Re: [f-cpu] more about f-romfs

[Ben Franchuk <bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca>]

Cedric BAIL wrote:
> Personnaly I prefer the first solution, because more complex a bios, more
> time it take for a boot, and to be stable. An other think is that in a lot of
> case the kernel will redo what it has been done by it...

The bios needs well thought out boot virtual devices. I think it may be
wise to have F-CPU I/O devices in FPGA to handle disk, and one for User
interface and one for Video display as very little I/O nowadays is open
source. The PC's bios is a good example of how not to write a BIOS.
While CPU's have been streamlined I/O devices still need too much
software hand holding to run. Take a floppy disk drive , you need to
program 1) floppy controller 2) DMA channel 3) timer for motor 4) IRQ
devices 5) Memory management
6) I/O ports for things like disk in drive, eject. Ideally I would like
a bios
to have floppy.status(),floppy.seek(),floppy.r/w(),floppy.initialize()
as standard
calls with medium level abstraction. You get a cleaner interface I hope.
You get a HD ... oh that is just a floppy with more sectors! Why write a
New OS for every new device... we got a REAL BIOS it does all the work.

-- 
Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu *
www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html
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