Ed Brinker wrote:
Finally, I have been on this list for about a year. I have seen discussions flare up from time to time after a month or so of dormancy. ... But I do know that there is a standard way of buiding a software system: requirements => preliminary design => detailed design => unit coding => unit testing => system testing. The first step is always the requirements and if we can't, as a group, determine a set of requirements then this group will slowly twist in the wind until long after the 512 bit PC's have passed into oblivion. ... But please, can we build a set of requirements. ...
This is my attempt to figure out how OpenBIOS development should be run
Stage 0: divide BIOS into several tasks:
1 initialization of chipset - mandatory 2 booting OS from FDD - mandatory for the initial phase 3 configuration 4 BIOS services 5 floppy based diagnostics, embedded in ROM diagnostics 6 booting OS from HDD 7 booting OS from CD-ROM, Network 8 serial console 9 network console - this is my proposal for avoiding inefficient serial communications 10 USB keyboard support 11 Open-SCSI-BIOS 12 Open-VGA-BIOS 13 Open-Net-BIOS 11 power saving and sleeping 12 get used to another name for BIOS - it's not I/O system anymore and this name is confusing
To my mind the only OS that should have the possibility to boot for the first time must be Linux. This will give the project initial user base and attract possible developers. This OS like other can live mostly without BIOS. Boot loader maybe customized for this OS to be more strait forward then current implementations
Stage 1: develop set of routines for BIOS developers and testers - requirements (general hardware - chipset, processor, M/B make etc. and maybe specific hardware, which can be implemented easily) - software tools
Stage 2: ...
I've just found OpenBIOS project about 2 weeks ago and took it close though I can see some indications of no real achievements so far. Anyway in near time I'm going to study downloadable software and summarize my suggestions on web. Sorry, if this reading was just waste of time for you but this is the best of my efforts this moment. I'm really wish contribute to this project with my skills and available hardware though I may not be seen as person who can be in the clean room. I've seen a lot of BIOS source for XT/AT and it doesn't make sense for me to re-implement it. Hope you don't find this reading useless, yours Mark Zhitomirski - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message