*BSD News Article 12460


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uunet!gatekeeper.us.oracle.com!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!pascal
From: pascal@netcom.com (Richard Childers)
Subject: 386/486 motherboard ROM BIOS & 386BSD ( was Re: [REPOST] FDC DRIVER )
Message-ID: <1993Mar9.080706.14422@netcom.com>
Summary: does 386bsd use bios ? Is this good ?
Keywords: FDC floppy device driver dependencies
Organization: The Free State of Dis
References: <C30zxt.CJD@sugar.neosoft.com> <1993Mar4.103308.24945@marie.uucp> <C3E4nx.60o@sugar.neosoft.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 08:07:06 GMT
Lines: 28


peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:

>perryh@marie.uucp (Perry Hutchison) writes:

>> Not to my knowledge, one factor being that most machines' ROM BIOS will
>> only support two hard drives (that being the maximum number ever blessed
>> by Big Blue); and even if a particular BIOS would take more than two I
>> don't know that stock DOS would cooperate.

>That wouldn't stop UNIX or PICK or Netware from taking advantage of them.

Am I correct in understanding that 386BSD does _not_ use on-board BIOS ? And
if so, does this imply that there is a market for BIOS-less 386/486 mother-
-boards ? Or is it a less-than-complete operating system that relies upon
additional firmware, the which of utilization allows for ( apparently ) smal-
-ler kernels, et caetera ?

It would be nice to not have a dependency upon BIOS, for numerous reasons.


-- richard

-- 
     "It is obligatory, within the limits of capability, to commend the
      good and forbid evil."     _Kitab_Adab_al-Muridin_, by Suhrawardi

                richard childers          pascal@netcom.com