Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:24:22 -0700 From: Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org> To: Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS? Message-ID: <200006160124.SAA01295@mass.osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:15:30 EDT." <39497FB2.33D63EB7@bellatlantic.net>
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> Mike Smith wrote: > > > > > > I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three > > > > months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly > > > > well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his > > > > results pretty representative of the issue. > > > > > > Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but > > > what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the > > > new Intel's proposal for BIOS. It's the only thing that will > > > be (and is) on IA-64, and also will be retrofitted on the > > > 32-bit machines. It's a very flexible thing including extensive > > > API, OS-independent loadable drivers, networking, serial console, etc. > > > I'm in progress of reading the specs (avaliable from the Intel's > > > developer web site), so I don't know more detail yet. The spec says > > > that the full source code of reference implementation is available > > > for free. By the way, they used FreeBSD as the base of their EFI > > > API implementation (libc, networking and other). > > > > It's still entirely useless without the _board_specific_ initialisation > > code, which vendors typically aren't going to just hand out. > > Right, but why would you want to replace the existing BIOS ? That's more or less my point - I think the only argument for it so far is sheer masochism. 8) > > The real issue with replacing a system's BIOS is not the top layer > > (services etc.), it's initialisation and random magic that is entirely > > specific to the board's actual implementation details. > > I think it depends mostly on the chipset used, hardly the board > manufacturers add much or anything at all. And there are not that > many modern chipsets on the market, and seems like their number > is reducing over time as Intel gets more involved. Actually, general experience suggests that's not the case at all. -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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