Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
Deal list, When reading about works on web page I was a little bit confused about OLPC's BIOS solution. Seems at the very first stage OLPC are using Insyde BIOS, then move to LinuxBIOS, then move to OFW. My questions is: does OFW is the only thing that act as BIOS? Or OLPC is using LinuxBIOS as BIOS and use OFW as BIOS payload to do extra things? Thanks a lot, Kein ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
On Aug 24, 2007, at 5:28 AM, Kein Yuan wrote: Seems at the very first stage OLPC are using Insyde BIOS, then move to LinuxBIOS, then move to OFW. My questions is: does OFW is the only thing that act as BIOS? Or OLPC is using LinuxBIOS as BIOS and use OFW as BIOS payload to do extra things? Insyde was a development BIOS and bootloader used for a very short time until we were able to bootstrap our own. At that point, we moved to LinuxBIOS for both low-level hw init and bootloader, which was less than ideal and somewhat unwieldy. In a surprise move, SUNW then opened up their parts of the OFW/OBP code under a BSD license, which allowed Mitch Bradley (at that point working for us) to open up his own parts -- that of his company, FirmWorks -- and let us have an acceptably-licensed OpenFirmware we can use as a fancy and compact bootloader. LinuxBIOS still does low-level hardware initialization, and there aren't plans to change that in the near future. (Mitch will correct me if I got any of the history wrong.) -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
So in short words, OLPC is using LinuxBIOS to do low level HW init, then transfer control to OFW, which also acting as boot loader to load Linux OS, right? Thanks a lot, Kein On 8/24/07, Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 24, 2007, at 5:28 AM, Kein Yuan wrote: Seems at the very first stage OLPC are using Insyde BIOS, then move to LinuxBIOS, then move to OFW. My questions is: does OFW is the only thing that act as BIOS? Or OLPC is using LinuxBIOS as BIOS and use OFW as BIOS payload to do extra things? Insyde was a development BIOS and bootloader used for a very short time until we were able to bootstrap our own. At that point, we moved to LinuxBIOS for both low-level hw init and bootloader, which was less than ideal and somewhat unwieldy. In a surprise move, SUNW then opened up their parts of the OFW/OBP code under a BSD license, which allowed Mitch Bradley (at that point working for us) to open up his own parts -- that of his company, FirmWorks -- and let us have an acceptably-licensed OpenFirmware we can use as a fancy and compact bootloader. LinuxBIOS still does low-level hardware initialization, and there aren't plans to change that in the near future. (Mitch will correct me if I got any of the history wrong.) -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
On Aug 24, 2007, at 7:25 AM, Kein Yuan wrote: So in short words, OLPC is using LinuxBIOS to do low level HW init, then transfer control to OFW, which also acting as boot loader to load Linux OS, right? Correct. -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
Hi, On Aug 24, 2007, at 7:25 AM, Kein Yuan wrote: So in short words, OLPC is using LinuxBIOS to do low level HW init, then transfer control to OFW, which also acting as boot loader to load Linux OS, right? Correct. Actually, I think Mitch replaced the LinuxBIOS init code with his own OFW init about six months ago -- Ivan described the situation before that. So, we're using pure OFW. - Chris. -- Chris Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
On 24/08/07 10:38 -0400, Chris Ball wrote: Hi, On Aug 24, 2007, at 7:25 AM, Kein Yuan wrote: So in short words, OLPC is using LinuxBIOS to do low level HW init, then transfer control to OFW, which also acting as boot loader to load Linux OS, right? Correct. Actually, I think Mitch replaced the LinuxBIOS init code with his own OFW init about six months ago -- Ivan described the situation before that. So, we're using pure OFW. Yep. B3 and newer is using OFW from top to bottom [1]. Jordan [1] Well, actually, the low level stuff is in assembly, which I think the OFW purists will claim isn't actually OFW, but it all comes together in the same package, and Mitch owns it all, so to us, its OFW. -- Jordan Crouse Systems Software Development Engineer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Questions on LinuxBIOS and OpenFirmware
Ivan Krstić wrote: On Aug 24, 2007, at 7:25 AM, Kein Yuan wrote: So in short words, OLPC is using LinuxBIOS to do low level HW init, then transfer control to OFW, which also acting as boot loader to load Linux OS, right? Correct. Sorry, not correct. LinuxBIOS is not present at all. The low-level init is now done with a few lines of assembly language code and a big table of register values. Removing LinuxBIOS was what made it possible for me to get the startup time down to a couple of seconds, and to do the firmware part of resume in a few milliseconds. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
