[SeaBIOS] [PATCH] boot: boot menu up to 35 devices with letters and possible pages

[Ivan Ivanov]

Maybe you are correct - it is hard to fill a page (get 18 entries)
during the normal usage scenario - when not adding a lot of slightly
different versions of payload for debug purposes... However, at least
one person except me (Gerd Hoffmann) thought its a nice feature to
have, so I decided to spend some time to implement and test it. If all
the devices fit at 1 page - there will be no changes at user
interface, no paging enabled. This paging enables by itself only when
more than 18 entries are detected - only when it is necessary, all the
other time this code is inactive

If I remember correctly, applying this whole patch (with paging
included) increases seabios rom size just by ~250 bytes, removing the
paging wouldn't give any noticeable benefit in size. So personally I
don't see any downsides and will continue using this patch at its'
current version ;)

2017-07-12 2:16 GMT+03:00 Ivan Ivanov <qmastery16 at gmail.com>:
> Maybe you are correct - it is hard to fill a page (get 18 entries)
> during the normal usage scenario - when not adding a lot of slightly
> different versions of payload for debug purposes... However, at least
> one person except me (Gerd Hoffmann) thought its a nice feature to
> have, so I decided to spend some time to implement and test it. If all
> the devices fit at 1 page - there will be no changes at user
> interface, no paging enabled. This paging enables by itself only when
> more than 18 entries are detected - only when it is necessary, all the
> other time this code is inactive
>
> If I remember correctly, applying this whole patch (with paging
> included) increases seabios rom size just by ~250 bytes, removing the
> paging wouldn't give any noticeable benefit in size. So personally I
> don't see any downsides and will continue using this patch at its'
> current version ;)
>
>
> 2017-07-07 17:51 GMT+03:00 Kevin O'Connor <kevin at koconnor.net>:
>> On Sun, Jul 02, 2017 at 12:38:00AM +0300, Ivan Ivanov wrote:
>>> Recently I discovered another area where this "35 devices" patch is useful.
>>> When you need to debug a payload on the real coreboot-supported hardware,
>>> to speed up the development you could include a lot of slightly different
>>> versions of the same payload to your coreboot ROM, and then
>>> could test them all after a single flashing, saving your time and
>>> reducing the wearing out of SPI flash
>>
>> Sorry for the delay in responding.
>>
>> I think it would be useful to support more than 10 devices in the boot
>> menu.  I'm not convinced we need a paging menu though.  I suspect that
>> increasing the count to 20 (or whatever fits on a page) should be
>> sufficient for now.
>>
>> -Kevin