Include updated syslinux MBR
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#10 Include updated syslinux MBR
Some improvements have been made in the MBR code that ships with syslinux. One of them is, that the MBR code now starts with 0x33 0xC0 which seems to increase compatibility with some (braindead) BIOS implementations. See
https://github.com/joyent/syslinux/commits/master/mbr/mbr.S
The most recent change in the MBR code was in Dec. 2010. However, the syslinux MBR that ships with ms-sys is 10 years old (according to CVS).
If you are going to update, that begs the question what "ms-sys /dev/sda" should do when it encounters an older syslinux MBR, like it would be written by current ms-sys versions.
If an update will be made, "ms-sys /dev/sda" will no longer recognize the old syslinux mbr. This applies to all supported boot records in ms-sys. If there are different versions with different contents of a boot record from some vendor and a boot record from that vendor is supported by ms-sys only one version is recognized and written.
I have no intention to bring out new versions of ms-sys every time some vendor comes with a new version of a boot record. The last development version of ms-sys is from 2012 and the last stable version is from 2011.
In fact, all ms-sys development is kind of "on demand" whenever someone thinks that a new or updated feature is important enough to do the work. That someone has not been me for the last years, I have mostly just merged in contributed patches and made new official releases.
As I am not very interested in having or testing the syslinux mbr functionality myself I will not put much effort into upgrading the syslinux mbr. But if someone contributes a patch and that someone is willing to put his or her name behind that patch saying that it works fine I will be happy to include such patches in next upcoming release.
Sven contributed a patch and the new syslinux MBR is now used by ms-sys 2.4.0.