Hi all,
My name is Mircea Ciocan, presently I'm struggling as a sysadmin at a small ISP and data carrier in Romania, but my "love of the heart" was allways low level asm programming and hardware hacking. < rant mode on - you may skip that > So few days ago I was thinking how can I become as rich as BillG. or as famous as Linus ;), remembering that some time ago there was still a need for people who can do asm and wrote their own device drivers. But I'm not so smart to make a better Linux and I hate any kind of spreadsheet so billgatising is not an issue. But what can do an old low level programmer and hardware guy do to reward somehow the community that gived him Linux and all those beautifull tools that allow him a (reletively) quiet and fruitfull job ??? Browsing deadly bored on the FSF site I see that on their task list the project of an open BIOS and I rememberd that I see on /. that a new project was started and after a little search I find you guys :). By some kind of miracle on the same time few other things happend:
On /. was announced the smallest PC that can run Linux, making me deathly gelous that I wasn't the first to do that ;) and remembering that with a lot of time ago I haved the smallest ZX Spectrum compatible in Romania :). I found the nicest and affordable board that a hacker can find as a Mini Internet Gateway build along in a nice case with power supply, 2 serial ports, one Realtek 8019 Ethernet controller with dual interface, twisted and coax cable, 1MB of RAM and 512KB of FlashROM, "powerd by the ferocious" ALI 6117C processor ( something like 386SX/40) all on a board of 100x110mm cased in a nice little plastic case[1]. The beast was used for connecting a network of max 256 station on 1 or 2 dial-up/leased/ISDN, it has a DHCP server for those windoze machines ;), it can be administrated remotely by telnet and WEB interface, it has built-in IP masquerading, traffic shaper, firewalling and it was a dream to work with. It saved me and my company a LOT of problems (and money) by zapping expensive routers, expensive windozian proxyes and wingates :) and yes, even Linux boxes and all that under 200$ !!!!. So I felt in love instantly, but with the hackerish devil in me just awaken, I mistreated a poor box to "see what's inside", beeing firmly convinced that is some proprietary chip design and I can never make it to mount network drivers and serve custom web pages for example, not to mention some other nice usages. To my great surprise the little thing has the above configuration and I said "You're mine baby, you'll run Linux in 2 weeks from now and you'll be everything that I want to do with you like a wereable(?) computer, network driven EPROM programmer and many other automation thingies ;)))". The joy was quickly shadowed by the fact that that the manufacturer of the chips "Acer Labs Int'l" (ALI)[2] IS THE MOST ANAL RETENTIVE AND IDIOTIC CHIP MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD !!! Now I feel better that I said it ;). Protected by password datasheets, no email address, a Taiwan BBS number that don't work and nothing more than some description, it was a real shock me that almost make me hack their american Solaris web host, but I think: what the hell, I just need a embedded BIOS with serial redirection and screw ALI. After another day browsing the Internet for a BIOS and seeing it at prices between 200-2000$ I give up closed source and see the light: "... the world needs an OpenBIOS, and mostly an embedded one ;)))" On the same time frame a customer with a lot of measurement points that spits their measured values on modems ask us if he can use our microwave MAN for colecting data, given that Breezecom[3] adapters we use have a phone voice channell simulating a PSTN. Unfortunately the modems did not work well on voice channel ( it wasn't intended for that) so I came with the ideea of simulating a modem by network and to use this little beasts, so now I have more time and resources to work on the BIOS project. So, all in all I'm here, all yours, eager to help, code and be if not a Linus to BIOSes but maybe a little Alan Cox or Dave Miller. And now let's get to real ( even protected mode) things ;) < /rant mode off, thank you for your patience.. >
Questions (not in relevant order):
1) It is considered in this project an embedded BIOS for small appliance, industrial PCs or PC104 ? 2) Is the list archived somewere? 3) Have you guys established the guide lines of this project and freezed the specifications? 4) Does the above specifications contain something about embedded BIOSEs and if yes, who is the sub-project leader? 5) What is the organisation of this project, who are the leaders and how many of you are here ( I'll be glad to receive personal mail from you to meet you all) ? 6) [IMPORTANT] Does anybody has specifications of those beasts: ALI 6117C ALI M5113-A2 ALI M5232-A1 and if so can he/she share it with me? 7) Is anybody working at some related boards like the above one? 8) What kind of develpment tools you standardised ( assembler,debugger and so..)? OK, this I'll figure soon when I'll try to see what's in the code tar ball.
In the end of this long and boring post thank you for your patience and I hope that I can be part of your team for a real free BIOS embedded or not ;). Mircea C.
P.S. For the pacient of you who made it here some pointers: [1] http://www.surecom.com.tw/ - SURECOM - the maker of Internet Gateway/Hub on that beautifull board. [2] http://www.ali.com.tw/ - Acer Labs - and their most idiotic overseas site: http://www.acerlabs.com/ [3] http://www.breezecom.com/ - BREEZECOM - manufacturers of microwave WAN adapters, in essance small calculators that are even cuter than Surecom
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Mircea Ciocan