Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> I am interested in finding out -- what BIOS dependencies are lurking in
> a standard x86 kernel? How much arch/i386/* code requires BIOS
> presence?
>
I am making a board right now, with an AMD Elan SC520 chip, flash rom,
SDRAM, eepro100 ethernet controller, etc for embedded use. I plan to
boot linux on this system without buying a BIOS. One problem seems to
be SDRAM sizing and initializing. I believe that the kernel can handle
a PCI controller without a BIOS, but I have not verified this. My card
is "headless" (no vga), so I am relying on the serial console.
>APM, and several framebuffer drivers (which directly or indirectly rely
>on BIOS) wouldn't work.
APM requires Intel Pentium System Management Mode (SMM/SMI), I am not
share if this is under NDA, like the Intel BIOS writers guide (sp?).
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 15 2000 - 21:00:29 EST