[gentoo-user] [OFF-TOPIC] Best bios type thingy to boot a computer

[gentoo-user] [OFF-TOPIC] Best bios type thingy to boot a computer

[Andrew Lowe]

Hi all,
	A bit of an off topic question , mainly aimed at those who, shall we
say, been there and done that.

	It is very common to find webpages stating that the BIOS that is in a
PC is a mess with respect to the way things boot, device discovery  etc.
Looking back through the fog of time, would anyone like to point me at
something that gets a computer from a not running state to a running
state and, in their opinion, does it the "right" way,  in an elegant,
extensible way.

	This is not to start a flame war, I just want to do some reading,
wikipedia pages, for self interest on how a BIOS could have/should have
been done. I'm thinking of how DECStations, Alpha's SPARCs etc etc
booted up.

	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OFF-TOPIC] Best bios type thingy to boot a computer

[Andrew Udvare]

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On 8/31/18 10:46 AM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,

> 	This is not to start a flame war, I just want to do some reading,
> wikipedia pages, for self interest on how a BIOS could have/should have
> been done. I'm thinking of how DECStations, Alpha's SPARCs etc etc
> booted up.

Try

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting#Boot_sequence
https://github.com/coreos/grub/tree/2.02-coreos/grub-core/boot/i386/pc
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/main.c#L135

-- 
Andrew


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Re: [gentoo-user] [OFF-TOPIC] Best bios type thingy to boot a computer

[Andrew Lowe]

On 31/08/18 23:16, Andrew Udvare wrote:
> On 8/31/18 10:46 AM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
>> Hi all,
> 
>> 	This is not to start a flame war, I just want to do some reading,
>> wikipedia pages, for self interest on how a BIOS could have/should have
>> been done. I'm thinking of how DECStations, Alpha's SPARCs etc etc
>> booted up.
> 
> Try
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting#Boot_sequence
> https://github.com/coreos/grub/tree/2.02-coreos/grub-core/boot/i386/pc
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/main.c#L135
> 


	Thanks for the comment but I was more looking along the lines of "When
I used the early SPARC 1 the boot was controlled by ???? and it was
really good because......" hence my original comment about "been there,
done that", people who are old enough to know what a SPARC1 looked like
or even used a Personal Iris or a POWERstation.

	Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OFF-TOPIC] Best bios type thingy to boot a computer

[Godzil]

I really enjoyed (and still) Open Firmware which was used by Apple on the PowerPC macintosh (starting from the first PCI models up to the latest G5)

It is a nice environment, with all the capabilities of UEFI with even more as it come for free and directly with a Forth interpreter (basically the CLI is an immediate forth interpreter)

Was quite nice and tidy, allowing lots of stuff like modifications of the device tree and other nice things.

Was probably underused by Apple but yet, was the key for a lot of hacks on PPC models!


I think it was originated from Sun and use on spark station, not really sure there

> Le 31 août 2018 à 18:19, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> a écrit :
> 
>> On 31/08/18 23:16, Andrew Udvare wrote:
>>> On 8/31/18 10:46 AM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>> 
>>>    This is not to start a flame war, I just want to do some reading,
>>> wikipedia pages, for self interest on how a BIOS could have/should have
>>> been done. I'm thinking of how DECStations, Alpha's SPARCs etc etc
>>> booted up.
>> 
>> Try
>> 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting#Boot_sequence
>> https://github.com/coreos/grub/tree/2.02-coreos/grub-core/boot/i386/pc
>> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/main.c#L135
>> 
> 
> 
>    Thanks for the comment but I was more looking along the lines of "When
> I used the early SPARC 1 the boot was controlled by ???? and it was
> really good because......" hence my original comment about "been there,
> done that", people who are old enough to know what a SPARC1 looked like
> or even used a Personal Iris or a POWERstation.
> 
>    Andrew
>