On 3 Feb 2004, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
The main problem is that cards don't usually come with IEEE 1275 FCode on them. We've pretty much had to write all of ours, and have gotten tired of it - we're actually looking at LinuxBIOS as a way to get out of that business, and just build in the drivers we care to in the Linux kernel on the prom. But I can answer questions any questions about writing FCode, it's most of what I've done in recent years.
Interesting. The observation that powerful firmware eventually becomes an OS so you might as well use an OS, seems true :)
I don't expect the cards to come with fcode any time soon, if ever. Four reasons: first, the market is more or less zero, and the all the non-x86 systems support x86 emulators to support the x86 option roms; second, if they support two option roms (fcode, x86) that makes for lots more work; third, the PC market will probably never go to fcode; and fourth, I bet they (naively) think that fcode would make reverse engineering easier.
ron