Ronald G Minnich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Thu, 10 May 2001, David Chow wrote:
>
> > > On Wed, 9 May 2001, David Chow wrote:
> > >
> > > > I wonder does the Linux bios detect other XT roms in the bus and boot
> > > > them at all? Does it provide INT13 routines for compatibility?
> > >
> > > no INT13. No other roms. Those other roms are just not needed.
> > >
> > > ron
> >
> > But what about compatibility? If you all manufacturers as well as me, you
> > have to provide a int13 routines in order to compatible with other OS. It
> > is very hard to presuade people to use the bios unless you have good
> > compatibility.
>
> right now we support linux. We will be supporting all flavors of BSD.
>
> It's not legal to put NT into flash, so we can't.
>
> Booting NT, if it ever happens, will happen via linux somehow.
>
> Windows Me, 98, 95, XP, DOS: we just don't care.
Mostly true. The current design does allow for compatibility, but
as an add-on, instead of a core component. You boot something that loads
a backwards compatibility layer. That backwards compatibility layer
if good enough will let you run DOS & NT.
linuxBIOS addresses 2 sets of problems.
1) Current BIOS's are too complex to get right, in the limited time
they are being manufactured. Inevitably there problems in odd areas.
LinuxBIOS throws out the backwards compatibility crap resulting in
something noticeably cleaner.
2) Current BIOS's don't do interesting things like let you change the
configuration on hudreds of machines remotely with a single
command. Embed your application in the BIOS so you don't even need
a disk. Boot to a useful state in seconds. Workaround hardware
bugs, the manufacture doesn't care about.
With linuxBIOS doing a very simple boot of linux this kind of thing
becomes an almost trivial exercise.
As for DOS. I don't much care. But I do care about making certain we
aren't tied too tightly to linux. The ideal exercise to test a
compatibility layer would be to boot freedos. Or possibly just hack
freedos so it doesn't need a BIOS. I'm highly tempted to work on
this...
But to really go somewhere you need to provide a reason why what you
are doing is intrisically better at some thing then the competition.
LinuxBIOS has this in spades. So we don't need compatibilty to
persuade people to use LinuxBIOS.
Eric
