[OpenBIOS] PCI setup code

Ronald G. Minnich rminnich at lanl.gov
Thu Mar 30 09:10:32 CEST 2000


On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Alan Grimes wrote:

> I have been studying operating system design for years in hopes of
> writing my own. I strongly agree with Colin, Hardware info, init, and
> drivers should be in the bios or somewhere outside of the kernel...
> Even linux moves many drivers out into loadables... =) This trend is
> good. It is still fairly kludgy but its better than having everything
> inside the kernel.


well, that's ok. I've been doing OS for years. If you look inside the
kernels long enough, you'll find that the bios did not help you as much as
you think. It tends to get things wrong. Also, there are things you'd like
to be able to do that you can't because companies like Intel hide them in
proprietary BIOS code.

I have to say, having done OS porting and development in both BIOS and
non-BIOS environments, I've found the non-BIOS actually much easier. The
assembly code hackers who write BIOSes are not all that good, and they are
certainly not concerned about making life better for us open source OS
types.

Your comment about loadables really has no relation to BIOS or
non-BIOS. those are very different issues.

ron



-
To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at freiburg.linux.de
with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message



More information about the openbios mailing list