Where can I find a good primer on assembly? I would
very much like to contribute something useful to this project. I admit a lack of
skills, but the best way to learn is to get involved. From what I have seen so
far, just to put things in perspective, is:
Everyone has thier own ideas where they want this
project to go.
Most everyone is working on a different
platform.
Some people want a spartan bios, very streamlined,
while others want a more robust bios.
So we should attack this from a different angle. We
should choose an OS (I recommend FreeDOS) as a startpoint, then build a BIOS
configurator, menu driven, that allows the person to select the options he/she
wants. Then the program would detect the architecture of the system, (possibly
by reading current BIOS version?),prompt the user to confirm/correct what it
detects, and compile an image to be flashed.
I realize that is asking alot. But it is not beyond
the scope of feasibility. Most systems now days have the option to boot from a
cd. So if we make an iso of the whole package, it could then be burned on a CD,
and thus be bootable. Otherwise one could copy it to a partition and configure
thier bootloader to look for it.
Rather than FreeDOS we might consider hacking a
very minimal OS that would work on basically any platform. Consider, the only
major requirements are disk access, and the ability to load our software. It
would not be a major undertaking if we took a look at what's already out
there.
It seems to me that there are a lot of people
interested in this project but no one knows exactly how to contribute. This
would give the project some structure, and allow everyone to pick an area to
work on toward a more tangible goal. I realize that this is way beyond the scope
that most of you were contemplating. But there are many of us interestedin
OpenBIOS, and it would keep us from each reinventing the wheel as we go. With
many hands, we can move mountains. More than that, the end product would be
*darn* attractive to basically everybody.