Thanks for bringing this project up in this mailing list, Liam. It's unfortunate that there haven't been any replies to your post so far.
Also, muefircate <https://gitlab.com/tkchia/muefircate> (and its predecessor BiEFIrcate) have been mentioned in threads in freedos-devel before, but there hasn't been much engagement on it. That's really unfortunate, since this project seems to be exactly what FreeDOS needs to remain natively usable on newer PCs. Muefircate (a.k.a. "μuᴇꜰɪrcate") is a UEFI boot loader that would allow legacy OSes to boot from UEFI systems that lack a Compatibility Support Module (CSM), which applies to most motherboards and laptops that entered the market after 2020. The project accomplishes this by implementing the relevant legacy BIOS routines, notably INT 10h for video output and INT 13h for disk access, and by scanning the upper memory area for option ROMs and a video BIOS, and loading them if detected. (Even on modern UEFI systems, the upper memory area often still contains such loadable ROMs.) Even if no legacy video BIOS is detected, it could then try either loading a generic VGA BIOS from the SeaBIOS project, or failing that, implement INT 10h routines that output video through whatever framebuffer interface UEFI would expose. Also, there was some work in progress to emulate a PS/2 keyboard, since modern UEFI systems only take USB keyboards these days. And then it would search for MBRs to boot. And with those three (INT 10h, INT 13h, PS/2 keyboard emulation, MBR chainloading), I believe you'd already have the bare minimum to be able to boot DOS from a legacy-free x86-64 UEFI system, right? TKChia, who also maintains IA-16 (a 16-bit x86 fork of GCC), seems to have been working on muefircate entirely by themself. This project could really do with some more contributors, and if successful, would enable FreeDOS to remain bootable on newer bare-metal hardware for the foreseeable future, especially now that Intel has withdrawn their legacy-free 64-bit exclusive X86S specification proposal. I know that even without bare-metal compatibility, one would still be able to run FreeDOS in a VM under an emulator or a hypervisor, but I can't help but get the feeling that something would die in the project if new hardware wouldn't be able to run FreeDOS natively anymore. I'm sure we'll reach that point eventually, but as long as modern x86 CPUs still (at least theoretically) have the ability to run (Free)DOS natively, isn't it worth the effort to maintain that possibility? It would be wonderful if some knowledgeable people in the FreeDOS Developers community could reach out to TKChia with an offer to assist in completing muefircate to the point where it can actually boot FreeDOS, and then possibly even including muefircate in a separate FreeDOS ISO image "for newer legacy-free systems". Curious to read about other people's thoughts on this. Thanks, and happy holidays, everyone. On Sat, Nov 2, 2024 at 4:03 PM Liam Proven via Freedos-devel < freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > Since this is a FAQ, I was surprised to come across this today. > > https://gitlab.com/tkchia/muefircate > > It's a fork of the deleted BiEFIrcate > > There's another fork but it seems inactive: > > https://github.com/LoopZ/biefircate > > > -- > Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com > Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven > IoM: (+44) 7624 227612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 > Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >
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