I see two clear fractions here. One that, like me, wishes to create a full, complete BIOS with all the functions that goes with it (keyboard, video, storage etc). And one that supports the minimalistic approach with just a bootloader in the Flash ROM. How should we deal with this? Should we make two seperate versions of OpenBIOS? Or should we join our efforts in making one, very flexible and configurable BIOS? Any other ideas?
I think that, when considering the bootloader approach, you miss two vital parts of the BIOS, the I and the O. To be classified as a BIOS (in particular, OpenBIOS), in my opinion it should atleast support some form of input and output system. Otherwise you are left with BS (perhaps Booting System?). There is nothing wrong with this, and I can clearly see some merits of that, but as I said, I don't classify that as a BIOS. Perhaps there should be a subproject of OpenBIOS called OpenBS?
(Flameshield suit - ON ;)
/ Niklas Ekström
On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Ed Brinker wrote: <snip>
With all of that history, I like the model
Media: EEPROM BootDevice BootDevice Any Device Code: BootLoader -> BIOS -> OSloader -> OS
The EEPROM has four necessary functions that I can identify: Self test of the motherboard. The chipset dependent functions. These are really unique to the motherboard. For speed and efficency, copy the os independant portion of the kernel to shadow ram. Loading layer 1 of the boot.
<snip>