Introduction

[Jim Stewart]

Hello all,

I've been lurking on the mailing list for about a week now and I'd like
to say hi.  I have an interest in Bios code because I've written the
Bios for our Flashlite series of controllers and I'm interested in
building an embedded Linux machine.

As far as contributions go, I can't give you my code, but I do have the
source to a PC/XT Bios, written in Masm, that was freely circulated a
few years ago.  It does work, I've burned it into eproms and booted from
it and I've used just a little code from it.  It's not very pretty, but
if there is any demand, I'll post it for downloading.

Concerning Microsoft OS's and Bios, at least in the case of Win95, I
have it on pretty good authority that the OS uses *none* of the Bios
functions. This is documented in "Unauthorized Windows 95" and confirmed
by the VP of engineering at Award Software.  What I got from my
discussions with him is that the current microsoft philosophy is for the
Bios to initialize the hardware and sorta give the os clues as to what's
out there and nothing more.

Whether this is relevent to your efforts is not real clear yet as I
haven't been on the list very long.

In any case, I'll be lurking, and if I can be of any help, let me know.

Regards,
Jim

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[Pavel Machek]

Hi!
> Concerning Microsoft OS's and Bios, at least in the case of Win95, I
> have it on pretty good authority that the OS uses *none* of the Bios
> functions. This is documented in "Unauthorized Windows 95" and confirmed
> by the VP of engineering at Award Software.  What I got from my

Not true.Windows 95 do not use bios in full 32-bit mode. But they are
able to fall back to bios mode, and they do it quite often. (Load
hyperdisk accelator to try).

Pavel

[Dave Cinege]

Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> > Concerning Microsoft OS's and Bios, at least in the case of Win95, I
> > have it on pretty good authority that the OS uses *none* of the Bios
> > functions. This is documented in "Unauthorized Windows 95" and confirmed
> > by the VP of engineering at Award Software.  What I got from my
>
> Not true.Windows 95 do not use bios in full 32-bit mode. But they are
> able to fall back to bios mode, and they do it quite often. (Load
> hyperdisk accelator to try).

Win95 (98) *IS* DOS no matter all the 32-bit extensions or not. I've even read
Caldera was able to replace the DOS base with their OpenDOS, and will prove this
in court concerning their M$ lawsuit.

I'm still not convinced what WinNT actually is. I know for sure that it uses
DOS to boot. (Via my tireless hacking at it to get it to fully reside on and
boot from a logical partition, of which I was successful except for 2 files.)
It needs DOS to get to NTLDR at the least.

[Stephen Williams]

[e-mail] said:
> I'm still not convinced what WinNT actually is. I know for sure that
> it uses DOS to boot. (Via my tireless hacking at it to get it to fully
> reside on and boot from a logical partition, of which I was successful
> except for 2 files.) It needs DOS to get to NTLDR at the least.

Yes, but that is the last of it.

NT is like Linux in that it is a real operating system, and not the
Win95 fake. Its access to the hardware is through the HAL, and various
device drivers. DOS programs are executed by running them in a DOS VM
in an NT process.