On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 08:26:55PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
Extensions could be "stackable" and configurable for certain application goals:
- legacy emulation for VGA and SCSI init
- elf loader
- openbios kernel
Something like splash image support could be in the extension. I have one for VESA SVGA but it's a too strange thing to be in the core. I know supercomputer guys will hate it, but I believe some kinds of embedded systems will need it. It will be displayed ealier than disk spin up.
I also developed a standalone bootloader, by putting together the IDE driver from Etherboot 5.1 and filesystem code from GRUB, with keyboard (as well as serial) support and a simple line input routine to boot arbitrary ELF files in the filesystem of disk. It's an ELF image for now, but could be ported to LinuxBIOS, then I can save space for printk etc.
On the other hand, it has certain advantages as well, the code can probably easier integrate an x86 emulation, like milo/srm do on alpha and some free ARM firmware implementation does as well..
I'm totally ignorant about non-x86 architecture, but it sounds cool.
-- Takeshi