David Seifert <seifert@sequent.com> writes:

> Why does the PCI spec care whether the code that mucks with these
> registers is linked into the lump called firmware or the lump called
> the OS?

Because the firmware knows more about the machine state than any OS ever
could, unless you have a few million and vendor support.

> For small machines (workstations) I think the firmware
> should do as little as possible.  Sanity test memory,
> init the memory's ecc and a few essential things, load the OS
> and jump to it.

That pretty much means that only high-budget OSs will get the resources
to run on 100 slightly different motherboards.

I take the other approach -- I'd like hardware _drivers_ to be in the
firmware, and called from NetBSD.  Like open firmware, sorta.

--Michael