Subject: Re: BSD needs BIOS?
To: Grant Stockly <gussie@stockly.com>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/03/1999 15:19:59
In message <v04020a00b3cd136de866@[24.237.5.4]>,
Grant Stockly writes:
>But does NetBSD ever use the bios? Once the kernel is loaded, is the BIOS
>ever refrenced?
apm callbacks. Is power management an issue for your emebedded device?
(Matthias' pnpbios bus does pnpbios callbacks but we can ignore that
if you dont claim a PnP BIOS).
the normal i386 install code expects to find disk info from the
BIOS, but if you prepare a ROM image you probably can ignore that.
It'd be interesting to examine what's necessary to split sys/arch/i386
into separate `PC architecture' and `i386 CPU', but PC arch is so
dominant that the payback probably isn't worth it.
(I couldn't get to www.stockly.com, so I'm assuming your embedded
device has conventional Wintel interrupt control, ISA or successor I/O
architecture, support chips, etc; If it doesn't you'd probably have to
do the above split anyways.)