[coreboot] ADLO for buildrom

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 01:58:50AM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Myles Watson wrote:
> 
> > Legacybios is the Bochs BIOS ported to compile on gcc instead of with the
> > dev86 tools.  Kevin's intent (I'm paraphrasing) was to make it easy to
> > update the BIOS so that more developers would be able to fix/improve it.  He
> > hoped that the ability to boot operating systems with BIOS callbacks would
> > make Coreboot more popular as well.

Thanks Myles, that is a good summary.

> Is it tested and reliable in depth anywhere close to Qemu/Bochs BIOS? Or
> are we exchanging a fragile piece of code with a fragile and untested one?

What I have tested: booting linux, freedos, netbsd from floppy, cdrom,
and hard drives from qemu.  I have reports of Windows XP working as
well.

> The latest legacybios (0.2.0) was very bochs/qemu dependent, ie. it
> expected ram size reported in cmos instead of reading lbtable. We should
> definitely have a
> #define COMPILE_FOR_COREBOOT in either legacybios or bochs/qemu bios.

The legacybios code is currently just a port of bochs bios to gcc.  I
know of no additional hardware restrictions that it imposes.

I'm working on going through all the external hardware dependencies
that bochs bios/legacybios impose - I plan to send an email when I
have the list completed.

Unfortunately, my home machine "blew up" some time back, and the
headache of getting a replacement machine has set me back about a
month.  :-(

-Kevin