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BAMBIOS: BIOS emulator for EFI

sHARD>>

By sHARD>>

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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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BlueTrance

BlueTrance 0

Posted

Well, they say on their mini-presentation that it uses "Bochs BIOS core extended and customized for the Intel 945 Express chipset", so maybe it won't be so limited.

 

Anyway, it seems like they have announced this because of narfs recent shots. The website says almost nothing about BAMBIOS (because everybody already knew that it was needed a legacy-bios and VGA module for EFI).

 

And in their forum there are many people asking for being testers and all of them have been rejected because "it isn't testable yet".

Why people is flaming narf shots? they look really bad, but it's much more than what BAMBIOS has proved.

 

Don't missinterpretate me, I don't believe BAMBIOS is not a great idea, but it really looks like they have announced it before having something because they see they're going to miss the contest.

Metrogirl

Metrogirl 7

Posted

It would be very interesting to see a standard IBM employment contract. Typically in the US anyone working in a company research lab has to give the rights to any software they develop to their employer, even if they develop it off the premises and in their own time. People have been known to resign before announcing something to avoid such rules - and still get sued. Whether this applies in this case, or whether IBM would enforce such a provision, is a moot point. It would be really quite amusing if IBM ended up owning (marketing?) BAMBIOS.

abcslayer

abcslayer 0

Posted

It does not emulate the BIOS function if they can do as they said.

It run it natively. But sorry make a custom BIOS is not an easy work. Both of them (who announce the news) don't make good images, info, videos to proof that they can do it and they did do it.


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