Finishing? touches.

2 files changed, 87 insertions, 63 deletions

diff --git a/sys/arch/i386/stand/biosboot/biosboot.8 b/sys/arch/i386/stand/biosboot/biosboot.8
index 638a9ce275f..6c841d96cbf 100644
--- a/sys/arch/i386/stand/biosboot/biosboot.8
+++ b/sys/arch/i386/stand/biosboot/biosboot.8
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\"	$OpenBSD: biosboot.8,v 1.3 1997/09/05 17:59:27 mickey Exp $
+.\"	$OpenBSD: biosboot.8,v 1.4 1997/09/05 21:25:15 weingart Exp $
 .\"
 .\" Copyright (c) 1997 Michael Shalayeff
 .\" All rights reserved.
@@ -31,54 +31,73 @@
 .\"
 .Dd September 1, 1997
 .Dt BIOSBOOT 8 i386
-.Os
+.Os OpenBSD 2.1
 .Sh NAME
 .Nm biosboot
 .Nd
 primary system bootstrap program
 .Sh DESCRIPTION
-This small program (about of 256 bytes of code) is responsible for
-loading second stage
+This small program (roughly 256 bytes of code) is responsible for
+loading the second stage
 .Xr boot 8
 program, which in turn, will load the kernel.
-It is small, robust and takes neither input nor options.
-Location of the
+It is a small piece of code that takes no input or options.
+.Pp
+The location of the
 .Xr boot 8
-program is stored in the block table inside of the
+program that
+.Nm
+loads, is stored in a block table inside the
 .Nm
-by the
+program.  The
 .Xr installboot 8
-program, and is very machine dependant. So, you have to run
+program is used to fill this table with the location of the
+.Nm
+program.  This location is BIOS dependant, so you have to run the
 .Xr installboot 8
-program every time you are moving your disk between machines and/or
-controllers.
+program to update this table every time you move your disk between
+machines and/or controllers.
 .Pp
-When it receives control from either BIOS or MBR it will print message:
+When 
+.Nm
+receives control from either the BIOS or the MBR it will print the message:
 .Pp
 .Dl loading /boot
 .Pp
 followed by a dot for every successfully loaded block,
-and then put cursor on the next line right before switching into the
+and then put cursor on the next line right before switching into
 protected mode and transferring control to the just loaded /boot program.
 .Sh DIAGNOSTICS
 Diagnostics consist of two error messages:
 .Bl -tag -width read_error_
 .It Er Read error
 Some kind of error returned by the BIOS read call. This might be
-any media error.
+any media error, including bad sectors (common on floppy disks),
+and invalid sectors (can occur with messed up geometry translations).
 .It Er Bad magic
-Just loaded /boot image contains bad magic in it's header.
-This might indicate some kind of hardware problem.
-This may also means that
+The just loaded /boot image contains a bad magic in it's header.  This
+might indicate some kind of hardware problem,  or it may mean that the
 .Ar boot
-argument for
+argument to the
 .Xr installboot 8
-program was actually not a valid /boot program.
+command was not a valid /boot program.
 .El
-Other common reason for those errors to appear is a wrong BIOS geometry
-had been used in
+.Pp
+Other common reasons for these errors to appear is that a wrong BIOS geometry
+has been used in
 .Xr installboot 8
 for the device you are booting from.
+.Sh NOTES
+The practice of making OpenBSD use the whole disk (ie: having
+.Nm                                                                            
+as the MBR) has been depreciated, and will not work on certain BIOS versions.
+There is a lot of strange behaviour with different BIOS's, one of well
+known lobotomy cases is that the BIOS does not pass the right boot drive
+number to the
+.Nm
+program.  This is one of the main reasons that having
+.Nm
+as the MBR has been depreciated.
 .Sh FILES
 .Bl -tag -width /usr/mdec/biosbootxx -compact
 .It Pa /usr/mdec/mbr
@@ -86,7 +105,7 @@ Master Boot Record block
 .It Pa /usr/mdec/biosboot
 primary bootstrap
 .It Pa /boot
-system bootstrap
+secondary bootstrap
 .It Pa /bsd
 system code
 .El
@@ -96,21 +115,20 @@ system code
 .Xr installboot 8 ,
 .Xr boot 8 .
 .Sh BUGS
-It contains fake fdisk table and the stuff, that it should not.
+It contains a fake partition table and associated things that it should not.
 .Pp
-It should check checksum over the loaded /boot image.
-.Pp
-There is neither BIOS error number reported nor the error location.
+It should do a checksum over the loaded /boot image, and check that against
+a value that
+.Xr installboot 8
+has precomputed.
 .Pp
-There is a lot of strange behaviour with different BIOSes, the one of well
-known lobotomy cases is a wrong boot drive number passed to boot program
-by BIOS.
+There is no BIOS error number reported nor is the location of the error
+reported.
 .Pp
 You can pick your motherboard, and you can pick your BIOS,
 but you can't pick your motherboard's BIOS.
 .Sh HISTORY
-This program was written by Michael Shalayeff for
-.Ox 2.1 .
+This program was written by Michael Shalayeff for OpenBSD.
 However it's based on bootstrap code from older versions of this
 operating system, other operating systems, other programs, and
-other people's works.
+other people's work.
diff --git a/sys/arch/i386/stand/boot/boot.8 b/sys/arch/i386/stand/boot/boot.8
index e48635a0c07..34ae563cfd3 100644
--- a/sys/arch/i386/stand/boot/boot.8
+++ b/sys/arch/i386/stand/boot/boot.8
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\"	$OpenBSD: boot.8,v 1.2 1997/09/05 18:08:05 mickey Exp $
+.\"	$OpenBSD: boot.8,v 1.3 1997/09/05 21:25:16 weingart Exp $
 .\"
 .\" Copyright (c) 1997 Michael Shalayeff
 .\" All rights reserved.
@@ -37,21 +37,23 @@
 .Nd
 secondary system bootstrap program
 .Sh DESCRIPTION
-The main purpose of this program is to load system kernel dealing with
-all the bugs and bottlenecks of the PC hardware and it's way of design.
+The main purpose of this program is to load the system kernel, dealing with
+all the bugs and bottlenecks of the PC ``architecture'' and philosophy.
 .Pp
-As described in the
+As described in
 .Xr boot_i386 8
 this program is loaded by the
 .Xr biosboot 8
-primary bootstrap loader and will give you convinient way to load kernel.
+primary bootstrap loader and will give you convinient way to load the kernel.
+This program acts as an enhanced boot monitor or ROM for PC systems, providing
+a buffer or common interface for the kernel to start from.
 .Pp
 Basic operations include:
 .Bl -bullet -compact
 .It
 Detecting and switching between multiple consoles.
 .It
-Loading kernel from any device supported by your system BIOS.
+Loading kernels from any device supported by your system BIOS.
 .It
 Loading kernels compressed by
 .Xr gzip 1
@@ -59,48 +61,48 @@ program or
 .Xr zlib
 routines.
 .It
-Passing system parameters queried from BIOS to the kernel.
+Passing system parameters queried from the BIOS to the kernel.
 .It
-Providing interactive command line.
+Providing an interactive command line.
 .El
 .Pp
-The sequence of it's operation consists of initialization
-followed by interactive command line. While in the command
+The sequences of its operation consist of initialization
+followed by an interactive command line. While at the command
 line you have a timeout of 5 seconds (initially, then increasing
-by one second on every consequent kernel loading failure)
-to type any commands if needed. Upon timeout expiration
+by one second on every subsequent kernel load failure)
+to type any commands, if needed. Upon timeout expiration, the
 kernel will be loaded according to the current variables
-settings (See
+settings (See the
 .Nm set
 command for details).
 The sequence of
 .Nm
-operations is like follows:
+operations is as follows:
 .Bl -enum
 .It
 Setup protected mode involving IDT setup for processor exceptions to
-be caught and reported and simple real-mode BIOS interface provided.
+be caught and reported, and setup a simple real-mode BIOS interface.
 .It
-Probe for console devices, which involves PC internal VGA+keyboard
-console and serial console over any of four serial ports. Correspondent
-messages reports about found devices to the default console device,
-which is pc0, if present.
+Probe for console devices, which includes the PC VGA+Keyboard console
+and up to four serial consoles connected to the serial ports.
+Corresponding messages report about the found devices to the default
+console device, which is pc0, if present.
 .It
 Probe for memory. Conventional memory probed by quering the BIOS.
 Extended memory probed by running through the memory probing
 for present pages, which elliminates BIOS restriction for 64M of memory.
-found memory is reported as well to the default console device.
+All the memory found is reported to the default console device.
 .It
-Probe for APM support in BIOS. Message printed if support is present.
+Probe for APM support in the BIOS. Message printed if support is present.
 .It
-Open, and if successfull, process
+Open, and if successfull process
 .Pa /etc/boot.conf
 file on the same filesystem
 .Nm
 was loaded from. This file may contain any commands
 .Nm
 accepts at the interactive prompt.
-Ussually they are commands that changes boot parameters according to your
+Usually they are commands that change boot parameters according to your
 environment, although default values are usable in most cases.
 .It
 Header line
@@ -116,9 +118,10 @@ program, followed by the
 .Dl boot>
 .Pp
 prompt, which means you are in the interactive mode and may enter
-commands. If you won't,
+commands. If you do not,
 .Nm
-will proceed loading kernel w/ default parameters.
+will proceed loading kernel with the current parameters after the
+timeout period has expired.
 .El
 .Sh COMMANDS
 The following commands are accepted at the
@@ -144,32 +147,35 @@ Issues machine-dependant commands. These are defined for i386 architecture:
 .Bl -tag -width diskinfo_
 .It diskinfo
 Prints list of hard disks installed on your system including:
-BIOS device number, BIOS translated geometry.
+BIOS device number, and the BIOS geometry.
 .El
 .It ls Op Ar directory
 Prints contents of the specified
 .Ar directory
-in long format including: file type and attributes, owner, group,
-size, and ilename.
+in long format including: attributes and file type, owner, group,
+size, filename.
 .It regs
-Prints contents of processor registers, if defined for this architecture.
+Prints contents of processor registers, if defind for this architecture.
 .It reboot
 Reboots machine by initiating a warm boot procedure.
 .It set Op varname Op value
-If invoked without arguments will print list of variables with values.
+If invoked without arguments will print a list of variables with values.
 If
 .Ar varname
 and
 .Ar value
 present will set variable with that name to the given value.
 Variables include:
+.Pp
 .Bl -tag -compact -width boothow
 .It addr
 Address at wich to load the kernel.
 .It howto
 Options to pass to the loaded kernel.
 .It debug
-Debug flag if compiled w/ DEBUG defined.
+Debug flag if
+.Nm
+was compiled with DEBUG defined.
 .It device
 Boot device name (ie fd0a, sd0a).
 .It tty