Re: OpenBIOS has first Code :-) (fwd)

[Ragnar Hojland Espinosa]

Since it looks it didn't make it here: (or at least I didn't get it)

On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Dear Linux-Kernel readers,
>
> This may be somewhat offtopic for most of you, but as I guess it's interesting
> for many others, I decided to send this mail to linux-kernel. It's about the
> OpenBIOS project. Our goal is to write a free, completely configurable firmware
> that is availbale under GNU PL.
>
> I had the time to have a closer look at Daniel Engstroems code now and I
> think we should use this as a code base for further developments.
> I've played around a bit with the Makefiles and you can now configure the
> firmware setup by using make menuconfig or make config, like in the linux
> kernel. make xconfig doesn't work correctly right now, because I had to
> add some changes to the whole bunch of Linux configuration scripts to
> allow a more general usage.
>
> Get OpenBIOS 0.0.1 (completely based on Daniel's gfw-0.1) from
>             http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS/
>
> We only have support for 3 chipsets right now, which is definitely not
> enough. I will try to write support for the Intel 430HX/TX/VX/.. chipsets,
> as I have an old HX board at home. If anyone is capable of doing this
> (it's not really hard, as you just need the datasheets for your chipset
> and a board containing the chipset itself to test)
>
> Now, at the moment, we don't have hardware drivers for any bootdevices.
> Should we go the way linux goes and write our own drivers or should we try
> to use other bioses (i.e. scsi bios on host adapter) for that?
>
> The second thing may be simpler and shorter, but I guess the first one is
> the way to go because we need drivers for floppies, parport devices etc,
> too.. :)
>
> Well.. I wrote this just to start discussion again :-)
>     Best regards,
>             Stefan.