openbsd already has this.  the firmware is placed in /etc/firmware

see

  http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=loadfirmware&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&arch=i386&format=html

for details.

marius.

* Martin Husemann <martin@duskware.de> [050528 02:41]:
> Hi folks, 
> 
> on some sparc64 graphics cards (called "afb") we need firmware uploaded to
> the graphics card before the X server will run. NetBSD console itself works
> without the firmware.
> 
> Now every other OS on the world uses a command called "afbinit" to upload
> the "afb.ucode" file.
> 
> So what we can do now is
> 
>  1) simply add usr.sbin/afbinit (in the style of usr.sbin/grfconfig)
>  2) modify X source to have the X server upload the firmware itself
>  3) create a more generic framework for firmware upload
> 
> The latter sounds like a good idea, there are lots of other devices that
> could use it and we probably have a dozen or so programs already in-tree
> that handle firmware upload (isdnctl for example does it for active ISDN
> cards)
> 
> I would like to see all X related changes pulled up to the 3.0 branch
> ASAP, and since it is what all other OS do, I personally would prefer aproach
> (1) for now. If we come up with something along (3) later, we'll have to 
> migrate other stuff to it and can do the same with afbinit.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Martin

-- 
marius a eriksen <marius@monkey.org> | http://monkey.org/~marius/