[OPENBIOS]: EEPROM size

Charles Esson charlese at cvs.com.au
Sat Feb 13 11:22:50 CET 1999


I just relised I sent to a person not the group, sorry.

My comment is at the end.
<snip>

> > PS.
> > A couple of you have mentioned Open Boot. Where can I find out more about
> > it? Is Open Boot open as in open source or open as in marketing-buzzword
> > "open". Could this be used as the boot loader part of the project? Is it
> > something that we could build on?
>
> I found something on the SUN server I think. Search there for it. I think
> it's of no use for us at least because the sources are not free.

It is open in the sense there is a standard. IEEE 1275.

All these issues have been thought about and dealt with. It is a used by sun and
apple.

As the standard is in use by apple and sun, and as most open OS's work on these
machines it will not be a difficult task to get the OS's ported ( remember you
have nothing if you can't get anyone to port the OS).
Well I will rephrase that, all you have is a lot of work and an end result you
have nothing more than a boot loader. If that is your aim use the netbsd loader,
they have a cut down version that can be used for this purpose ( they also
support the Fcode drivers as specified in the PCI spec).

If the source was available there would be no need for OpenBIOS. Implementing
openBOOT would be a worthwhile aim for this group.

If it was implemented in a CPU independent way ( possible if openBOOT) the
efforts would move easily across the 64 bit transition that is looming.

Implementing something new will be a complete waste of time, and unlikely to get
finished, and if anything more than a boot loader unlikely to be taken up by
industry. And I ask, as netBSD has a perfectly good promable boot loader, why
would they use the result of this effort.

Take a long hard look at linux, did it succeed because of inherent greatness, or
because it implemented a current standard.

As an aside openboot gives us a clear aim "implement openBOOT". Anyone who has
followed this even a little should be able to see the problem faced if a small
tight specification is not forthcoming. All the time will be spent arguing what
is required and nothing will get done.

some references

http://www.penton.com/ed/Pages/magpages/june2298/embed/0622es2.htm

http://playground.sun.com/pub/p1275/home.html

http://www.hal.com/support/dpfirmware/


I have seen the standard itself onthe net, but do you think I can find it (
still looking).



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