Hi!

quoted

quoted

Open Firmware may be a 'nicer' solution, but I guarantee that if the 
vendors started supporting that it would be just a bug ridden as any 16-
bit real mode BIOS code. For the Video BIOS the code always works for 
what it is tested for. Some vendors spend more time testing the VBE BIOS 
side of things fully (if they are smart they have licensed our VBETest 
tools for this purpose). Unfortunatley some vendors do not test this 
stuff thoroughly and it has problems. But the same testing issues would 
exist whether the firmware was written as a 16-bit x86 blob or as an Open 
Firmware blob.

Actually that 16-bit x86 blob can access any PC hardware, and that's
where the stuff gets hard.

Yes, but there is only a very small set of PC hardware features you need 
to implement, and most BIOS'es only look at those things for timing 
purposes. Unfortunately there is no standard for how BIOS'es do internal 
timing and delay loops, so we emulate them all (8253 timers, speaker 
ports and CMOS time/date support ;-).

Hmm, that does not seem that bad. Did you need to emulate interrupt
controller, too? That one seemed most scary to me.
								Pavel
-- 
People were complaining that M$ turns users into beta-testers...
...jr ghea gurz vagb qrirybcref, naq gurl frrz gb yvxr vg gung jnl!