I just relised I sent to a person not the group, sorry.
My comment is at the end. <snip>
PS. A couple of you have mentioned Open Boot. Where can I find out more about it? Is Open Boot open as in open source or open as in marketing-buzzword "open". Could this be used as the boot loader part of the project? Is it something that we could build on?
I found something on the SUN server I think. Search there for it. I think it's of no use for us at least because the sources are not free.
It is open in the sense there is a standard. IEEE 1275.
All these issues have been thought about and dealt with. It is a used by sun and apple.
As the standard is in use by apple and sun, and as most open OS's work on these machines it will not be a difficult task to get the OS's ported ( remember you have nothing if you can't get anyone to port the OS). Well I will rephrase that, all you have is a lot of work and an end result you have nothing more than a boot loader. If that is your aim use the netbsd loader, they have a cut down version that can be used for this purpose ( they also support the Fcode drivers as specified in the PCI spec).
If the source was available there would be no need for OpenBIOS. Implementing openBOOT would be a worthwhile aim for this group.
If it was implemented in a CPU independent way ( possible if openBOOT) the efforts would move easily across the 64 bit transition that is looming.
Implementing something new will be a complete waste of time, and unlikely to get finished, and if anything more than a boot loader unlikely to be taken up by industry. And I ask, as netBSD has a perfectly good promable boot loader, why would they use the result of this effort.
Take a long hard look at linux, did it succeed because of inherent greatness, or because it implemented a current standard.
As an aside openboot gives us a clear aim "implement openBOOT". Anyone who has followed this even a little should be able to see the problem faced if a small tight specification is not forthcoming. All the time will be spent arguing what is required and nothing will get done.
some references
http://www.penton.com/ed/Pages/magpages/june2298/embed/0622es2.htm
http://playground.sun.com/pub/p1275/home.html
http://www.hal.com/support/dpfirmware/
I have seen the standard itself onthe net, but do you think I can find it ( still looking).