[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBios on a braille display ?

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Dear all,

I am wondering if it would be possible to run LinuxBios on a braille
device. Regarded from a Linux point of view, such a device is very
similar to a PC or a laptop, as you will certainly notice according to
the datas provided below.
If the device is supported, the idea would be to install a screen-reader
(like brltty) in the BIOS, which would help when there is a problem
while booting the operating system's kernel.

So below are the outputs of lspci -n, lspci -v and lspci -t run on
the terminal. Could someone please tell me whether there is a possibility
or not to install LinuxBios on such a machine ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help,
Sébastien.

# lspci -n
00:00.0 0600: 1078:0001
00:02.0 0200: 1282:9102 (rev 40)
00:12.0 0601: 1078:0100 (rev 30)
00:12.1 0680: 1078:0101
00:12.2 0101: 1078:0102
00:12.3 0401: 1078:0103
00:12.4 0300: 1078:0104
00:13.0 0c03: 0e11:a0f8 (rev 06)

# lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Cyrix Corporation PCI Master
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:02.0 Ethernet controller: Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. 21x4x DEC-Tulip compatible 10/100 Ethernet (rev 40)
    Subsystem: Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. Unknown device 8212
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 165, IRQ 11
    I/O ports at 1000 [size=256]
    Memory at fedfe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
    [virtual] Expansion ROM at 10000000 [disabled] [size=256K]
    Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

00:12.0 ISA bridge: Cyrix Corporation 5530 Legacy [Kahlua] (rev 30)
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64

00:12.1 Bridge: Cyrix Corporation 5530 SMI [Kahlua]
    Flags: medium devsel
    Memory at 40012000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]

00:12.2 IDE interface: Cyrix Corporation 5530 IDE [Kahlua] (prog-if 80 [Master])
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
    I/O ports at 1400 [size=16]

00:12.3 Multimedia audio controller: Cyrix Corporation 5530 Audio [Kahlua]
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
    Memory at 40011000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128]

00:12.4 VGA compatible controller: Cyrix Corporation 5530 Video [Kahlua] (prog-if 00 [VGA])
    Subsystem: Cyrix Corporation Unknown device 0001
    Flags: medium devsel
    Memory at 40800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M]

00:13.0 USB Controller: Compaq Computer Corporation ZFMicro Chipset USB (rev 06) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
    Subsystem: Compaq Computer Corporation ZFMicro Chipset USB
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 9
    Memory at 000e0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]

# lspci -t
-[0000:00]-+-00.0
           +-02.0
           +-12.0
           +-12.1
           +-12.2
           +-12.3
           +-12.4
           -13.0