[coreboot] SeaBIOS debug output

[Kevin O'Connor]

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:04:27AM -0600, Jordan Crouse wrote:
> Hmm - I'm starting to see Stefan's concerns.  Many of our payloads don't
> need SeaBIOS functionality, but most need (or at least will use) option
> ROMs (especially our good friend VGA).  If there is going to be some
> conflict between coreboot and SeaBIOS in this area, then really, the only
> option is to put SeaBIOS into coreboot.

I'm unconvinced that integrating SeaBIOS and coreboot at a source code
level is a good plan.  SeaBIOS is also applicable to qemu and kvm - I
think there is a big advantage to having seabios used as the bios for
emulators - that community of users and developers is currently much
larger than coreboot.

I can see a setup where coreboot initializes the machine and hands
control over to SeaBIOS (as a payload) and then SeaBIOS boots the OS
(including enablement of vga).  It may be too simplisitc, but I see
benefit to keeping coreboot focused on hardware initialization, while
the payload focuses on OS booting.

>I don't really favor forcing
> folks to start using the payload chooser to load SeaBIOS in order to
> grok VGA ROMs.  That seems like it is asking too much of the 
> end developer.

I agree.  However, if seabios was the payload and it pulled the
chooser out of flash (or the chooser was linked into seabios), then
maybe we could sidestep this issue.  That is, instead of going
coreboot->chooser->seabios->chooser->OS we could go
coreboot->seabios->chooser->OS.

-Kevin