Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 11:05:37 -0800 From: Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org> To: "Ronald G. Minnich" <rminnich@lanl.gov> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do? Message-ID: <200003291905.LAA01047@mass.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 29 Mar 2000 09:09:20 MST." <Pine.LNX.4.20.0003290906060.2491-100000@mini.acl.lanl.gov>
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> Question, has anyone tried booting freebsd on raw hardware, i.e. absent a > bios? I am curious as to how good a job it can do if, e.g., no enable bits > are set in PIIX4, BARs are not set on PCI devices, no IRQs are assigned, > and so on. Anyone feel they are close enough to this to say? Not good. You'd also have to take care of PCI setup, interrupt routing, any board-specific hacks using the GPIO bits, etc. (eg. on most systems you'll need to turn the CPU fan, power LEDs, etc. on) Doing this without the BIOS is likely to be a major PITA, and different for every single board. Outside of some expensive and boring embedded vendors' products, you're unlikely to get the sort of information you need without reverse-engineering the BIOS that's already there. > See www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios to see why I am asking. I see no reason I > could not also put FreeBSD as the BIOS in nvram as well. If you're trying > to build a cluster, you have to kill the BIOS. Well, they're going to have the same basic stuff, and I can see that they're not having much fun trying to get there. I'm curious as to what you mean by "have to kill the BIOS" though; I'm not seeing why it's an issue. -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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