[OpenBIOS] Filesystem code in BIOS

[Alexander Viro]

On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, Dave Cinege wrote:

<snip>
> My peace:
> Everything reads FAT, most things read ext2. We need (and already have) code
> for both.

Dave, it just occured to me that we can have the damned thing (FAT, ext2,
whatever) written on the very same Forth. Think a bit - it will not make
the execution slower. But it will give us helluva lot of flexibility.
All we need is the function that reads sector #n from device foo.
Evrything above is _pretty_ simple exercise. What will you say about it?

I.e. we have 
	a) a lot of low-level stuff - C & assembler.
	b) Forth interpreter - C & assembler.
	c) hardware testing etc. written on that Forth using a)
	d) menu system - ditto.
	e) crash-dump saver - ditto.
	f) boot-time debugger - ditto.
	g) loader/FS - ditto.
	h) Good 'ol BIOS (realmode, etc.).
Core == a+b+c
Minimal system == a+b+c+g.
Minimal DOS system == a+b+c+h
Usual system == a+b+c+d+g+h
Plus extras for the screwy situations.

What do you think about such priorities/scheme?
								Al


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