There is the linuxbios.org project which is developing a Open Source BIOS, but it does not support the legacy BIOS calls directly, there is a payload for legacy BIOS applications: ADLO + Bochs, ADLO apparently came from a security project working on a trusted boot process with signed binaries but as I understand it can't be released because the author is having trouble getting a patent license, which since he is employed at a university was assigned to the university, ick :(
The LinuxBIOS project started with a Linux kernel in the BIOS ROM but the ROMs did not grow in size as expected so mostly they load from compact flash/hard disk on ide or netboot. Once you get Linux loaded you can use kexec to load something else. They currently have quite a variety of chipsets supported including early serial port access, but they have not bothered with USB yet, there are only 3 kinds of USB chipsets I know of, ohci (Apple/NCR/TI) uhci (Intel/Via) and ehci (USB 2.0 - everybody) even the embedded people seem to use one of these programming models, the ARM SL811HS looks a lot like a ohci controller if I remember correctly. The chips are not too bad but I seem to recall that the protocol is rather messy and that is likely where any problems would occur. By the way I am assuming that running pcscd over the network to a thin X terminal would work like the remote sound demon (esd) and would use the DISPLAY? variable to select where to connect to, I would suggest using something like a ssh tunnel for the communications as the pcscd sends the PIN to the card and I assume you don't want that passing over the network in the clear nor the challenge/response results either. I have run the whole X session over the ssh tunnel with reasonable results so sound and authentication over the tunnel should not cause to much in the way of problems. _______________________________________________ Muscle mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.musclecard.com/mailman/listinfo/muscle
