On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
Philipp Rumpf prumpf@jcsbs.lanobis.de has looked at the linux kernel startup and the lilo code and determined which software interrupts are needed to boot up a system at the moment....
It's the following
1000 o SET VIDEO MODE 100E o TELETYPE OUTPUT 100F o GET CURRENT VIDEO MODE 1014 o LOAD FONT 11 ? GET EQUIPMENT LIST 12 ? GET MEMORY SIZE 13?? ! DISK ACCESS 140000 ! INITIALIZE SERIAL PORT 1587 COPY EXTENDED MEMORY 1588 GET EXTENDED MEMORY SIZE 15C0 GET CONFIGURATION 15E801 GET MEMORY SIZE > 64M 1600 ! GET KEYSTROKE 1601 ! CHECK FOR KEYSTROKE 1602 ! GET SHIFT FLAGS
with the following meaning o obsolete (not really needed) ? don't know don't know, too. ! IMPORTANT.
Well - nice work, but I don't think that's the right way. Since LILO is a tool to load the kernel when BIOS16 (well, I will call it that way) is running, we will need (or be proud of programming) a new tool using BIOS32 (aka OpenBIOS). If the only work we want to have done is booting Linux with LILO a few seconds faster than with BIOS16 - then I stay with BIOS16. But if we start a new BIOS, 32 bit aware and with a lot of new features (which of course will/should not be compatible with BIOS16), we will need a new Linux loader.
I thought, a main topic for OpenBIOS development is full access to the hard drives so there is no trouble with large disks, large partitions and kernels laying somewhere on them.
Please, correct me if I forgot to think of some relevant point.
Winscheichwos, - Matthias