[coreboot] Discussion of CareBear and patrickg for my question "can coreboot+seabios+filo boot XP from usb drive" on IRC

[JasonZhao at viatech.com.cn]

Post the discussion to here, just for future reference :)

[16:13] <patrickg> moin
[16:13] <jasonzhao> I want to get some help from you :)
 [16:14] <jasonzhao> I want to boot XP on a usb drive, So I want to know
if I should have coreboot+seabios(for windows/dos envirement)+file(for
boot from usb)+xp
[16:15] <patrickg> jasonzhao: just post your questions then. you might,
or might not get answers ;)
[16:15] <agaran> jasonzhao: i was joking of course
[16:16] <patrickg> jasonzhao: filo won't help you. we had a google
summer of code project to make an optionrom for usb booting, but it's
not finished
[16:16] == phueper [n=phueper at invsv002.invision.de] has joined #coreboot
[16:17] <jasonzhao> <patrickg> :) no problem.  about one year before, I
frequently log on this channel. But I have been absence for long long
time
[16:18] <jasonzhao> FILO announce that it support booting from usb
drive. see
this:http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/filo/browser/trunk/filo/README
[16:19] <jasonzhao> o, patrickg ... are you the one from google?
[16:25] <patrickg> jasonzhao: I was mentoring the project, but I didn't
work on it, and I'm not associated with google in any way
[16:25] <patrickg> jasonzhao: FILO can load from USB, but it doesn't
setup the BIOS interrupts to make windows able to use that capability
[16:27] <jasonzhao> So , maybe seabios can prepare interrupt need by XP,
then boot FILO as a payload. then FILO load XP?
[16:28] <patrickg> jasonzhao: FILO uses the usb driver in libpayload,
and the optionrom project was (and is) about building a BIOS interrupt
"frontend" to that driver
[16:30] <jasonzhao> So, this optionrom is indepent module can be include
in CBFS, then called by SEABIOS or FILO?
[16:30] <patrickg> by seabios, yes
[16:31] <CareBear\> but the optionrom is really far from working
[16:31] <CareBear\> and the project stopped
[16:31] <CareBear\> short answer: I don't think there is a solution
today
[16:32] <CareBear\> but I think there are several ways to make it
possible in the future
[16:32] <CareBear\> 1. reuse USB driver from FILO in SeaBIOS
[16:32] <jasonzhao> Hi CareBear, thanks
[16:32] <CareBear\> 2. add Windows booting to FILO (maybe using FreeLDR
from ReactOS)
[16:33] <CareBear\> Hi jason! Nice to talk to you again. :)
[16:33] <jasonzhao> me too!
[16:34] <jasonzhao> can I copied these words from you and patrickg then
post on maillist.
[16:34] <patrickg> CareBear\: the optionrom thing was started because
you can't easily push the libpayload driver into seabios
[16:35] <CareBear\> *nod* not easily no
[16:35] <patrickg> so you basically have to fork the driver. that will
be fun...
[16:36] <CareBear\> my thinking is that the optionrom interface itself
creates too many problems, and that the driver .. yeah.
[16:36] <CareBear\> possibly the driver could be changed a little so
that it can be used both by libpayload and SeaBIOS without changes
[16:37] <CareBear\> at that point it's actually a project of it's own
[16:40] <patrickg> seabios has quite tight memory requirements. EHCI
will definitely kill that (thanks to the multitude of companion
controllers it usually comes with)

JasonZhao