On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Chris Arguin wrote:
Partially to get people talking about what we should support, I would like to propose a possible code layout. A fairly simple method of sorting the source code that should be fairly extensible.
I'd like to add rescue/ as really this should be the first bit of code we do also with maybe a floopy utility disk to do the burn/recovery. Also as someone said we should first get the thing so it can boot linux then work on the dos/win support. I imagine we need a very small (code wise) consol interface that can be piped to teh vga card or the serial port (for those who want serial config, one of the reasons this project started i think) and to work in the mem/bus inits then move onto the boot devices. Anyway enough speil from me. Cheers Adam
memory/ <- how to setup cache, memory timing, etc... Bus/ PCI/ ISA/ AGP/ <- How to access and set up those buses USB/ etc... Drives/ <- for our purposes, anything that can boot Floppy/ IDE/ SCSI/ Interface/ <- The front-end Input/ <- Where do we get input from, and how Output/ <- Where do we send output, and how Common/ <- Whatever code that is common misc/ <- Anything else
For example, my computer would be built with something like
memory/Intel/82437FX Bus/PCI/Intel/82437X BUS/ISA/Intel/PIIX Drives/Floppy/Std_Floppy Drives/IDE/PIIX Drives/SCSI/NCR53c8xx Interface/Power_CLI Interface/Input/Keyboard Interface/Output/VGA_text misc/std_timer
The Interface/Power_CLI would be something like the Sun-bootloader, or the Alpha console. Other possibilities would be a standard (like in most PCs), or maybe a PC96 compliant one, if that applies.
Notice that you can easily change to a serial boot if desired, and I think this sort of division allows for quite a bit of flexibility. Configuration scripts can hide much of the actual details (for example, I would just select the Intel 430fx chipset, which would set up the Memory, PCI, ISA, and all that).
Comments?
-- Chris Arguin | "While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a Chris.Arguin@unh.edu | much higher plane... at least I know I'm bewildered | about the really fundamental and important facts of | the universe." - Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett
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