Subject: Re: BSD needs BIOS?
To: Grant Stockly <gussie@stockly.com>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.lip6.fr>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/04/1999 12:12:03
On Wed, Aug 04, 1999 at 02:12:43AM -0800, Grant Stockly wrote:
> So basically I should rewrite all the drivers I plan to use?  Then put them
> into a patch so that others can make the kernel?
> 
> I don't want any BIOS on this thing.  But, I will know the exact hardware
> configuration when compiling...so would that save time?

Sure. You don't need to touch end drivers. You just need to allocate
I/O ports and memory and IRQs before doing it.

What I'd do is put a limited knowledge of this in the boot loader
(if you know your hardware won't change you can just write I/O ports
and IRQ in the PCI registers, whithout special algorithm to allocate them).
This way you can run the NetBSD kernel unmodified.
But putting this in the NetBSD pci scan routine won't be much more work - 
it's just that it's not a stock NetBSD kernel any more, you'll have to
maintain patches.

--
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr
--