[OpenBIOS] Questions and comments (was Re: openbios and via)

[Jeff Garzik]

"Joseph D. Foley" wrote:
> 
> More importantly, borland released (*free, for real*) TurboC to the web,
> which supports far pointers, among other things.

And probably optimizes better too...  But I'll have to run it under
DOSemu, as I don't want to install MS-DOS or FreeDOS.  :)

BTW, can the OpenBIOS firmware be tested from Linux or a boot disk,
without having to flash the development code into flash mem?

It looks like it wouldn't be hard to integrate Linux's bios32.c into
OpenBIOS, to provide PCI support.

And I have an Intel PIIX, a popular chipset, in addition to Via, so
maybe I can add Via and PIIX4, once PCI support is in.  (both chipsets
are generally controlled via PCI)

Finally, another question:  Does OpenBIOS ('make config ; make') built a
32-bit protected mode image, or a 16-bit image?  The make output seems
to imply both, though most of the code I look at is 16-bit.

Can we do _everything_ in protected mode?

Personally, I think doing everything in C is the best choice, as you can
more easily compile code to be either 16-bit or 32-bit.  That way ROMs
can choose whether they want larger, faster firmware, or smaller but
slower firmware.

Regards,

	Jeff




-- 
Custom driver development	|    Never worry about theory as long
Open source programming		|    as the machinery does what it's
				|    supposed to do.  -- R. A. Heinlein
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