[OT] Freebios
by Tobias Diedrich
I don't know if anyone here is interested in this, but some time ago (1998) I
started writing a pc-compatible bios for fun, but never finished it.
So in case someone is interested in the little code I wrote you may find
it at http://ranmachan.dyndns.org/~ranma/freebios-0.0.1.tar.gz (~67KB) ...
[As long as my system is up, which should be nearly 24hours/day, and
my internet connection and the dyndns.org dns updates are working...]
I stopped because I had trouble figuring out how to enable SDRAM on my
Pentium Mobo with Intel chipset...
However for an older 486 Chipset there were specs in an old c't magazine, so
I was able to boot into dos with this piece of code...
(Don't know if it's still working, I did not try it recently...
The floppy code is buggy IIRC... No HD support)
Of course this probably doesn't help a bit with openbios development, but maybe
someone will find it interesting to look at :-)
GPL license, no reverse engineering of propriatary BIOSes was involved,
I had to go with only a few books (Basically "PC Hardwarebook" and
"PC Programmers Guide to low level Functions and Interrupts")
--
Tobias PGP-Key: 0x9AC7E0BC
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18 years, 7 months
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Re: boy is EFI a kludge!
by ebiederman＠lnxi.com
Ronald G Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov> writes:
> > Ron unless you have something better I'd suggest using one of the
> > upcoming dual Itanium/P4 chipsets as a starting point. Then you could
> > be certain the chipset worked before on x86 before trying to reverse
> > engineer the cpu initialization for the Itanium...
>
> do we have a vendor name yet?
I have seen reports that both Intel and IBM are working on chipsets
that will support that. I think the reports were talking many way
SMP but possibly that is because where Itanium is positioned. This
looks like it may be in the McKinley time frame. I have a strange
hunch that McKinley will be bus compatible with the P4. This is what
I am picking up through osmosis reading the reviews.
Eric
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18 years, 7 months
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Re: [OpenBIOS] award bios source code - end of discussion
by Stefan Reinauer
* andye <awe(a)ftt.co.uk> [010828 11:09]:
> Please send source
> Regards
Are you able to read more than 2 lines of mail or are you not able
to determine what mails to send to whom?
_Any_ other Mail to this list regarding stolen protected, stolen, proprietary
source code of Award Bios or whatever software will force me to unsubscribe
_everyone_ who asked for such from this list without any further notification
_plus_ I will make this list moderated. I am sick of it - This is not a
warez trader list.
If you have anything to say to the subject OpenBIOS or IEEE 1275-1994
say it. If not, listen or leave.
Best regards,
Stefan Reinauer
OpenBIOS project coordinator
--
axiom: electronic devices only work if the smoke stays inside.
proof: when smoke comes out they don't work anymore.
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18 years, 7 months
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RE: [OpenBIOS] New power-up graphics BIOS.
by Ralph Stickley
SVGA may be standard, but which chip-set are you using ?
The system setup can be highly unique for each CPU (PII, PIII, Celeron,
Ultra-Low Power, etc),
"co-processor" (440BX, 440TX, et. al.) and/or Super I/O....
These devices must be initialized before DRAM, PCI bus, etc will get
started, even before the Video driver is loaded.
Interested observer....
Ralph
> ----------
> From: Gavin R. Brewer[SMTP:gavinbr@gavinbr.worldonline.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 3:27 PM
> To: openbios(a)elvis.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
> Subject: RE: [OpenBIOS] New power-up graphics BIOS.
>
> James,
>
> I would like to program in Intel generic 8088 mode, and assume an industry
> standard SVGA chip. The code is aimed to be as simple as possible.
>
> All I would like to do, is to be able to program the SVGA registers to
> move,
> and rescan pixel efficiently.
>
> This should be done in a few lines of assembler code. Things like
> Bresenham's algorithm etc, can be efficiently coded in C++, so there is no
> need to overburden ourselves.
>
> Thanx,
> Gavin. <|;-)
>
> PS. do you know any useful links where I can download asm snippets?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-openbios(a)freiburg.linux.de
> [mailto:owner-openbios@freiburg.linux.de]On Behalf Of James Logan
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 7:04 PM
> To: openbios(a)elvis.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
> Subject: Re: [OpenBIOS] New power-up graphics BIOS.
>
>
>
> Gavin,
> I would love to help. have you started? what
> chip will you be using?
> James
>
>
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18 years, 7 months
- 14
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Re: boy is EFI a kludge!
by ebiederman＠lnxi.com
ebiederman(a)lnxi.com (Eric W. Biederman) writes:
> Ronald G Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov> writes:
>
> > OK, looking around, it's about what I expected.
> >
> > However one thing we might be able to use: EFI is called from something
> > called SAL. SAL is real low-level stuff you will never see the source to
> > that does all the horrible stuff that Intel won't tell us how to do.
> >
> > You don't need EFI. You need something to link to SAL that replaces EFI. I
> > think that's our hook.
>
> So if intel won't cooperate we need to plan on reverse engineering SAL. Unless
> IA64 dies soon it is probably a worthwhile investment.
Ron unless you have something better I'd suggest using one of the
upcoming dual Itanium/P4 chipsets as a starting point. Then you could
be certain the chipset worked before on x86 before trying to reverse
engineer the cpu initialization for the Itanium...
That isn't a very aggressive plan but unless we start moving in a
hurry it is probably a very workable one.
Eric
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abit motherboard
by Tobak Jeno
Hello!
I have an abit bx6v2 motherboard. Can i use openbios with this?
Jenci
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18 years, 7 months
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Re: [OpenBIOS] Re: boy is EFI a kludge!
by Ronald G Minnich
On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Per Jessen wrote:
> >Hhmmm, that's just gratuitous eye candy, no? Besides, it's pretty trivial
> >to replace those graphics with logos or other stuff. I think that doing
> >things that are new and usefull (like serial consoles) would really help
> >get people and hardware manufacturers interested. Imagine being able to
> >run a server farm with no graphics cards, just a serial console and
> >ethernet...
>
we make it easier. We do all our admin on linuxbios clusters over
ethernet. Serial console admin is not our idea of a good time.
To buy, see www.linuxlabs.com
ron
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Re: sorry, it works, K7SEM (fwd)
by Ronald G Minnich
Just a sample of what can happen. The K7SEM has two ethernet chips on it,
both will probe fine. But if you try to really use the build-in sis900
chip, it hangs the board, because there is no PHY installed. So you really
need a bios built for that specific motherboard.
PC hardware is really just horrible. There ought to be a spec for reading
vendor/mainboard ID. But the vendors change it so often that I doubt that
would ever really work.
ron
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 09:07:09 +0800
From: Ollie Lho <ollie(a)sis.com.tw>
To: Nikolai Vladychevski <niko(a)isl.net.mx>
Cc: Ronald G Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov>, linuxbios(a)lanl.gov
Subject: Re: sorry, it works, K7SEM
Nikolai Vladychevski wrote:
>
> Ronald G Minnich writes:
>
> > please send us your kernel output. You can capture the serial output using
> > minicom.
>
> yes, I am doing this, aparently it dies on loading sis900.c code .... I am
> compiling the kernel without it, lets see what happends. this is the current
> kernel output:
>
The is the problem. Do not include the SiS 900 driver for any 730 board
which does not have PHY with it. Those boards with RTL 8139 as LAN
device
are in this category. The driver will hang the machine in probing PHY.
Ollie
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Re: [OpenBIOS] Re: boy is EFI a kludge!
by Per Jessen
On Tue, 28 Aug 2001 14:58:20 -0600 (MDT), Ronald G Minnich wrote:
>On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Per Jessen wrote:
>
>> >Hhmmm, that's just gratuitous eye candy, no? Besides, it's pretty trivial
>> >to replace those graphics with logos or other stuff. I think that doing
>> >things that are new and usefull (like serial consoles) would really help
>> >get people and hardware manufacturers interested. Imagine being able to
>> >run a server farm with no graphics cards, just a serial console and
>> >ethernet...
>
>we make it easier. We do all our admin on linuxbios clusters over
>ethernet. Serial console admin is not our idea of a good time.
Completely agree - the serial console is only handy when you have no
ethernet. We've recently moved a 16 node cluster, which caused a
couple of harddrives to give up - the serial consoles came in quite
handy.
regards,
Per Jessen
regards,
Per Jessen, Principal Engineer, ENIDAN Technologies Ltd
http://www.enidan.com - home of the J1 serial console.
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Re: [OpenBIOS] Re: boy is EFI a kludge!
by ebiederman＠lnxi.com
Ronald G Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov> writes:
> On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Chris Maresca wrote:
>
> > There was a post on /. today about a BIOS that boots in .8 sec. That
> > seems to be pretty good... Now all we need to do is speed up linux
> > boot...
>
>
> we talked about that on the linuxbios list. That was a stupid publicity
> stunt. .8 sec is actually pretty slow.
Well I wouldn't call it slow. I'd say someone has achieved a
reasonable BIOS boot time with a stock BIOS.
Eric
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