[geeks] OF in a PC

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at 21:26:45 (-0500), R. Lonstein wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] OF in a PC
>
> On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 03:48:16PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 	[snip]
> > able to find any documentation anywhere of anyone even beginning to
> > work on creating a true OpenFirmware-based machine with anything
> > even remotely close to any x86 processor.
> 	[snip]
> 
> Does the OpenBIOS project count as a first step closer?

Nope, not even close in my opinion -- OpenBIOS is just some dudes
writing yet another incarnation of the IBM PC BIOS, with the same stupid
ancient APIs and everything.  Sure they might eventually get closer to
having good implementations of real-world features that could end up
being useful outside the M$ OS world (eg. a proper serial port console),
but that still misses almost the entire point behind OpenFirmware.

The worst thing is that OpenBIOS still doesn't avoid them having to do
all the hard parts.  While Intel's motherboard designs are often copied
(as they were intended to be), there are lots of other designs too, and
each one needs custom BIOS code.

I've often wondered though whether OpenFirmware for i386 might not be
wrapped around the really important system specific bits of the BIOS,
thus avoiding having to get detailed hardware specifications for every
motherboard you want to support.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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