[OpenBIOS] OpenBIOS as an intermediate loader

Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl.openbios at telemetry.co.uk
Mon Nov 3 20:07:52 CET 2008


My apologies- this might come up as a double posting, there was a bit of 
confusion while I was setting up a permanent gateway for the list.

OK, I've got OpenBIOS built on an x86 system but it's also running other 
things at the moment so it's going to be a few hours before I can make 
more progress. In the interim I wonder if I could ask some more questions.

i)    I can only boot the test system reliably from LILO (as distinct 
from GRUB) which doesn't have the equivalent of GRUB's "module" command. 
Is there a way of "piggybacking" openbios-x86.dict onto 
openbios.multiboot, or are there steps I can apply to 
openbios-builtin.elf to make it bootable?

ii)    Since in this role I'm not storing the dictionary in Flash 
presumably any changes imply a complete rebuild. Does this also apply to 
the setenv/printenv settings, or can they- for example- be stored in a 
file? I guess a variant of this question applies if booting from CD.

iii)    While I'm enthusiastic and have a small amount of experience of 
OpenPROM on Sun systems my Forth is extremely rusty. Where can I find 
more documentation on OpenBIOS facilities (as distinct from a Forth 
primer of which there are plenty around)?

Many years ago there was a debugger called Quaid Analyzer which could 
boot from floppy and set traps on BIOS entry points. I'm looking forward 
to finding out how much comparable functionality I can get out of OpenBIOS.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]



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