I've been wondering about that too. My Award BIOS support Legacy USB and I have
installed and operated RH 5.1 with no problems from a USB keyboard. So, the
BIOS sets up the USB hardware and either:
1. loads key codes into the keyboard controller chip -or-
2. stuffs key codes into the BIOS interface buffer
Both keyboards work at the same time to! So far, Award (now Pheonix) seems to
be the only BIOS that supports this feature. Seems like it was a hack provided
by a consultant to Award and other BIOS vendors are scrambling to provide the
same functionality...
Also, I've seen the kernal configurator provides some features like power
management and thermal support. These are highly chip-set specific functions
that are provided to Windoze through a standard BIOS interface but I'm not sure
how Linux knows about them...
Anybody else have any clues as to whats going on here ??
Thanks,
Ralph Stickley
Datalux, Corp.
Brendan Simon wrote:
>
> The only bios dependency that I know of is that the bios determines how to
> boot your OS (Linux, DOS, or whatever). It generally reads the MBR from
> the hard disk or floppy disk to find out where the executable lives on the
> physical media. It then loads that code to RAM and runs it. Once the
> linux kernel is running I don't think there is much dependecy on the bios.
>
> This is what I believe, but I can not guarantee it.
>
> Brendan Simon.
>
> Naushit Sakarvadia wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Can anybody tell me how much Linux Kernel is dependent on BIOS ?
> > Till I have figure out that for PCI card/.bus it is dependent on Bios
> > what else should
> > I consider if I want to remove BIOS from my Single board computer?
> >
> > And please can anybody tell me how many SBC( single board computers )
> > uses PCI interfaces?
> >
> > Please bear with my ignorance.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Naushit
