OpenBSD 4.3: New project, multiboot OpenBSD & XP x64.

Hola. It's been a long while aye. Ok here's the latest project, I'm currently planning to do a multiboot system of OpenBSD and WinXP x64.

Why not FreeBSD? I guess it's time fer me to experiment / try out the other *BSD sibling. I read a lot of user experience / review on OpenBSD and none is negative. People says it's stable and secure. Sure, the port tree maybe not as vast as FreeBSD but it'll be enough I guess. I'm also interested in their encryption.

As my PC is a AMD64 pc, I downloaded OpenBSD's AMD64 installation cd. I heard that OpenBSD never released a full installation cd before to encourage people to buy official CD / DVD but in 4.3, they made it available fer download. My rough hard disk space now is:

1) Western Digital Caviar WD400 40gb: 27gb XP x64, 12gb OpenBSD
2) Western Digital Protege WD200 20Gb: All ntfs

Currently I'm reading references on multibooting OpenBSD with XP. The 1st site I'm looking is http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Multibooting. There's also user experience multibooting OpenBSD with XP but reflecting OpenBSD 3.6: http://www.aleph0.com/computing/openbsd/dualboot/. By reading the links given, I notice that it's a bit different between FreeBSD and OpenBSD on multiboot installation. From a 1st time read, I think OpenBSD will be harder. But as I progress, I might prove meself wrong here. Both articles suggest using Windows's own NTLdr to manage booting to OpenBSD, and it's something I never done in FreeBSD before. So it's interesting.

There's also method using BootPart to look into but unfortunately, I already done fixing my hard disk space. So I have to skip this part. Unless BootPart method can be done without the need to create a small FAT partition. I'll post update on this when I found a way.

Ok, found out another Boot Manager of interest. GAG Boot Manager. It's stated that GAG will not need it's own partition and can be installed to the existing partition. Great. The screenshots is nice too. So I'm downloading it now.

Here's my AMD64 machine:

1. DFI LANParty UT RDX200 CF - DR
2. AMD AthlonÖ 64 3500+ (Winchester) s939
- Cooler Master X Dream K641 low profile CPU heatsink/fan
3. Kingston KVR400X64C3A/512 PC3200 DDR400 512Mb x2
4. GECUBE HD 2600Pro 16x PCIe 512Mb DDR2
5. Primary Master: Western Digital WD400 ATA 40Gb
6. Primary Slave: Western Digital WD200 ATA 20Gb
7. Secondary Master: Samsung WriteMaster DVD-RW ATA
8. Toshiba 15" IPC5030B LCD monitor
9. PS/2 keyboard
10. USB optical mouse

I'll do some researching to prepare fer this multi boot project. In the meantime, I would like to ask fer favor, if anyone have any info on my Toshiba IPC5030B LCD monitor. This Japan-spec LCD is hard to get any info on. Later.