comments and ideas

Hi!

first, i'd like to say that re-inventing a 'DOS' bios is a bad idea,
what it does for DOS, it does well enough.

what is really needed, is a a true 32bit bios for people that single boot 
Linux. this bios should  boot directly into protected mode (this way it can
load uncompressed kernels).

it should be able to boot the kernel image from any IDE partition on any of
the 4 disks (hda,hdb,hdc,hdd), or find the kernel on the IDE cdrom (to be
able to boot directly into an install program from a linux distribution CD.
and as a fallback, boot from the floppy.

later versions could be made to boot from SCSI Disks. ZIPdisks, LS drive.

this bios should have a setup utility, to setup things like date, time, boot
order, timings, etc..

the kernel could be easily modified to support this bios, heck, make it a
Makefile option (make lbios).

we should keep this bios as simple as possible, a subset of the drivers
allready used in the kernel distribution could be used, but not removed from
the kernel, the ones in the bios would only be used for booting. this way
the kernel would remain untouched (except for adding an option to the
Makefile).

if you really want to remake the DOS bios, go look at the bochs x86
emulator, it can boot dos from cpu's other than x86, so it must have it's
own bios!!!  (freebios?)

Steph!

[Markus Kaufmann]

Hi.

At 00:08 19.02.98 -0500, you wrote:
> what is really needed, is a a true 32bit bios for people that single boot 
> Linux. this bios should  boot directly into protected mode (this way it can
> load uncompressed kernels).

What is the advantage of an uncompressed kernel?
> it should be able to boot the kernel image from any IDE partition on any of
> the 4 disks (hda,hdb,hdc,hdd), or find the kernel on the IDE cdrom (to be
> able to boot directly into an install program from a linux distribution CD.
> and as a fallback, boot from the floppy.
>
> later versions could be made to boot from SCSI Disks. ZIPdisks, LS drive.

This means, that the first version is only for Computers with Linux 
and IDE-Harddisk. I think only very few people are using such a configuration.

Most Linux installations i know are either private computers with Win95+Linux
or Linux servers with an SCSI-Harddisk.
> we should keep this bios as simple as possible,

Where's the advantage of an own BIOS, if it is only a small subset of
the normal BIOS? The only advantage of your proposal i can see is the booting
from any harddisk, but since there is only Linux on the system ...

Bye
  Markus Kaufmann

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