Progress?

[Joe'l' Mansford]

Forgive my ignorance....

Has anyone actually made any progress so far on actually writing a bios
which boots an OS?

I was also wondering if anyone has noticed the way that old and some current
Compaq machines BIOS' work.  They seem to have a very simple bios on ROM
which is capable of autodetecting RAM, processor, hdd, fdd etc. but has no
interface, to set the thing up you need the floppy or special partition on
the harddrive.  Although from a maintenance point of view I don't like this
it did mean that they were able to make a very comprehensive setup program
with full built-in diagnostics etc. Which ultimately was user friendly since
Compaq used Windows 3.1 as the BIOS set-up OS! No reason why we couldn't use
a nice 'pretty' VGA setup util that sits on the harddrive, or a text one
that runs from Floppy.

I appreciate that this isn't an ideal solution, but I've become very
frustrated with BIOS' that simply don't have the right options for no good
reason like, no option to boot A,ZIP/LS,SCSI,IDE-0 or the like.

As I understand it we are looking for a modular system that can be compiled,
ultimately for any motherboard, is this correct?

Just some Ideas,
Regards

Joel Mansford

============================================================================
===
      A Computer is only as good as its [Non-Commercial] Applications and
              Operating System.  '98 is the work of the Devil
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
   To see when I last checked my mail,or when I last received a mail which
   is unread goto my homepage at http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~ssu96jm/ and follow
   the link.   My recommended reply-to address is  mailto:[e-mail]
============================================================================
===

[Matthias Wächter]

On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Joe'l' Mansford wrote:
> I was also wondering if anyone has noticed the way that old and some current
> Compaq machines BIOS' work.

Well, I already heard from that.
> No reason why we couldn't use
> a nice 'pretty' VGA setup util that sits on the harddrive, or a text one
> that runs from Floppy.

No reason to discuss this _now_. Besides, setup will, of course, not be
implemented in BIOS (I think). For three good reasons:

1. Size. I think there are configurations where it could fit into 128kB
EEPROM, but I think for most of us the space will be too small.

2. Most setup (like driver selection etc.) will be done using the
configuration tool at compile time, the remaining configuration options
also don't have to be available everytime, but a tool (of course, OSS and
compilable for DOS, Win32, Linux etc.) could do the trick.

3. The BIOS should only setup the hardware for loading the kernel - no
tweaking is necessary at this point.
> I appreciate that this isn't an ideal solution, but I've become very
> frustrated with BIOS' that simply don't have the right options for no good
> reason like, no option to boot A,ZIP/LS,SCSI,IDE-0 or the like.

Of course, we can discuss whether this kind of option should be accessible
all-the-time at boot time (even without media) or if it would be enough to
setup this from a running OS using the tool mentioned above.

About boot order: This is a feature I hate in every BIOS, because it
_never_ does what I want it to do. What's the Option "C,A,CDROM" for?
What's the option "A,CDROM,C" for than for an automatic virus
installation?

My opinion is: The BIOS should have either a automatic loading of a
prespecified partition on a prespecified media or use this as a default
for something like a boot menu. Normally, one knows very good why and when
to boot from A:, and going to BIOS setup and changing from "C only" to "A
,C" is a very stupid thing - especially if you forget to change it back. I
think, the best way is something like F8 (DOS/95), SHIFT (LILO) or any
other system we already have in the operating systems, but in BIOS: For
example, it would be great to just enter the boot device selection menu by
holding down a specific key (or key combination). So one always boots from
the same device except he wants to boot from somewhere else.
> As I understand it we are looking for a modular system that can be compiled,
> ultimately for any motherboard, is this correct?

For any supported motherboard, yes.

Winschdawos,
- Matthias

[Simon Richter]

Joe'l' Mansford schrieb:
> No reason why we couldn't use
> a nice 'pretty' VGA setup util that sits on the harddrive, or a text one
> that runs from Floppy.

Well, you need some setup code in the BIOS in case hdd and floppy are
unavailable (Many machines come without floppies for security reasons). Also,
there should be an interface so that user space applications may access/change
the data (security set aside). So it's up to the user space programmers to
provide these interfaces.
> I appreciate that this isn't an ideal solution, but I've become very
> frustrated with BIOS' that simply don't have the right options for no good
> reason like, no option to boot A,ZIP/LS,SCSI,IDE-0 or the like.

You forgot PCMCIA memory cards... :-)
> As I understand it we are looking for a modular system that can be compiled,
> ultimately for any motherboard, is this correct?

Ultimately, yes. But this is still a long way to go.

CU
   Simon