Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) naming conventions are a standard for identifying the location of a file or a program on a device such as a hard disk or a floppy disk. You must understand the ARC pathname conventions to be able to create paths to use to start the computer from the Windows NT startup floppy disk.
On x86-based computers, you use ARC pathnames to describe the location of the boot partition for each instance of Windows NT installed on the computer. On an x86-based computer, you can create alternate paths to the boot partition, as described in "Creating Alternate Boot Selections for an x86-based Computer," presented later in this chapter. The ARC path in the Boot.ini file appears in one of the following forms:
On RISC-based computers, you use ARC pathnames to describe the location of:
When you create a Windows NT startup floppy disk to use on a RISC-based computer, you need to modify the NVRAM to include the ARC path to the floppy disk. To create an entry for the Windows NT startup floppy disk, see the section titled "Creating Alternate Boot Selections for a RISC-based Computer," presented later in this chapter. On a RISC-based computer, only the scsi() syntax is used for hard disks. The boot selection has the following parts:
This is an example of a boot selection for a RISC-based computer: