On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 01:58:50AM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
Myles Watson wrote:
Legacybios is the Bochs BIOS ported to compile on gcc instead of with the dev86 tools. Kevin's intent (I'm paraphrasing) was to make it easy to update the BIOS so that more developers would be able to fix/improve it. He hoped that the ability to boot operating systems with BIOS callbacks would make Coreboot more popular as well.
Thanks Myles, that is a good summary.
Is it tested and reliable in depth anywhere close to Qemu/Bochs BIOS? Or are we exchanging a fragile piece of code with a fragile and untested one?
What I have tested: booting linux, freedos, netbsd from floppy, cdrom, and hard drives from qemu. I have reports of Windows XP working as well.
The latest legacybios (0.2.0) was very bochs/qemu dependent, ie. it expected ram size reported in cmos instead of reading lbtable. We should definitely have a #define COMPILE_FOR_COREBOOT in either legacybios or bochs/qemu bios.
The legacybios code is currently just a port of bochs bios to gcc. I know of no additional hardware restrictions that it imposes.
I'm working on going through all the external hardware dependencies that bochs bios/legacybios impose - I plan to send an email when I have the list completed.
Unfortunately, my home machine "blew up" some time back, and the headache of getting a replacement machine has set me back about a month. :-(
-Kevin