Philosophical question...

[Mircea Ciocan]

Dave wrote:
> 
> This is a philosophical question that I am posing here for discussion.
> 
> What should the purpose of the BIOS be?
> 
> In my mind, the BIOS should be a minimal piece of code, used only to
> initialize the hardware to the extent needed to boot the system. This would
> include initializing the memory space and boot device, reading the first
> block of code from the boot device and turning control over to that block
> of code. This "boot block" would then finish initializing the hardware,
> loading API's, OS's or whatever, from the boot device.
>
	Well if we drop the the legacy of supporting DOS and windoze and tweak
a little the free OSes not to depend by "classic" BIOS calls ( I belive
that Linux still use at boot some BIOS calls for memory size discovery,
some APM sevices and so...) and add a little configuration program that
will be nice as a start.
	But somewhat it MUST be a metod for add-on cards to announce their
capabilitys more than what we have now on the PCI bus.
	BTW somebody studied the IEEE proposal ???

 
> I believe that all API level services should be provided by the boot block
> code that is loaded by the BIOS and not by the BIOS itself.
> 

	You mean by the kernell ;) ???

> The BIOS as boot loader would also be well suited for embedded applications
> because it is small, lightweight and can be specifically implemented to
> boot from things such as flash, EPROM, network cards, radio modems or other
> unusual boot devices.
> 
	In most embedded devices THE boot media is the ROM so, the
configuration is also enough fixed to not necesite a configuration
program and btw. is there some ( even scratch...) standard for what a
embbeded BIOS should do, tommorow I'll start coding to some micro-PC
board with ALI 6117C and I'll like a starting point.

P.S. Still nobody answered me, really nobody doing embedded on this list
:(((


		Mircea C.