Open Firmware

[Dale Schumacher]

Thanks for the reply.

I see your point.  I guess a better solution would be to create a boot
loader the stays resident after the "main" OS is running, and can be called
from that OS.  That way the low-level drivers needed for booting could be
maintained in only one place.  The same could be true for the network stack
(to support network boot).  Unfortunately, AFAIK, that's not the strategy
taken by Open Firmware, U-Boot or any other boot loader.

Would such a sharing approach have merit?  Or is it an
intellectual/technical dead-end.

[more comments after the quote]

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 5:51 PM, Werner Almesberger <werner at openmoko.org>
wrote:

> [ Processing mails accumulated during my vacation ... ]
>
> Dale Schumacher wrote:
> > Has anyone considered using Open Firmware [1] as a more capable
> bootloading
> > system?
>
> Hmm, no. Much like u-boot, it tries to solve the problem that we
> want to have the functionality of a small operating system, but that
> we can't afford to actually have that operating system there.
>
> But we can :-)


What do you mean?  Are you thinking that the "real" OS would be kept
directly in NAND/NOR flash?
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