Re: [OpenBIOS] Aladdin V chipset

[Edwin Rhodes]

this souds great!
edwin
----- Original Message -----
From: Ronald G. Minnich 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 6:52 AM
Subject: Re: [OpenBIOS] Aladdin V chipset
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Burl Nyswonger wrote:
> > > when you say super socket 7 chipsets -- does this include AMD?
> > > edwin
> >
> > I meant "Super Socket 7 boards" in general -- ie: the Asus P5 series,

Acer
> > boards (obviously), etc...  When I say "Aladdin V Chipset", I am

referring
> OK, this brings up an interesting issue for the OpenBIOS community. At
> least one Socket 7 motherboard will support either alpha or pentium in the
> socket. So it's the same motherboard with a different processor. All
> startup tasks for the motherboard are pretty much the same.
>
> I had an interesting set of discussions with vendors at extreme linux last
> week. There's a lot of interest in linuxbios -- from Alpha motherboards
> too (the alpha bios'es all have sucked very badly -- dec never got it
> right).
>
> As things stand openbios is too pentium-specific. So I'd like to propose
> an idea.
> get into protected mode early
> get rid of as much assembly as possible
> there's a lot that can move to C
>
> so we change the layout a bit. It's still early in the game, we can do
> this.
>
> A possible layout:
>
> bios/arch/i386/{poweron.s,protected_mode.s,memory.s,motherboard.c,boot.c}
> bios/arch/alpha/{poweron.s,protected_mode.s,memory.s,motherboard.c,boot.c}
> bios/payload/{your c files here}
>
> poweron.s is the very first set of things you do on poweron -- should be a
> few instructions. protected_mode.s bumps you into protected mode. On the
> pentium this is a few instructions. memory.s turns on memory -- this is
> *much* easier on the pentium in protected mode. memory.s should set up a
> stack and jump to C code. Motherboard.c does anything that has to be done
> to further use the motherboard. Boot.c gunzips the payload (either a
> bios-compatible code or Linux or FreeBSD or whatever) and jumps to it.
>
> I'm talking to a commercial company that is going to do something like
> this -- they don't want much assembly long-term, so they're recrafting
> openbios. I don't think most people want to do assembly.
>
> If we do this, we're not just for pentiums any more. That would be
> wonderful! Any interest?
>
> ron
>
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