> I remember the AMI WinBIOSes were on the market for a really short period of
Icky :)
> time. I'm sure most of you have also seen the IBM ThinkPad BIOS - it looks
> nice, but the interface is really an overkill for a task like setting up
> the machine BIOS. The interface just makes things slower.
Actually, I work for IBM in ThinkPad support, and it appears that the
Easy-Setup is a feature of our ThinkPads that our target audience really
appreciates. It's very easy to use, which makes my job easier.
Unfortunately, most of the settings are done through a program called
'ThinkPad Configuration'. The EasySetup has never had a lot of options
(usually there's no more than the boot sequence). I think the 'Test' icon
in it is the most useful one, followed by 'Initialize'.
ThinkPad Configuration is also easy to use, but you need to run one of the
support operating systems, ie. OS/2 or some kind of Windows. DOS command
line is supported too. It'd be nicer to have all this stuff in the BIOS
(so us poor support folk would not have to remember all the differences
between the OS/2 version and the windows version). I wouldn't need a 2MB
DOS partition for it either then.
Personally, I think the BIOS should be nothing but POST and a
sophisticated boot loader. The boot loader would replace LILO, BootManager
and whatever windows folk tend to use to boot their toy and be very
flexible and hackable.
Hardware setup would either be fully automatic (should PCI be able to do
this) or in the MCA style where you have a setup diskette (or hd
partition) that contains the setup program. This setup program would not
require an operating system (unlike MCA, which uses DOS). It would rely on
the flexible boot loader. Someone proposed a boot loader that understands
ELF executable files and reads a simple file system (which can be put on
floppy, harddrive or even RAM/ROM/flash ...)
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu