Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:36:37 +0100 From: Ed Schouten <ed@fxq.nl> To: Bill Vermillion <bv@wjv.com> Cc: FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: New bus-unit wiring via hints.. Message-ID: <20071028133637.GC5411@hoeg.nl> In-Reply-To: <20071028124604.GA43062@wjv.com> References: <20071028081634.722CF16A547@hub.freebsd.org> <20071028124604.GA43062@wjv.com>
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--IhRHiOJhC/7Q+39k Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable * Bill Vermillion <bv@wjv.com> wrote: > Hmm. I started running Xenix systems on Intel systems [SCO's > Xenix, and Altos systems] back in the 1984 era. >=20 > At that time as I recall it the BIOS was ONLY used to get > the information to boot the system, and everything else in the BIOS > was ignored. This caused a lot of confusion for people who had > come from a DOS oriented world and saying things such as "well it > works in DOS so *i*x must be broken. >=20 > So - have things changed where the OS looks at the BIOS [in the > *i*x world - or is it like this old fart remembers where BIOS was > only used to find the HD and boot the OS? A good example is FreeBSD on the Microsoft Xbox. The Xbox has no PC-style BIOS and yet it's capable of running a (slightly patched) FreeBSD kernel. A disadvantage of the Xbox is that it doesn't have a VGA BIOS interface, which means the port uses a custom framebuffer driver to make the console work. --=20 Ed Schouten <ed@fxq.nl> WWW: http://g-rave.nl/ --IhRHiOJhC/7Q+39k Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFHJJBl52SDGA2eCwURAtFEAJsEwdlyD2gfEqcWmrNl+j1v1HNskgCeKdYr uI2d6QtLV08r8+Hq41xly24= =qzWp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --IhRHiOJhC/7Q+39k--
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