OpenBIOS

openbios@openbios.org

4297 discussions

Mail list
by Matthew Sullivan 04 Feb '99

04 Feb '99

Hiya To the List Owner: Could you possible force reply-to header in the list mails please, it will make it so much easier to reply to the mail, and will ensure that all mails do not get duplicated to their recipients, and that they all go back to the list with the use of the 'Reply' button on most mailers ;-) Thanx Matthew

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To Join GNU?
by M Carling 04 Feb '99

04 Feb '99

There are some advantages to joining GNU: Publicity, which means more contributors Credibility, which may get MB manufacturers to evaluate the code sooner On the other hand, RMS is petty about semantics. I think that not being allowed to use the term "open source" is silly. And then there's the restriction about "GNU/Linux" vs "Linux" which presents special problems for the OpenBIOS project becase the BIOS software is generally concerned with the kernel rather than with the whole OS. RMS might not be too pleased about us calling Linux "Linux" even though we really only mean the kernel, in cases where we *could* mean the OS. I'm not opposed to joining GNU, but doing so will entail putting up with RMS's politics and rants. M

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Back soon.
by Stefan Reinauer 03 Feb '99

03 Feb '99

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi Openbios hackers, I am sorry for my long time of silence. I had to finnish a lot of work of which I thought it could be done much faster. I expect to be able to spend quite much time for OpenBIOS starting from next week. I got a complete intel testing machine plus 2 motherboards for testing with OpenBIOS (one is an old SMP board). I got my old vt100 Terminal running now, too Niklas Ekström wrote a little Program which is able so put a disk file into the shadowed ram from 0xe0000-0xfffff. This allows to test a bios without needing to flash it. I had no time to test it yet. Thanks, Niklas. I'll put it on the web page as soon as I finnished the last stuff here. I'll finally try to move the OpenBIOS homepage and mailing list to openbios.org We had some problems with our mail server here which caused a lot of "Too many hops" mails to be sent out and deliver some mails more than one time. I suspect it was some software update on our universities mail gateway, so I don't think it will happen again soon. Last week I got mail from Richard Stallman asking whether we want to become an official GNU project. We should discuss whether to do so or not. Here's an excerpt from what he wrote: - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's an explanation of what it means for a program to be GNU software. I would be very glad to have OpenBIOS as a GNU Program, if that's what the developers of OpenBIOS would like. ====================================================================== Calling a program GNU software means that its developers and the GNU project agree that "This program is part of the GNU project, released under the aegis of GNU"--and say so in the program. This means we would normally put the program on ftp.gnu.org (although we could instead refer to the developer's choice of ftp site) and we would want to put pages about the program on the GNU web server. It means that the developers would agree pay some attention to making the program work well with the rest of the GNU system--and conversely that the GNU project would encourage other GNU maintainers to pay some attention to making their programs fit in well with it. Just what it means to make programs work well together is mainly a practical matter that depends on what the program does. But there are a few general principles. Certain parts of the GNU coding standards directly affect the consistency of the whole system. These include the standards for configuring and building a program, and the standards for command-line options. It is important to make all GNU programs follow these standards, where they are applicable. A GNU program should not recommend use of any non-free program, and it should not refer the user to any non-free documentation. The need for free documentation is now a major focus of the GNU project; to show that we are serious about the need for free documentation, we must not contradict our position by recommending use of documentation that isn't free. Occasionally there are issues of terminology which are important for the success of the GNU project as a whole. So we ask maintainers of GNU programs to follow them. For example, the documentation files and comments in the program should speak of Linux-based GNU systems or GNU/Linux systems, rather than calling the whole system "Linux", and should use the term "free software" rather than "open source". Deciding that a program is GNU software does not necessarily require transferring copyright to the FSF; that is a separate issue. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Especially the documentation passage may be a problem for us. But anyways, I'd like the idea of having openbios an official gnu project - what do you think? Best regards, Stefan - -- Reincarnation: Life sucks, then you die. Then life sucks again. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNrhKryu+zKndEmP5AQGU3AgAsn8JmaQ5zTC/W3ubGUQF/qobWyb9Svkv Y/2lqj1nRA+6XVsqkUVuRpZFFhkFmGZG753ere6Ue2on86t/0qM3BxjDG0pQIyfa pYm/dF0SlJz5TD6U3WRiw5lSCZ5CYcoTWYCGZyh3DBlKdBfD9eRVp6pEjRka+yvz xStaLV3/ndeTPhg7NfekywnKn5Eoig9/xwTbuL9Q7hiUzvYcf0/WlvVUhfYnVWy4 9EloQgw09gyvHg7DaX3z4dAjNdF7K6qq7WOm8ZAimoM/blYGuQ1s6uVSaSB6GK7p C7jBdLEPk6SUC9L5QqdVDmafsJBYOoJ8zhBviHAfLTG5gEaRpwJdgQ== =g71u -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Some stuff...
by Mircea Ciocan 03 Feb '99

03 Feb '99

M Carling wrote: > > Welcome! > > I'm the FAQ maintainer, so I'll try to answer your questions. > > OpenBIOS is envisioned to serve the needs of MB manufacturers, hobbyists, > and embedded systems developers. > Great... :) > There is no list archive yet, AFAIK. This is something we need to do. > O.K., I'll keep every message on my computer, it seems from the low traffic that my 10GB disk won't be filled right away ;) and I'll try to setup a digest and an archive. BTW. feel free to forward me any relevant old message. > The guidelines are still flexible. About the only thing on which there > seems to be a clear consensus (that had been controversial) is that > OpenBIOS should support (as a compile time option) multiple chipsets > in a single executable. This would enable MB manufacturers to compile > one BIOS image for all their products. > And now the BIGGEST question: what will that BIOS be, a resource configurator and OS loader and nothing after boot, or it will offer some services to be used after boot, if so what services and how? I think that is the fundamental part of the design guidelines. Related: are those guidelines somewere in a written format, is about the IEEE 1275 ummm.... thing ?????? As for multi-chipset, multi-processor support I think is a good thing and Award's approach with a BIOS boot block who probe and then decompress and load in the shadow memory the relevant module archives stored in ROM is the best, of course YMHO. But somehow I don't thing that the resultant image will be small enogh to be hold in a 128KB Flash like now, I belive this mostly irellevant for Main Boards manufacturers but a BIG deal for embedded systems, of course somebody could want to compile in only the necessary modules. > There is no subproject leader for embedded systems, at this time. > Then to put in another way, is anybody on this list doing embedded BIOS/systems now ??? Please answer here or e-mail me so we can figure out somethig because unfortunately in a embedded system we have a totally different thingie like no "simple" OS loader, maybe even no OS at all, but just a highly optimised API framework and yes I know that somewere is a grossly over-priced Embedded DOS but I don't thing this is a solution. Sugestions and comment wellcome :). > The leader is Stefan Reinauer <stepan(a)linux.de> > > I don't have any docs on the boards you asked about. > All right, I'll cry just once more: :) PLEAZZ, pleazz, if some one has access at ALI chips ( mostly ALI 6117C and super I/O) detailed documentation get in touch with me, is important for me and maybe for the Open Source movement. > Cheers, > M All the best, Mircea C.

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Strange things...
by Mircea Ciocan 01 Feb '99

01 Feb '99

Now, unfortunately not :((((((, I'm sorry for that I think there is a loop or some other misconfiguration on the list processor that make it spit so many messages, and boy they were long :((((((. I'll see what's matter with this one because if the situation repeats is about time to contact list maintainer to cut that "nice" echo ;). Mircea "red faced" Ciocan P.S. Certainly a misconfiguration, this message bounced back from openbios(a)linux.freiburg.de, the host just diappeared... Simon Zarrin wrote: > > Mircea, > > Am I the only one who has now received 6 copies of this email? > > --ssz >

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Hello, introducing myself, big rant and newbie (on this list) questions [LONG]
by Mircea Ciocan 31 Jan '99

31 Jan '99

Hi all, My name is Mircea Ciocan, presently I'm struggling as a sysadmin at a small ISP and data carrier in Romania, but my "love of the heart" was allways low level asm programming and hardware hacking. < rant mode on - you may skip that > So few days ago I was thinking how can I become as rich as BillG. or as famous as Linus ;), remembering that some time ago there was still a need for people who can do asm and wrote their own device drivers. But I'm not so smart to make a better Linux and I hate any kind of spreadsheet so billgatising is not an issue. But what can do an old low level programmer and hardware guy do to reward somehow the community that gived him Linux and all those beautifull tools that allow him a (reletively) quiet and fruitfull job ??? Browsing deadly bored on the FSF site I see that on their task list the project of an open BIOS and I rememberd that I see on /. that a new project was started and after a little search I find you guys :). By some kind of miracle on the same time few other things happend: On /. was announced the smallest PC that can run Linux, making me deathly gelous that I wasn't the first to do that ;) and remembering that with a lot of time ago I haved the smallest ZX Spectrum compatible in Romania :). I found the nicest and affordable board that a hacker can find as a Mini Internet Gateway build along in a nice case with power supply, 2 serial ports, one Realtek 8019 Ethernet controller with dual interface, twisted and coax cable, 1MB of RAM and 512KB of FlashROM, "powerd by the ferocious" ALI 6117C processor ( something like 386SX/40) all on a board of 100x110mm cased in a nice little plastic case[1]. The beast was used for connecting a network of max 256 station on 1 or 2 dial-up/leased/ISDN, it has a DHCP server for those windoze machines ;), it can be administrated remotely by telnet and WEB interface, it has built-in IP masquerading, traffic shaper, firewalling and it was a dream to work with. It saved me and my company a LOT of problems (and money) by zapping expensive routers, expensive windozian proxyes and wingates :) and yes, even Linux boxes and all that under 200$ !!!!. So I felt in love instantly, but with the hackerish devil in me just awaken, I mistreated a poor box to "see what's inside", beeing firmly convinced that is some proprietary chip design and I can never make it to mount network drivers and serve custom web pages for example, not to mention some other nice usages. To my great surprise the little thing has the above configuration and I said "You're mine baby, you'll run Linux in 2 weeks from now and you'll be everything that I want to do with you like a wereable(?) computer, network driven EPROM programmer and many other automation thingies ;)))". The joy was quickly shadowed by the fact that that the manufacturer of the chips "Acer Labs Int'l" (ALI)[2] IS THE MOST ANAL RETENTIVE AND IDIOTIC CHIP MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD !!! Now I feel better that I said it ;). Protected by password datasheets, no email address, a Taiwan BBS number that don't work and nothing more than some description, it was a real shock me that almost make me hack their american Solaris web host, but I think: what the hell, I just need a embedded BIOS with serial redirection and screw ALI. After another day browsing the Internet for a BIOS and seeing it at prices between 200-2000$ I give up closed source and see the light: "... the world needs an OpenBIOS, and mostly an embedded one ;)))" On the same time frame a customer with a lot of measurement points that spits their measured values on modems ask us if he can use our microwave MAN for colecting data, given that Breezecom[3] adapters we use have a phone voice channell simulating a PSTN. Unfortunately the modems did not work well on voice channel ( it wasn't intended for that) so I came with the ideea of simulating a modem by network and to use this little beasts, so now I have more time and resources to work on the BIOS project. So, all in all I'm here, all yours, eager to help, code and be if not a Linus to BIOSes but maybe a little Alan Cox or Dave Miller. And now let's get to real ( even protected mode) things ;) < /rant mode off, thank you for your patience.. > Questions (not in relevant order): 1) It is considered in this project an embedded BIOS for small appliance, industrial PCs or PC104 ? 2) Is the list archived somewere? 3) Have you guys established the guide lines of this project and freezed the specifications? 4) Does the above specifications contain something about embedded BIOSEs and if yes, who is the sub-project leader? 5) What is the organisation of this project, who are the leaders and how many of you are here ( I'll be glad to receive personal mail from you to meet you all) ? 6) [IMPORTANT] Does anybody has specifications of those beasts: ALI 6117C ALI M5113-A2 ALI M5232-A1 and if so can he/she share it with me? 7) Is anybody working at some related boards like the above one? 8) What kind of develpment tools you standardised ( assembler,debugger and so..)? OK, this I'll figure soon when I'll try to see what's in the code tar ball. In the end of this long and boring post thank you for your patience and I hope that I can be part of your team for a real free BIOS embedded or not ;). Mircea C. P.S. For the pacient of you who made it here some pointers: [1] http://www.surecom.com.tw/ - SURECOM - the maker of Internet Gateway/Hub on that beautifull board. [2] http://www.ali.com.tw/ - Acer Labs - and their most idiotic overseas site: http://www.acerlabs.com/ [3] http://www.breezecom.com/ - BREEZECOM - manufacturers of microwave WAN adapters, in essance small calculators that are even cuter than Surecom

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Re: BIOS Autodetection Design
by M Carling 12 Jan '99

12 Jan '99

> >The objective is not to write OpenBIOS such that (in practice) a single > >compiled image can boot any chipset. Rather, the autodetect objective is > >that a set of chipsets may be chosen at compile time from which the image > >is about to boot. Thus, for example, a MB manufacturer could compile a > >BIOS such that one image would work for all the MBs that they manufacture. > If this (compile time selection) is the objective, why call it autodetect? I > would have thought from the name that one image fits all. Then, at run time > it is autodetected, requiring all of the tables at once. If someone chooses a set of chipsets at compile time, and then compiles an image which can automatically detect which of those chipsets it on the MB on which it finds itself running, why not call that autodetect? Do you have a better name in mind for such functionality? Note that the software architecture would not impose any particular limit on the size of the set of chipsets for which support could be compiled in. Rather the size of the image is the only constraining factor. I cannot think of an application that would require a BIOS image that supports more than a handfull of chipsets. MB manufacturers wouldn't need more than a handful, home users wouldn't need more than a handful, and embedded systems builders probably wouldn't need more than one. Who needs a BIOS compiled to run on every machine? M

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Re: BIOS Autodetection Design
by M Carling 12 Jan '99

12 Jan '99

Erin R. Kern wrote: > The tables for all of the chipsets that you want to support would fill > any BIOS EEPROM on the market and you haven't even written one line of > code yet. The objective is not to write OpenBIOS such that (in practice) a single compiled image can boot any chipset. Rather, the autodetect objective is that a set of chipsets may be chosen at compile time from which the image is about to boot. Thus, for example, a MB manufacturer could compile a BIOS such that one image would work for all the MBs that they manufacture. Do you think this has any merit, Eric? M

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Chipset autodetect -- pro and con
by M Carling 12 Jan '99

12 Jan '99

There seems to be some disagreement over the issue of whether or not OpenBIOS should provide for possibility to compile into a single binary support for multiple chipset types to be autodetected at run-time. For OpenBIOS to be successful, it needs to become more attractive to the MB manufacturers than the alternatives. I don't know whether such a feature would be attractive to the MB manufacturers or not. I suggest will begin by compiling a list of the advantages and disadvantages of this feature. Having done that (so that we understand it ourselves as best we can) we should then ask the manufacturers. (This will be a good step toward getting free hardware from them for development.) When we ask them, we should also ask any other questions about their needs. In effect, we need to do some market research. Here are the advantages and disadvantages that I can think of. There are probably others. Pro: It's cool. It would allow manufacturers to have one BIOS ROM that supports all their MB products. The autodetect code might also be useful for diagnostics. Con: Extra complexity--something else to go wrong. Bug free code is *really* important in the BIOS. Extra complexity--more difficult to test. What other questions would we like the MB manufacturers to answer for us? M

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Re: BIOS Autodetection Design
by M Carling 12 Jan '99

12 Jan '99

Eric R. Kern wrote: > Is the objective of OpenBIOS to provide source code to motherboard > manufacturers that they can modify and customize for their boards > or is it to provide a BIOS that will run on an individuals PC? One objective is that MB manufacturers should have a better, more reliable BIOS such that license fees don't exist and thus are not passed on to the consumer. Another objective is that end users should be able to customize and compile thier own BIOS. Of course, since it is Open Source[tm], others may want to do other things with it. I expect OpenBIOS to become widely used in embedded systems, for example. I suspect that providing code that will compile without any pre- configuration and run on any PeeCee is probably too ambitious. Some decisions will need to be made at compile time, I think. M

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