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* ron minnich rminnich@lanl.gov [040203 22:46]:
I don't expect the cards to come with fcode any time soon, if ever. Four reasons: first, the market is more or less zero, and the all the non-x86 systems support x86 emulators to support the x86 option roms; second, if they support two option roms (fcode, x86) that makes for lots more work; third, the PC market will probably never go to fcode; and fourth, I bet they (naively) think that fcode would make reverse engineering easier.
I fully agree that using ndisasm is by no means more complicated than using my fcode detokenizer detok. All x86/efi option rom discussion sounds rather like a game of not stepping on the others' toes rather than technologically driven reasoning.
OpenBIOS can be used on top of a PC BIOS as well, thus it could allow to use any Open Firmware compliant pci card in a machine that still has different firmware in rom. This is one step towards the great unification..
If the concept of having a diversity of hardware architectures available is going to survive, there has to be a generic solution to the early initialization issues.
Best regards, Stefan Reinauer