Supporting extension ROMs and beyond...

[Adam Agnew]

> If I stick with this requirement that the VGA roms get supported by an
> external ELF piece, I have to do this:
>
> linuxbios -> external ELF bit that does VGA ROMs -> some other bit that
> loads linux from flash -> linux
>

I tend to agree with Sone that much of these functions should be seperated
into ELFs, but I did so on the assumption that we had a framework to
return to LinuxBIOS already. Is that still in the works? It seemed to me
like a utility such as Steven James' Bare Metal Toolkit, which seeks out
ELF images in ROM could then execute them in order:

linuxBIOS ->
	VGA Search and Init ROM ELF
	<- Back to linuxBIOS
linuxBIOS ->
	Polled IDE & File Systems Support ELF
	Success:
	-> Linux
	Failure
	<- Back to LinuxBIOS
LinuxBIOS ->
	Etherboot tftp boot ELF
	Success:
	-> Linux
	Failure
	<- Back to LinuxBIOS
LinuxBIOS ->
	Last Ditch Effort Floppy Boot ELF
	Success:
	-> Linux
	Failure
	<- Back to LinuxBIOS
LinuxBIOS out of options and says so.

All of that could fit in a 256KB part while providing several fallbacks
and choices. And it still serves a purpose when EEPROMs are big and roomy, as
tasks like a VGA Seek and Init ELF can perform their task without getting
LB2 dirty before going to Linux. The complexity of returning to LB to then
execute the next ELF image seems trivial next to maintaining polled ide,
floppy, INT15, and all these other features right in LB.

Thanks for concideration before flames :)

- Adam Agnew