Talk:MBR (x86)
This page is all over the place. I vote for a rewrite. What should be kept and what destroyed? Yayyak 05:15, 5 June 2008 (CDT)
I agree. Major rewrite. According to Wikipedia, the master boot record has two functions, the partition table and the bootstrapping code. The article should be organized around those functions IMHO. Stevo14 04:58, 6 June 2008 (CDT)
Yes, the page needs a major rewrite. This is one of the articles on my list for an eventual major rewrite. However, the topics in here need to end up someplace. Most of this article is trying to discuss controlling the x86 boot process. That is, setting up the stack, setting up the segment registers, accessing BIOS functions. There is already a Boot sequence article that does a bad job of describing the same things, from a different viewpoint -- and a System Initialization (x86), and a Partition Table, too! So the rewrite is going to be complex. There should be ONE article that discusses the MBR (I think it should be a subsection of the Partition Table article), that discusses things like:
- what devices have MBRs/Partition tables
- whether having an MBR/Partition table is enough to make a drive bootable
- where the MBR is initially loaded
- the values that the BIOS passes to the MBR (dl)
- the state of the machine when the MBR is activated
- the expected output and function of the MBR bootstrapping code
- dual booting MBRs (chaining)
- the typical method for an MBR to do its work (relocation, BIOS functions)
- format of the sector
BUT all of the boot process info needs to be stripped out of this article -- combined with boot process info from the other 3 articles -- and merged into one giant boot process article -- probably in System Initialization (x86).
So, I don't think that this article should exist as a separate entity at all. Once all of its contents are removed, it should be deleted, along with Boot sequence.
Bewing 00:42, 8 June 2008 (CDT)
- Rewrite in progress!