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[Stefan Reinauer]

Hi..


[about:16bit stuff in bios/compatibility to DOS/Windows]

> > IMHO this is not the way to go, since many people still have Windows95
> > installed (because of the games), but would like OpenBIOS. I would leave an
> > option that links a set of wrapper functions.

The problem is, that the available space on a flashchip is today 128 k or
256 k, depending on the system. Because 256k chips are still too rare,
I'd suggest that we try to get the most stuff into 128k and maybe only
some not really needed features as the animated logo with mp3 sound at
bootup into the second 128k :-))

> Would it be possible somehow to have the original bios image on the
> harddisk, and then have an option on the boot console where you could
> load it into memory and start it? It may very well not be possible,
> but if it was, then we could concentrate on our stuff, and let the
> original bioses support the win95/98/dos/other os's... Also having
> the possibility to select bios at boot would be a cool feature! :)
> Just a thought...

Well.. This is really a good idea. I once thought about loadable bios
plugins on hd or via network, but that may be very hard.
The easiest way would probably be to load the bios directly from harddisk,
as it can be done on the Alpha AXP boards. We could do this before the cpu
is switched to protected mode or afterwards and switch back to realmode to
load award or ami bios. The first would save some code, the second seems
to me to be the more elegant version, because we can do the whole floppy
stuff in PM (which could be necessary if we want to support ia64 some day)

Stefan.

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