[OpenBIOS] Platform for the OPENBIOS question

[Martin Roth]

It doesn't look to me like the pci spec says that Open firmware is required.

>From the pci 2.2 spec:
6.3. PCI Expansion ROMs
The PCI specification provides a mechanism where devices can provide expansion RPM 
code that can be executed for device-specific initialization and, possibly, a system boot 
function...

6.3.1. PCI Expansion ROM Contents
PCI device expansion ROMs may contain code (executable or interpretive) for multiple 
processor architectures.....

This all says to me that you can provide one, multiple, or no roms in your pci adapter.

martin



On Wed, 22 Aug 2001 16:33:11 +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:

>* Ronald G Minnich <rminnich at lanl.gov> [010821 21:03]:
>> On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
>> 
>> > In fact, not having an Open Firmware compliant ROM on a PCI adapter breaks
>> > compliance to the PCI standard, which makes total sense.
>> 
>> stefan, doesn't that make every vga card out there a violator? does any
>> good graphics hardware have fcode in the rom for init?
>
>As far as I understand the specs, yes, this is true. Depending on what you
>consider good, maybe there are some cards - the Sun Ultra5/10 have PCI graphics
>adaptors that contain such a code, so it should be possible to use these when
>the basic API to OpenFirmware is working. I know that Adaptec has FCode 
>Firmware on some of their scsi adaptors. I don't know how much these cards'
>hardware differs from their PC equivalents. Eventually it is even possible
>to reflash some of the PC cards with the Fcode firmware, but I don't know
>about legal issues when doing this. Though, at least Adaptec had FCode updates
>on their web page some time ago.
>
>> If at any point you get something going we would like to see about linking
>> it in to linuxbios. If this works you will have more platforms to work
>> with.
>
>Since you have far more experience with the early setup code, I think this
>would be a very good symbiosis.
>
>  Best regards
>      Stefan
>
>-- 
>Mad, adj.:
>        Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
>                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
>-
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