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!