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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!gmd.de!fanoe!veit
From: veit@fanoe.gmd.de (Holger Veit)
Subject: Re: 386/486 motherboard ROM BIOS & 386BSD ( was Re: [REPOST] FDC DRIVER )
Message-ID: <1993Mar9.114737.17888@gmd.de>
Keywords: FDC floppy device driver dependencies
Sender: veit@fanoe (Holger Veit)
Nntp-Posting-Host: fanoe
Organization: GMD - German National Research Center for Computer Science
References: <C30zxt.CJD@sugar.neosoft.com> <1993Mar4.103308.24945@marie.uucp> <C3E4nx.60o@sugar.neosoft.com> <1993Mar9.080706.14422@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 11:47:37 GMT
Lines: 44
In article <1993Mar9.080706.14422@netcom.com>, pascal@netcom.com (Richard Childers) writes:
|>
[...]
|> Am I correct in understanding that 386BSD does _not_ use on-board BIOS ? And
|> if so, does this imply that there is a market for BIOS-less 386/486 mother-
|> -boards ? Or is it a less-than-complete operating system that relies upon
|> additional firmware, the which of utilization allows for ( apparently ) smal-
|> -ler kernels, et caetera ?
Yes and No. The machine needs the BIOS for doing the whole power-on-self-test
and device initialization stuff, like with any OS running on PC. So, a
BIOS-less machine is a myth, a no-go. 386bsd, as any other OS, also needs
to be bootsstrapped, i.e. in this case, one and only one disk sector which
does the following things must be loaded from fd/hd into main memory.
Any BIOS which can do this is good enough. From the moment, the primary boot
loader (this sector) is executed in memory, no BIOS (of any kind) is
needed any longer. There is one exception from the rule: there are special
versions of primary and secondary loaders which make use of the BIOS, but at
least the running system ("/386bsd") is BIOS-clean (which causes some of the
existing troubles ;-)).
You might think over some more consequences: If you manage to get a
kernel into the correct locations in memory from anywhere, proper initialization
of course done, it will work. The kernel might be copied from a large ROM
or copied from another network side.
|>
|> It would be nice to not have a dependency upon BIOS, for numerous reasons.
|>
There is none, although one might have liked to use at least the video BIOS
support for several things.
Holger
|>
|> richard childers pascal@netcom.com
--
Dr. Holger Veit | INTERNET: Holger.Veit@gmd.de
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