Steve and Sue wrote:
Is http://www.freiburg.linux.de/openbios/ the correct URL?
Yes.
Is there any specification for OpenBIOS that defines the initial aims, features etc?
There are a few docs inside the source tarball itself. Right now the feature set maintain consists of bootstrapping an x86 PC. BIOS interrupt support and support for specific motherboard chipsets needs to be added before it can be useful.
Is anyone guiding the development process?
There is a Web page, but no updates have come out of the maintainer in a year or more.
I am now collecting patches for OpenBIOS, as well as working on it on my own. Hopefully the maintainer will re-appear, and I can submit my patch collection to him for a new release of OpenBIOS.
I have written and ported BIOS code for industrial computers, but most of that source is over-weight and difficult to adapt - so I am interested in working on something that is more flexible, but I don't want to waste time on code that is only intended for getting a Linux box up and running.
OpenBIOS is _not_ only for Linux. It should be able to boot all operating systems your current BIOS can boot.
One of the wonderful thing about OpenBIOS is that is allows us (as programmers) to bring modern features and support to old motherboards which haven't been supported in years.