A few researchers from IBM are working on a new BIOS emulator for EFI based on the Boch's x86 emulator. This BIOS emulator is essentially an EFI application which serves to load and execute an emulated BIOS for older operating systems, including Windows, to use. OSNews notes, however, that this may present a few problems: complex partitioning and many updates for new Macintosh Computers. Amit Singh, a developer, elaborates on it's functionality:
"To EFI, our software looks like a regular EFI program which happens to be a bootloader. This bootloader contains a binary payload which is an entire BIOS, VGA BIOS, and other x86-specific glue needed to boot the machine. This binary payload is loaded into memory in the legacy BIOS space. To all software on the machine, it appears as if the machine has a traditional BIOS. An important aspect of BAMBIOS is that its goal is to be non-disruptive."
This could finally bridge the gap for legacy OSes, including Windows and Linux flavors.
Find more information at the BAMBIOS website.
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