From owner-freebsd-hardware  Fri Mar 10 21:52:17 2000
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To: up@3.am, Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, matt@msg.ucsf.edu
Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, tjm@codegen.com
Subject: Re: console friendly motherboard/BIOS ? 
In-Reply-To: Message from <up@3.am> 
   of "Sat, 11 Mar 2000 00:08:06 EST." <Pine.BSF.4.10.10003110007220.88680-100000@richard2.pil.net> 
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 21:52:10 -0800
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From: Parag Patel <parag@cgt.com>
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On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Mike Smith wrote:

> i then heard that some motherboard/BIOS combinations do this too.  since i
> need to upgrade my machine anyhow, i can kill 2 birds with one stone by
> getting such a system and skipping the Weasel.  can anyone suggest a
> motherboard/BIOS that does this?  i'm not picky about the CPU, any current
> models would likely be plenty fast.

Just FYI, I'm porting SmartFirmware to an Intel L440GX+ right now due to
interest from some customers.  SF is IEEE-1275 `OpenBoot' compliant
firmware written in ANSI C.  Please see <http://www.codegen.com/> for
details.

If all goes well (hah!) I should have a preliminary beta running out of
flash in 1-2 months, depending on how much free time I can find.  It'll
be pretty limited and won't support most legacy devices initially, and
the console will be only on /pci/isa/serial.

Once SmartFirmware is running from ROM, the next step is to port some of
the more popular OSes such as OpenBSD, Linux, and FreeBSD.  SF won't be
able to run any OS that needs a PC BIOS nor any cards that have only x86
ROMs (well, those without builtin C drivers).

Anyway, it'll take a while due to other work.  I'll post a note when I
have something running if enough people are interested.  Longer-term
plans are to port to a few additional motherboards and devices depending
on demand.


	-- Parag Patel


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