On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 8:47 AM, Fred .
<eldmannen@gmail.com> wrote:
> The ability for SeaBIOS to launch a "setup program" is already present
> - it just requires the creation of this setup program. Several
> coreboot payloads already have some menu drawing code, so this
> shouldn't be too difficult. Frankly though, there isn't much to
> configure (and that is a good thing).
>
>> * Competition have password protection. SeaBIOS does not.
>
> Again - this is part of the "setup program" - there is nothing in
> SeaBIOS to protect.
The BIOS of the competition have two types of passwords.
One to boot the system and one to access the setup screen.
Password for bootup has nothing todo with the "setup program".
Since there is currently no such setup program, the initial
implementation for a bootup password could use a password configured
at compile-time.
I think it's useful to step back and look at it in a different light. The "competition" follows a very different usage model than coreboot and SeaBIOS; Many commercial BIOS products are essentially OSes in themselves, which has historically been considered a bad thing in the coreboot community and by extension the SeaBIOS community.
From that perspective, it doesn't make much sense for SeaBIOS to have a boot password when every modern OS has a robust authentication mechanism already.
(you have some good ideas, but keep in mind many people simply want SeaBIOS to do its job and get out of the way)
>
>> * SeaBIOS supports 32-bit PCI. It should support 64-bit PCI.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here.
I've read that SeaBIOS supports 32-bit PCI.
http://www.seabios.org/Releases#SeaBIOS_0.5.1
PCI also have 64-bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI#64-bit_PCI
64-bit PCI is actually obsolete. It was used for a period in server platforms, but has been supplanted by PCI Express.