[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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