On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Erik Goldoff <egold...@gmail.com> wrote: > It’s all about standards … either it has to emulate BIOS to interface with > existing Operating Systems, or the OS developers have to code future > versions to it and drop any backwards hardware capability. ( or bloat the > os more with dual capability ??? )
Boot loader code is tiny (because it has to be). Bloat isn't really an issue. It might mean installing a different boot loader for BIOS and one for $NEW_THING, but that's about it. Once the OS boots the OS device drivers take over and the BIOS (or $NEW_THING) doesn't matter anymore. The main reason the BIOS has held on as long as it has is that it's been less painful to extend the BIOS than it has been to replace everything else. Now that we're up against a hard limit in the conventional IBM-PC partition table, we have to break backwards compatibility to move forward anyway. So now's the time to change everything else, too. I'm betting $NEW_THING will still have a good deal of BIOS compatibility/emulation anyway, for hardware compatibility. Otherwise option card BIOS ROMs might break. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
