Since it looks it didn't make it here: (or at least I didn't get it)
On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
Dear Linux-Kernel readers,
This may be somewhat offtopic for most of you, but as I guess it's interesting for many others, I decided to send this mail to linux-kernel. It's about the OpenBIOS project. Our goal is to write a free, completely configurable firmware that is availbale under GNU PL.
I had the time to have a closer look at Daniel Engstroems code now and I think we should use this as a code base for further developments. I've played around a bit with the Makefiles and you can now configure the firmware setup by using make menuconfig or make config, like in the linux kernel. make xconfig doesn't work correctly right now, because I had to add some changes to the whole bunch of Linux configuration scripts to allow a more general usage.
Get OpenBIOS 0.0.1 (completely based on Daniel's gfw-0.1) from http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS/
We only have support for 3 chipsets right now, which is definitely not enough. I will try to write support for the Intel 430HX/TX/VX/.. chipsets, as I have an old HX board at home. If anyone is capable of doing this (it's not really hard, as you just need the datasheets for your chipset and a board containing the chipset itself to test)
Now, at the moment, we don't have hardware drivers for any bootdevices. Should we go the way linux goes and write our own drivers or should we try to use other bioses (i.e. scsi bios on host adapter) for that?
The second thing may be simpler and shorter, but I guess the first one is the way to go because we need drivers for floppies, parport devices etc, too.. :)
Well.. I wrote this just to start discussion again :-)
Best regards, Stefan.-- Reincarnation: Life sucks, then you die. Then life sucks again.