OpenBIOS

openbios@openbios.org

4284 discussions

Test, list server change
by Dave Cinege 07 Sep '98

07 Sep '98

The openbios list (which has been broken and dead) is now (alive and working) on psychosis.com. The post addy is now openbios(a)psychosis.com -- http://www.psychosis.com/emc/ Elite MicroComputers 732-541-4214 http://www.linuxrouter.org/ Linux Router Project I am a regex s/retard/student/. Pray. There is hope. --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)psychosis.com Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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Re: Continue Development
by Stefan Reinauer 04 Sep '98

04 Sep '98

Hi.. [about:16bit stuff in bios/compatibility to DOS/Windows] > > IMHO this is not the way to go, since many people still have Windows95 > > installed (because of the games), but would like OpenBIOS. I would leave an > > option that links a set of wrapper functions. The problem is, that the available space on a flashchip is today 128 k or 256 k, depending on the system. Because 256k chips are still too rare, I'd suggest that we try to get the most stuff into 128k and maybe only some not really needed features as the animated logo with mp3 sound at bootup into the second 128k :-)) > Would it be possible somehow to have the original bios image on the > harddisk, and then have an option on the boot console where you could > load it into memory and start it? It may very well not be possible, > but if it was, then we could concentrate on our stuff, and let the > original bioses support the win95/98/dos/other os's... Also having > the possibility to select bios at boot would be a cool feature! :) > Just a thought... Well.. This is really a good idea. I once thought about loadable bios plugins on hd or via network, but that may be very hard. The easiest way would probably be to load the bios directly from harddisk, as it can be done on the Alpha AXP boards. We could do this before the cpu is switched to protected mode or afterwards and switch back to realmode to load award or ami bios. The first would save some code, the second seems to me to be the more elegant version, because we can do the whole floppy stuff in PM (which could be necessary if we want to support ia64 some day) Stefan. -- .signature: No such file or directory

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Re: Continue Development
by Simon Richter 04 Sep '98

04 Sep '98

Stefan Reinauer schrieb: > 1) Do we need the 16bit bios stuff in an OpenBIOS? > I'd say a clear "NO" here. This does mean, on the other hand, that we > won't support any proprietary systems like windows or DOS anymore, > but as for using DOS/Windows, Award and AMI BIOS do a good job, this is > not really needed. > People who need more features like netboot and a good console in their > BIOS very likely use Linux or any BSD flair. IMHO this is not the way to go, since many people still have Windows95 installed (because of the games), but would like OpenBIOS. I would leave an option that links a set of wrapper functions. > I'd suggest C, [...] Agree. I also have some further thoughts on this, but I'll post them tomorrow. > 3) Testing platforms Well, I've got a bunch of testing machines as well as old NE1000 cards here. If I find some time (and the manual and a NE/2 for my PS/2), I can do some testing here. Also, I think if someone just wants to run Linux and nothing else, a Linux kernel with the BIOS querying code commented out would do as well. So the main reason to use OpenBIOS should not be "It loads my Linux bigger/better/faster/more" but rather "I like to have a boot console" or "My company saves $200 on harddisks for each computer". Just my two cents. Also, the BIOS should be optimized towards minimal data storage space rather than speed. It won't harm speed that much, but the final OS has to live with all that stuff in RAM. CU Simon

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Continue Development
by Stefan Reinauer 01 Sep '98

01 Sep '98

Dear guys :-) As you might have noticed, there's not much traffic on this list at the moment. I'd like to start a bit of discussion right now to get things proceeding again. 1) Do we need the 16bit bios stuff in an OpenBIOS? I'd say a clear "NO" here. This does mean, on the other hand, that we won't support any proprietary systems like windows or DOS anymore, but as for using DOS/Windows, Award and AMI BIOS do a good job, this is not really needed. People who need more features like netboot and a good console in their BIOS very likely use Linux or any BSD flair. 2) Which programming language should be used? We sure will have to write some init code in assembler, which is OK, if it doesn't get too much. I think writing in a higher level language is much easier because a) more people can help the project and b) the code can easily be maintained. I'd suggest C, as C++ seems to be a bit bloated for this project. (As well as other languages) To give anyone the chance to help the project, I'd like to use the GNU Compiler GCC. Every Linux/BSD user has access to it and it's available for most other platforms, too(W32 i.e.) 3) Testing platforms I had a look at bochs some days ago (which now runs fine on my Alpha AXP without segfaults) though I am not sure whether it is really good enough for testing (I expect problems with the PnP and PCI init stuff) I am sure that it's possible to get some test mainboards so that no developer has to fear to destroy his computer. You might have a look at my devbios project, a flash bios device for Linux2.1. It can be found at http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~stepan/bios/ The OpenBIOS webpage can be found at http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS/ I'll try to get the archive mirrors of the earlier mailinglist discussions online this week, so stay tuned and don't hesitate starting a new discussion about the above themes (or anything else) Stefan -- .signature: No such file or directory

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This mailinglist.
by Stefan Reinauer 09 Jul '98

09 Jul '98

Dear OpenBIOS-Readers, well, I have to confess, that there's not much traffic on this list at the moment. This is mainly due to my spare free time. I guess I can do much more for this project in 2-3 weeks. We were duscussing the idea of porting OpenFirmware or the Linux/Alpha Loader MILO (which is a full bios) to Intel architecture to get some test enviroment to start with. Has anyone succeeded in booting a PC from the Bochs BIOS? ... You will read much more on this list, soon! Best regards, Stefan (List Maintainer) -- .signature: No such file or directory

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status of openbios
by Alex.Nemirovsky＠radisys.com 24 Jun '98

24 Jun '98

Hi All, I am interested in putting in some effort in getting OpenBIOS going. I am a BIOS engineer and see value in GPL'ed BIOS source code. How far is the development so far? What has been talked about? Thanks -Alex

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OpenBIOS and OpenBoot
by Fare Rideau 09 Jun '98

09 Jun '98

Dear OpenBIOS people, have you by chance considered the fact that there already exist a cross-platform IEEE standard for firmware? It's called Open Firmware, and allows boot code to run unmodified on a variety of platforms, based on a bytecode ANS FORTH interpreter: * Sun SPARCs (on which it first appeared -- try STOP A someday) * PowerPCs * ARM ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/me/mejohnsn/OFIntro.html http://playground.sun.com/pub/1275/ ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/p1275/ http://www.firmworks.com If you write something for PCs, it would be great if it reused this proven, standard, design. And if you need a FORTH core, there already exist lots of them, including PFE, GNU forth (gforth), and many others. http://www.forth.org/ ftp://ftp.forth.org/pub And of course, if you are to use this standard, you should contact the Open Firmware committee, to be in synch with whatever they have done or intend to do about the PC platform... Just my 2p worth. I'm not subscribed to this list in any way, I've just seen an announce on the linux-kernel(a)vger.rutgers.edu mailing list. Hence, if you want to reply me, use private e-mail. Good luck! ## Faré | VN: Ð£ng-Vû Bân | Join the TUNES project! http://www.tunes.org/ ## ## FR: François-René Rideau | TUNES is a Useful, Not Expedient System ## ## Reflection&Cybernethics | Project for a Free Reflective Computing System ## Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

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i960 board with PCI
by Stephen Williams 13 Apr '98

13 Apr '98

larry.panzer(a)excel.net said: > Could you post some more info on your i960 board, is it a custom > design? It may make a good testbed platform on which to try the > OpenBIOS, when the time arrives. It might make some sence to do a pro/ > con list of the different design techniques for this BIOS. Well, OK. The card I refer to is the Picture Elements Imaging Subsystem Engine (ISE). There is information about it on our web page. It may not be of any real use to this list because they cost more then some cheaper PCI motherboard. However, it does have lots of PCI stuff to fuss with and has taught me the issues of BIOS management of PCI busses. Still interested? Read on. ISE is a full-size PCI card that has an i960RD on board. Internally, the board has a PCI bus connected to the secondary bus side of the i960RD. There is a DEC PCI-to-PCI bridge that adds another PCI bus. The board has daughter card positions that are electrically PCI. The daughter cards use typical interface chips (i.e. PLX PCI9080) to do the bus manipulation. Therefore, the cards appear to software like standard PCI devices. I have written code for the i960 that does the job that the BIOS32 does on a PC, namely it locates the PCI devices, probes their registers and assigns interrupt numbers and address space. It is this little bit that may be most interesting to this list. I have also ported TCL 7.6 to this environment. I have given TCL access to the PCI space by a "bios32" extension (load {} bios32) that adds commands to read/write configuration space registers. The software for the ISE board is fairly generic, and available for free from our FTP site. <ftp://ftp.picturel.com/pub/source/ucr/> UCR Version 1.0 is sitting there now, I'll be making a 1.1 release (and updating the TCL port) in a month or so. People are free to look at the PCI stuff to see what I had to go through, and the code may be used under GPL terms. (The TCL source has its own license that allows free use.) Some portions of uCR are known to work under i386 with gcc, as I have built and linked programs to run under Linux, using uCR in place of the C library. This is for simulation purposes, but may provide a decent test bed for embedded software. Anyhow, there you go. In a month or so, things will settle down enough that I can port uCR to i386/PC board if there is interest. -- Steve Williams "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. steve(a)icarus.com But I have promises to keep, steve(a)picturel.com and lines to code before I sleep, http://www.picturel.com And lines to code before I sleep." --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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Re: [OpenBIOS] This list?
by Gregory Gerard 12 Apr '98

12 Apr '98

OpenFirmware hurts! Don't go down this path. As a former Apple employee where OF was law, it causes more problems than it solves. The Forth derivation is baroque and tends to only bring back unmaintainable code (you though asm could be bad?!? You ain't seen nothing yet!) Also talking with Sun people (where OF originally began, though in a slightly derivitive and sometime incompatible language known as OpenBoot) who code it on regular basis, they hate the horribly restrictive environment and the debugging facilities suck wind, but they are stuck with it. Being able to initialize an OF card is okay, but doing a full OF implementation on the host ROM side is a nightmare. greg >On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, David Freeman wrote: > >> Wouldn't that be an OpenFirmware clone? I know that most modern PPC >> systems now use OpenFirmware, as well as newer SPARC systems. An >> OpenFirmware clone would be cool... > >This isn't exactly what I thought of at first, but it sounds like the best >thing to do now that I think about it. This would probably help out some >people trying to run LinuxPPC on Winbloze-NT only Motorola PowerStack >machines (You can flash a new bios onto them from a floppy, I believe) > >Maybe we can even add some cool features like control from an ethernet >interface.. Have it look for a bootp server at boot, and then allow telnet >configuration.. This would be *great* for setting up a cluster.. Take the >machine out of the box, hook it up, and configure it without ever hooking >up a monitor, keyboard, or inserting a floppy. There are some security >issues with this though, but I think those can be dealt with. > >Something like my previous idea is possible with a fully open-source >firware code.. What company would want to bother with something like that >anyway? I personally think it would be very useful. > >> And it isn't exactly proprietary either, independent companies make >> their own implementations of OpenFirmware, so I guess it would be >> possible to get the specs, and write clone, eh? >> >> Troy Benjegerdes wrote: >> > >> > Does this list exist at all? I haven't seen any activity for about 2 weeks >> > or something. >> > >> > Anyway, would anyone like to develop a GNU bios for PPC systems? I *might* >> > be in a position to get all the needed specifications and actually get the >> > developed *used* when it is stable. >> > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >| Troy Benjegerdes | troybenj(a)iastate.edu | hozer(a)dodds.net | >| Unix is user friendly... You just have to be friendly to it first. | >| This message composed with 100% free software. http://www.linux.org | >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > >--- >OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ >openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe >Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com > > --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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Re: Did someone start?
by David Woodhouse 12 Mar '98

12 Mar '98

pavel(a)elf.ucw.cz said: > Hmm. Did someone _really_ start? Is there someone who actually > compiled that Bochs BIOS? Where to download complete package > (including bcc, because it is not really common). I'm not sure about _compiling_ the Bochs BIOS, but Dave Cinege tried the precompiled version that comes with the Bochs source, and it did nothing visibly useful. Bcc is part of the Dev86 package, which can be found at http://poboxes.com/rdebath I'll put a copy of the latest version in /pub/openbios on my machine, too. As for _really_ starting on the code, I doubt that anyone's made much of a start. I'm itching to do some, but my Director of Studies will slaughter me if I so much as look at anything but "An implementation of RSVP on Nemesis" ( http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/pegasus/nemesis.html ) ---- ---- ---- David Woodhouse, Robinson College, CB3 9AN, England. (+44) 0976 658355 Dave(a)imladris.demon.co.uk http://dwmw2.robinson.cam.ac.uk finger pgp(a)dwmw2.robinson.cam.ac.uk for PGP key. --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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