Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!olivea!hal.com!decwrl!deccrl!news.crl.dec.com!pa.dec.com!engage.pko.dec.com!newsdaemon From: eje@irenaeus.mlo.dec.com (Eric James Ewanco) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: new boot roms Message-ID: <1992Sep3.144421.575@engage.pko.dec.com> Date: 3 Sep 92 14:44:21 GMT References: <183c4vINNfit@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> Sender: newsdaemon@engage.pko.dec.com (USENET News Daemon) Reply-To: ewanco@mlo.dec.com Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 38 In article <183c4vINNfit@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>, brtmac@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (Brett McCoy) writes: > From: brtmac@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (Brett McCoy) > Subject: new boot roms > Date: 2 Sep 1992 16:36:31 -0500 > Okay, here's a thought. Why doesn't someone write up some new boot > room code that would make a PC act a lot like a Sun when you turn it > on. Get rid of all the gunky MS-DOS support. Put in a nice little > monitor to examine memory and various registers and i/o ports and > allow easy booting from any device and any partition on that device. I think that is an excellent idea -- in fact I think hosing the BIOS is going to be a necessary step in moving to more advanced operating systems. BIOS is out of date. We need SCSI support in the ROMs, a monitor, and flexible booting choices. We need BIOS code written in protected mode (like IBM's PS/2 code), not in real mode. We need support for seven disk drives and other things. > This is far, far beyond any skills I have, but it seems like it might > be worthwhile and would solve a lot of the problems and workarounds > that people are having and using now. Maybe someone should get on > AMI's or Phoenix's back and get them to add some support for other > OS's than MS-DOS in their boot code. Some company should propose a standard. Maybe Digital. IBM if they don't try to extract license fees from everyone. With 1 MB flash ROMs 1 mm thick, 8 mm wide and 15 cm long, we can afford to put a lot of ROM in PCs and put lots of stuff in it. With memory management we can swap unused ROM out or compatibility ROM in. It is certainly something desparately needed. -- /=============================================================================\ | Eric Ewanco - Software Engineer For the rash and outrageous opinions ex-| | Digital Equipment Corp, Maynard MA pressed herein I alone am responsible; | | ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com they do not belong to DIGITAL(TM). | \==============================- 2 Th 2:15 -==================================/