. Let me say something about those things.                    
      NT BOOT is crap. 100 KBytes for a BOOTMANAGER ? Are you nuts ? And it  
      definitly needs Windows NT installed. (or a FAT partition?!)           
      OS/2 BOOTMAN needs a primary partition, so just 3 are left.            
      LILO is stupid. First it can not boot Linux, if Linux resides not on   
      the first harddisk (at least the last time, I tried). It's loading the 
      Linux Kernel via HackIn, that I can't stand as well. And it's not that 
      easy to install and setup. It has to get adjusted, when you add new    
      partitions to your harddrive. etc. etc. etc.                           
                                                                             
      Most bootmanagers need a specific OS installed, so this isn't good as  
      well. btw.: If you add a new partition to a drive containing Linux,    
            LILO will not find the root partition anymore (haha, nice try).  
            That's your "premier" boot-manager. phew. AiR-BOOT will find it  
            (normally) automatically on-the-fly and boot it like normal.     
                                                                             
  Q: Ohhh man, what do you got against LILO. It's soooo good.                
  A: Well, I had nothing against it, till it nearly erased my projects       
      partition. It was FAT and this nice little bugger overwrote some       
      internals *as documented* without even giving me any warning message.  
      I see LILO as on the same level as Mickeysoft products. Just believing 
      they would rule the whole computer and could do anything.              
      During AiR-BOOT alpha testing, it NEVER corrupted any partition table. 
      The only problems were crashs, so I had to restore the old MBR.        
      During late beta testing, it never got any problems. And if there were 
      any, I just inserted the AiR-BOOT disc and wups, the problem was gone. 
      (btw: that's the way I noticed that Partition Magic 3.x overwrites     
       some sectors in the MBR).                                             
                                                                             
  Q: So many options, no one will ever need this. Guess you wasted your time 
  A: Okay, well, perhaps there are too much options, and perhaps it's crap.  
      I believe many users will use different options, so they are good as   
      they are. Too much options would be, if the program is too slow or     
      handling is too difficult, but not in AiR-BOOT. It's tiny in size,     
      easy to setup...just like your BIOS. I have included REAL on-line      
      help, too. Not the way in most BIOSes. I included fancy things, like   
      color menus...look at BIOSes from 1989. They were really ugly. Colored 
      menus are somewhat cool. But I know, you are the one with WindowsNT,   
      which thinks it's the best OS in the world. You never tried OS/2, nor  
      Unix/Linux. You want a GUI, but you hate those silly colored-windows.  
                                                                             
  Q: I believe you have copied the text of your boot-menu from DocsBoot.     
  A: You are right. DocsBoot is cool, but you had to setup using a DOS-exe.  
      This ain't possible under Unix/Linux, nor under WinNT or OS/2. So it's 
      a no-no. And it didn't have many options that AiR-BOOT has.            
                                                                             
  Q: By the way, your SETUP looks much as my Award BIOS SETUP.               
  A: Well, :] nope, I modified most of its design. The menu-locations were   
      done good, same goes for the colors, so I used them too (Most users    
      would not like to have 2 different setups). But window design, window  
      drawing speed and optimization are a little bit different <bg>.        
                                                                             
  Q: I am a representative of a bios manufacturer and we would like to       
      implement AiR-BOOT in our BIOS.                                        
  A: This would be great, we are looking for something like this, so it      
      could be pre-executed from BIOS, so no WinNT-install could kill it.    
      Please contact us. (We have coded AiR-BOOT in a way, so this would be  
      possible. We would need about 512 byte code space in your BIOS).       
      AiR-BOOT would need to be installed to the harddisk anyway, but the    
      layer 0 code would be in BIOS, so AiR-BOOT would get the first pick on 
      the harddisk and could check for virus etc.                            
                                                                             
  Q: I am a representative of a OS building software company. We would like  
      to implement your AiR-BOOT, too.                                       
  A: We could talk about bundled versions. But I will NEVER EVER modify      
      AiR-BOOT to be OS dependant. AiR-BOOT was coded for being totally      
      independant from any OS, so OEM versions would boot other OS as well.  
                                                                             
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