[OpenBIOS] Re: OpenFirmware and interrupt-map

[Stefan Reinauer]

* ron minnich <rminnich at lanl.gov> [040203 22:46]:
> I don't expect the cards to come with fcode any time soon, if ever. Four
> reasons: first, the market is more or less zero, and the all the non-x86 
> systems support x86 emulators to support the x86 option roms; second, 
> if they support two option roms (fcode, x86) that makes for lots more 
> work; third, the PC market will probably never go to fcode; and fourth, I 
> bet they (naively) think that fcode would make reverse engineering easier. 

I fully agree that using ndisasm is by no means more complicated than
using my fcode detokenizer detok. All x86/efi option rom discussion sounds rather 
like a game of not stepping on the others' toes rather than technologically driven
reasoning. 

OpenBIOS can be used on top of a PC BIOS as well, thus it could allow to
use any Open Firmware compliant pci card in a machine that still has
different firmware in rom. This is one step towards the great unification.. 

If the concept of having a diversity of hardware architectures available
is going to survive, there has to be a generic solution to the early
initialization issues. 

Best regards,
  Stefan Reinauer