From stevez@bigboy74 Tue Jun  7 18:11 PDT 1994
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 1994 01:11:36 -0700
From: stevez@bigboy74 (Steve Z.)
To: markk@bigboy74, carlh@bigboy74, vicki@bigboy74, billt@bigboy74
Subject: vtoc on PowerPC

We have come to the conclusion that the VTOC on PowerPC should be the
same, and in the same place, as on x86.  Here are the reasons:

1.  We are following the Solaris standard -- ALL little endian Solaris
    ports use this format.  :-)

2.  It gives us media interchange between x86 and PowerPC.  Adopting
    the SPARC vtoc would not give us interchange with SPARC because
    of the endian differences.

3.  It allows 16 partitions instead of 8.  A bug report was filed on
    SPARC (Bug ID 1097871) that indicates that more partitions would
    be very desirable.

4.  The SPARC format was burdened with SunOS 4.x compatibility and is
    somewhat less clean because of it.  For example, the x86 uses the
    the structure defined in the public interface (in uts/common/sys/vtoc.h),
    while the SPARC has to translate to that interface.  Also, the SPARC
    version partitions based on cylinders, whereas the x86 uses geometry-
    independent sectors as the unit.

Mark, if this requires PSARC approval, would you sponsor it for fast-track?

Steve