Messages in this thread |  | | | From | Christopher Turcksin <> | | Date | Wed, 1 Apr 1998 20:46:07 +0100 (BST) | | Subject | Re: GGI Project Unhappy On Linux |
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On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Marek Habersack wrote:
> I remember the AMI WinBIOSes were on the market for a really short period of
Icky :)
> time. I'm sure most of you have also seen the IBM ThinkPad BIOS - it looks > nice, but the interface is really an overkill for a task like setting up > the machine BIOS. The interface just makes things slower.
Actually, I work for IBM in ThinkPad support, and it appears that the Easy-Setup is a feature of our ThinkPads that our target audience really appreciates. It's very easy to use, which makes my job easier. Unfortunately, most of the settings are done through a program called 'ThinkPad Configuration'. The EasySetup has never had a lot of options (usually there's no more than the boot sequence). I think the 'Test' icon in it is the most useful one, followed by 'Initialize'.
ThinkPad Configuration is also easy to use, but you need to run one of the support operating systems, ie. OS/2 or some kind of Windows. DOS command line is supported too. It'd be nicer to have all this stuff in the BIOS (so us poor support folk would not have to remember all the differences between the OS/2 version and the windows version). I wouldn't need a 2MB DOS partition for it either then.
Personally, I think the BIOS should be nothing but POST and a sophisticated boot loader. The boot loader would replace LILO, BootManager and whatever windows folk tend to use to boot their toy and be very flexible and hackable.
Hardware setup would either be fully automatic (should PCI be able to do this) or in the MCA style where you have a setup diskette (or hd partition) that contains the setup program. This setup program would not require an operating system (unlike MCA, which uses DOS). It would rely on the flexible boot loader. Someone proposed a boot loader that understands ELF executable files and reads a simple file system (which can be put on floppy, harddrive or even RAM/ROM/flash ...)
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