... and get back many of the restrictions which make people unhappy with
their current BIOS (e.g. that 1024 cylinder limit or some variation of
it).
> Recently, we've seen examples of features that have been unusable or at least
> difficult to use in Linux because the proprietary BIOS doesn't enable them or
> support them correctly. (UDMA, IO-APIC, ThinkPad APM...)
I'm not familiar with the details of those cases, but I'd assume you could
just replace whatever the BIOS currently does if you really want to.
> In addition to this improvement, we could offer extra functionality, like
> password-protection upon booting,
There are several ways to accomplish this already, e.g.
- some BIOS' already support password protection
- restrict boot options in BIOS and require password in boot loader
- if all else fails, move untrusted hardware somewhere where the BIOS
doesn't find it and require password in boot loader
> an interface to a Linux device which allows you to edit BIOS settings
> (imagine an Xbios config program :).
You can already access the configuration RAM and, with some effort, you
could probably also find where the BIOS stores that data and in what
format.
> We could incorporate serial console support,
Besides accessing the BIOS setup screens, this already works.
> MILO-style boot loading,
What exactly do you mean ?
> With hardware watchdogs, we could implement complete core dumps to the
> network on the way back up...
... or to a disk. Yes, this, and a network boot without hardware changes
would probably be the most interesting features.
> Calls to re-implement ROM BASIC might be shot down in flames though.
Just switch to 40x25 text mode and display "*** NO ROM BASIC ***" ;-)
> There are already people offering BIOS upgrades that haven't been tailored to
> particular boards. Take a look at http://www.mrbios.com/
They have a very long list of supported boards along with the order
numbers for the corresponding BIOS, so I guess what they put on the
chips isn't exactly generic ...
> The basic functionality required from a BIOS implementation is clearly
> documented in a number of places, and should be fairly easy to conform to.
Hmm, I wonder what the DOSEMU folks think about that statement.
> Providing a GPL'd BIOS implementation is a feasible project. It could be
> extremely useful.
I'm not so sure about the "extremely". It seems that most added
functionality such a BIOS could provide is already available in a
perhaps less elegant but acceptable way.
But if you're determined and have a few spare years, you can certainly
try :-)
- Werner
-- _________________________________________________________________________ / Werner Almesberger, DI-ICA,EPFL,CH werner.almesberger@lrc.di.epfl.ch / /_IN_R_131__Tel_+41_21_693_6621__Fax_+41_21_693_6610_____________________/- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu