OpenBIOS

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4297 discussions

Re: [OpenBIOS] comments and ideas
by Stephane Boyer 20 Feb '98

20 Feb '98

===================================================================== sboyer(a)smegheads.montreal.qc.ca Tel: (514)-457-6124 root(a)smegheads.montreal.qc.ca Stephane Boyer L I N U X 691 Surrey ------------------------------- Baie d'Urfe, Quebec the choice of a GNU generation. CANADA H9X-2E8 On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Pavel Machek wrote: > Hi! > > > what is really needed, is a a true 32bit bios for people that single > > boot > > Linux. this bios should boot directly into protected mode (this way it can > > load uncompressed kernels). > > Why is it needed? Linux can live with current bioses. There's no need > for 32bios. Linux can do that things itself. What is needed is 16bit > bios. > we already have a 16bit bios! and they work well enough. if you dual-boot dos/Linux , fine stay with a 16bit bios, but if you only use Linux, wouldn't you want a bios that was specificaly made for it. Steph! --- 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] serial console
by Markus Kaufmann 19 Feb '98

19 Feb '98

Hi. At 04:29 19.02.98 -0800, Dean Gaudet wrote: >If you haven't done it before, try administrating a sun box over serial. >Enjoy the ability to halt and reboot the system, to upgrade the kernel >without fear, to even reinstall the system completely without being at the >physical console. There are many servers from Sun and HP (and others) where the serial port IS the console. When i got my HP server, i tried to connect my VGA screen to it, but i couldn't find the port. I looked closer and realized the small label at the serial port "COM1/console" . These HP servers (and workstations) are able to boot from harddisk, network, CDROM and tape (DAT). I don't know, if they are able to boot from floppy (probably not, since they haven't one). Bye Markus Kaufmann --- 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] serial console
by Dean Gaudet 19 Feb '98

19 Feb '98

On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Benjamin Scott wrote: > Dean Gaudet wrote: > > The best idea I've ever heard for a serial console on a PC is an ISA video > > card that behaves like text-mode VGA only, > > While it would be a good idea, it has two problems: Cost and kludge. > Such a thing is going to cost a good amount of bucks, being so rare, and > it really is a kludge to support weirdness on IBM-PCs. rare? Every PC in use at any ISP that has any sense could use one of these. Consider the current situation -- in order to have a farm of machines you need to use expensive video/keyboard multiplexing devices or deal with the pain of switching cables all the time. Plus you have no remote administration of your machines -- telnet doesn't count, it's only useful when the system is in multiuser mode. > > Remember that ISA/PCI cards have bioses on them, and those bioses expect > > to play with a video card. > > I have seen a system boot headless (no video at all), but yes, most > software and some hardware expects to be able to play with video > memory. booting isn't what it's all about. What if during the boot your scsi card gave you a diagnostic? It'd sure be nice to see the diagnostic. > One solution is to just not use (or fix) such > hardware/software. Good luck. > Another is a software version of your above serial > console card. Hardware and software doesn't really want to talk to a > video card, just be able to write directly to video memory (and maybe > play with a couple of video registers). I am fairly sure we can create > a region of "video memory" from the BIOS for such stuff. We could then > either attempt to convert it to serial, or just ignore it, depending on > specific needs. The video registers I'm not sure about; can we hack > together an emulator for them using just BIOS code, or do we need actual > hardware? Won't work. Your VGA emulation needs to react to reads and writes. You "can't" do that -- ok I lie. If you build your system so that it goes into protected mode, and then do a v86 emulation to totally fake out the bios then you can do it. But you still won't be as solid as a hardware card. > > Plus you've got a more reliable method of generating an NMI/reboot which > > you'll absolutely need. > > Why? Without reboot control remote administration is useless. The serial ports on a PC have no way of generating an NMI (or an SMI), so you have no way of ensuring that the system is recoverable from a kernel failure. If you haven't done it before, try administrating a sun box over serial. Enjoy the ability to halt and reboot the system, to upgrade the kernel without fear, to even reinstall the system completely without being at the physical console. sun's serial ports and boot prom are designed to be able to control the system -- a break will send the equivalent of an NMI and bop you into the prom, from anywhere. PCs do not have this luxury. Granted there are probably some easy hardware hacks that would let you trigger an NMI (or better yet, an SMI) in response to a serial event. Dean --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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comments and ideas
by sboyer＠smegheads.montreal.qc.ca 19 Feb '98

19 Feb '98

Hi! first, i'd like to say that re-inventing a 'DOS' bios is a bad idea, what it does for DOS, it does well enough. what is really needed, is a a true 32bit bios for people that single boot Linux. this bios should boot directly into protected mode (this way it can load uncompressed kernels). it should be able to boot the kernel image from any IDE partition on any of the 4 disks (hda,hdb,hdc,hdd), or find the kernel on the IDE cdrom (to be able to boot directly into an install program from a linux distribution CD. and as a fallback, boot from the floppy. later versions could be made to boot from SCSI Disks. ZIPdisks, LS drive. this bios should have a setup utility, to setup things like date, time, boot order, timings, etc.. the kernel could be easily modified to support this bios, heck, make it a Makefile option (make lbios). we should keep this bios as simple as possible, a subset of the drivers allready used in the kernel distribution could be used, but not removed from the kernel, the ones in the bios would only be used for booting. this way the kernel would remain untouched (except for adding an option to the Makefile). if you really want to remake the DOS bios, go look at the bochs x86 emulator, it can boot dos from cpu's other than x86, so it must have it's own bios!!! (freebios?) Steph! -- ===================================================================== sboyer(a)smegheads.montreal.qc.ca Tel: (514)-457-6124 root(a)smegheads.montreal.qc.ca Stephane Boyer L I N U X 691 Surrey ------------------------------- Baie d'Urfe, Quebec the choice of a GNU generation. CANADA H9X-2E8 --- 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] serial console
by Benjamin Scott 19 Feb '98

19 Feb '98

Dean Gaudet wrote: > The best idea I've ever heard for a serial console on a PC is an ISA video > card that behaves like text-mode VGA only, While it would be a good idea, it has two problems: Cost and kludge. Such a thing is going to cost a good amount of bucks, being so rare, and it really is a kludge to support weirdness on IBM-PCs. > Even full screen stuff is possible: Reminds me of the old DOS DOORWAY program for BBSes. :) > Remember that ISA/PCI cards have bioses on them, and those bioses expect > to play with a video card. I have seen a system boot headless (no video at all), but yes, most software and some hardware expects to be able to play with video memory. One solution is to just not use (or fix) such hardware/software. Another is a software version of your above serial console card. Hardware and software doesn't really want to talk to a video card, just be able to write directly to video memory (and maybe play with a couple of video registers). I am fairly sure we can create a region of "video memory" from the BIOS for such stuff. We could then either attempt to convert it to serial, or just ignore it, depending on specific needs. The video registers I'm not sure about; can we hack together an emulator for them using just BIOS code, or do we need actual hardware? > Plus you've got a more reliable method of generating an NMI/reboot which > you'll absolutely need. Why? -- Ben <hawk(a)ttlc.net> --- 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] BIOS Changes...
by Benjamin Scott 19 Feb '98

19 Feb '98

Jon Torrez wrote: > Would is be possible if there were a OS interface to the BIOS that was > able to change options in real-time; without having to reboot the > machine? I suggested this in my "initial" post; we should definately have an open standard for at least querry/set operations. More difficult is having such config changes take effect without rebooting. Linux doesn't really depend on the BIOS for much after boot anyway, so changing the BIOS config won't help Linux itself during operation. DOS might benifit, but it tends to keep just enough config info in memory to screw up things. Win95 might benifit, but I think you'd also need a way to communicate such changes to the device abstraction layer (if it is even possible, Win95 is pretty horrid for things like this). I won't even bother thinking about NT. -- Ben <hawk(a)ttlc.net> --- 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] could we get better performance?
by David Woodhouse 19 Feb '98

19 Feb '98

johnl(a)meer.net said: > I'm curious what effect a given implementation of a BIOS has on system > performance. From what I understand (and I understand only a little > about the BIOS), DOS et al. use the BIOS functions much more than > Linux, which may just use them to boot and then leave the BIOS > functionality behind and use its own drivers. I suspect that the main performance increase would be under DOS and Windows, yes. Take a look at http://www.mrbios.com/proof.htm for an idea of what we're aiming at there. > Is performance affected more by the particular settings that the BIOS > can make (memory access, etc.) that would change performance? Under Linux, this will be the major factor - we can offer all the more esoteric settings that other BIOSes don't support, so we can eke a little more out of the beast here too. ---- ---- ---- 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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Testing Platforms
by Chris Arguin 18 Feb '98

18 Feb '98

We should probably start paying attention to what chipsets we have, so that we don't have two people going off and implementing the same one twice. If you want, I can keep track of that list. With any luck, we will have a fair amount of variety of platforms to develop and test on. I've got a ASUS P55TP4N motherboard, which is a single Pentium MB with the Intel 430fx chipset. Currently it has an Award BIOS and a Symlogic SCSI BIOS. The Intel 430fx chipset is a 82437 System Controller, 82438 Data Paths, and a PIIX IDE+ISA interface. -- Chris Arguin | "...All we had were Zeros and Ones -- And Chris.Arguin(a)unh.edu | sometimes we didn't even have Ones." +--------------+ - Dilbert, by Scott Adams http://leonardo.sr.unh.edu/arguin/home.html | --- 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] BIOS call guides?
by Pavel Machek 18 Feb '98

18 Feb '98

Hi! > > > If I'm gonna start to think about coding, I have to know what to > > > code :) > > > > Do you want to write it in assembly or in C? How are you going to deal > > with 32 bit code? > > I'd suggest that the bios switches to protected mode in a very early > state. This would allow to develop most of the code (except the setup > code) in C, which is sure what we want (At least I think so) Hmm. But int xx interfaces *still* need to be in 16-bit assembly. Still, it might be nice to provide description "how to call this from 32-bit prot mode", i.e. specification saying: BIOS can be called iff CS contains selector with base = 0xf0000 ... > Do we want to support an Award compatible bios which has 16bit calls > or do we want to save up the space to implement newer features? You *must* have int xx calls, which are 16bit, or dos will not boot. -- I'm really pavel(a)atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz. Pavel Look at http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/ ;-). --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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AMI BIOS execution order
by Chris Arguin 18 Feb '98

18 Feb '98

I ran across a web page that is supposedly a list of what some AMI BIOS does at startup. It seems to be fairly complete and may be useful to give us an idea of the normal order of execution. http://www.msi-computer.de/faq/A.HTM -- Chris Arguin | "...All we had were Zeros and Ones -- And Chris.Arguin(a)unh.edu | sometimes we didn't even have Ones." +--------------+ - Dilbert, by Scott Adams http://leonardo.sr.unh.edu/arguin/home.html | --- OpenBIOS -- http://www.linkscape.net/openbios/ openbios-request(a)linkscape.net Body: un/subscribe Problems? dcinege(a)psychosis.com

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