[coreboot] [RFC] port bochs-bios to gcc

Kevin O'Connor kevin at koconnor.net
Tue Feb 26 01:29:15 CET 2008


On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 08:30:50PM +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 01:34:29PM -0500, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> > I do wonder... if coreboot builds pirq, mptable, ACPI, and e820
> > tables.  Why not have it also populate that other bios "table" -
> > the 64K one at 0xf0000-0xfffff?
> 
> If by "table" you mean code the answer is that coreboot does not like
> callbacks by design.

Well, it wouldn't be coreboot that got the callbacks, it would be that
binary blob at 0xf0000.

Seriously though, I don't think implementing the real-mode irq
handlers is that technically challenging - I'd guess it is no harder
than implementing filo was.  The calling interface is stable -
implement it once and there's not likely to be a lot of maintenance.

So, I'd look at it as coreboot initializing and loading another
"table" at a certain area of memory.  Some OSs will make use of it -
others wont.  I don't see a lot of down sides to deploying it.

The big upside is that, with the proper handlers, all modern OSes will
load out of the box.  This will be a big selling point to hardware
vendors - especially those that want to deploy a single solution for
both mass-market and niche markets.

-Kevin




More information about the coreboot mailing list