Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:40:14 -0800 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: Svein Skogen <svein-listmail@stillbilde.net> (Listmail account) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HAL must die! Message-ID: <83D913FC-4A8B-489B-9BD1-09C33A05C31D@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <4D75BE6F.3000100@stillbilde.net> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1103061251530.95312@abbf.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz> <il2qar$ka1$1@dough.gmane.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1103071048200.903@abbf.onfvpvfc.arg> <AANLkTim_%2BZJ__dHF1i7NbAvbN65b8RNPo%2Bik=O5A9cot@mail.gmail.com> <4D75BE6F.3000100@stillbilde.net>
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On Mar 7, 2011, at 9:28 PM, Svein Skogen (Listmail account) wrote: > But he does raise a valid problem (if more than zero users, etc). "We" > (I include fellow FreeBSD users, but also OSX and Linux users) do lack a > decent cross-platform device manager stack, with uniform device name > enumeration. DevFS (and its peers in Linux) does give us a start, but > not enough to build a system on. However, I suspect that getting this to > be truly cross-platform would take "a known name" in BSD-land, > OpenIndiana/Illumos and Cupertino agreeing with RMS that "making this > worth would be a nice summer-of-code project". Oddly enough, Sun, IBM, and Apple agreed on something known as OpenFirmware, and expansion cards were expected to provide basic OS-independant drivers written in Forth on a ROM (PROM/EPROM/EEPROM). It worked pretty well, but consumers complained loudly about spending an extra $20 on a ~$200 AHA-1540 card to get the OF version.... Much of that is still available under a BSD license (something called OpenBoot, IIRC), but most of the industry is staggering towards EFI instead. Regards, -- -Chuck
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