OpenFirmware and interrupt-map

ron minnich rminnich at lanl.gov
Tue Feb 3 17:04:00 CET 2004


On 3 Feb 2004, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> > The main problem is that cards don't usually come with IEEE 1275 FCode
> > on them. We've pretty much had to write all of ours, and have gotten
> > tired of it - we're actually looking at LinuxBIOS as a way to get
> > out of that business, and just build in the drivers we care to in the
> > Linux kernel on the prom. But I can answer questions any questions
> > about writing FCode, it's most of what I've done in recent years.
> 
> Interesting.   The observation that powerful firmware eventually
> becomes an OS so you might as well use an OS, seems true :) 

I don't expect the cards to come with fcode any time soon, if ever. Four
reasons: first, the market is more or less zero, and the all the non-x86 
systems support x86 emulators to support the x86 option roms; second, 
if they support two option roms (fcode, x86) that makes for lots more 
work; third, the PC market will probably never go to fcode; and fourth, I 
bet they (naively) think that fcode would make reverse engineering easier. 

ron




More information about the coreboot mailing list