Is your TinyBIOS commercial or is it somewhere available so that we could have a look at it? ;-)
tinyBIOS is a commercial product. At this point I don't think I can afford to give away the farm. I could potentially release the source for non-commercial use only, but not under GPL.
I thought about USB keyboards
I think USB keyboards are a lousy idea. I'd rather use USB ports for devices that really need the bandwidth, and are a hassle to hook up otherwise, such as a scanner. Once you get above two USB devices, you will need a hub, and end up with a desk encrusted in USB cables...
Wrong. Current BIOSs have a simple MSDOS system in their int-Code. MSDOS even doesn't have it's own filesystem code afaik..
News to me. My BIOS works pretty well without any file system. The only place where some kind of file system is needed is for CD-ROM boot, which I don't support at this point.
This is generally based on a trial and error detection procedure (set biggest possible size, then find out how many address bits really work), rather than presence detect bits.
Again, modern PC Chipsets allow reading the exact RAM configuration out of their registers
Guess who sets this configuration ? The BIOS.
Do you seriously think a PC manufacturer would waste $0.50 on a input port to read the presence detect bits, if he can detect the memory configuration in software, and avoid compatibility problems with SIMMs that don't have the right configuration ?
PC designers would sell their grandmother for savings of $10 a system...
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