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Open Firmware (also, OpenBoot) is a hardware-independent firmware (computer software which loads the operating system), developed by Mitch Bradley at Sun Microsystems, and used in post-NuBus PowerPC-based Apple Macintosh computers, Sun Microsystems SPARC based workstations and servers, IBM POWER systems, Pegasos systems, and the laptop designed by OLPC among others. It is available under a BSD license.[1] The proposed Power Architecture Platform Reference will also be Open Firmware based. On those computers, Open Firmware fulfills the same tasks as BIOS does on PC computers. In computing, firmware is software that is embedded in a hardware device. ...
Software, or program, enables a computer to perform specific tasks, as opposed to the physical components of the system (hardware). ...
An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...
Sun Microsystems, Inc. ...
NuBus is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT as a part of the NuMachine workstation project, and eventually used by Apple Computer and NeXT Computer. ...
IBM PowerPC 601 Microprocessor PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ...
The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...
Sun Microsystems, Inc. ...
Sun UltraSPARC II Microprocessor Sun UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara 8 Core) SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture) is a pure big-endian RISC microprocessor instruction set architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems. ...
International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ...
POWER is a RISC instruction set architecture designed by IBM. The name is a acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC. POWER is also the name of a series of microprocessors that implements the instruction set architecture. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
The $100 laptop is a design for an inexpensive laptop computer being developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. ...
The BSD license is a permissive license and is one of the most widely used free software licenses. ...
Power Architecture Platform Reference (PAPR) is an initiative from Power. ...
BIOS, in computing, stands for Basic Input/Output System also incorrectly known as Basic Integrated Operating System. ...
Apple Macintoshes like the iMac Core Duo are personal computers. ...
It is accessed, by users, by a Forth-based shell interface. Forth is a powerful high-level language. For example, it is possible to program Open Firmware to solve the Tower of Hanoi problem.[2] Forth is a programming language and programming environment, initially developed by Charles H. Moore at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the early 1970s. ...
A command line interpreter is a computer program which reads lines of text that the user types and interprets them in the context of a given operating system or programming language. ...
A model set of the Towers of Hanoi Tower of Hanoi, by André Karwath The Tower of Hanoi or Towers of Hanoi is a mathematical game or puzzle. ...
It was described by IEEE standard IEEE 1275-1994, which was not reaffirmed by the OFWG since 1998 and has therefore been officially withdrawn by IEEE. This means it is unavailable from the IEEE, but the last text is available from the Forth research project at the Institute of Computer Languages, Vienna University of Technology in Austria. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-e) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. ...
Front view of the main old building of the Vienna University of Technology towards the Karlskirche Vienna University of Technology is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. ...
Several commercial implementations of Open Firmware have been released to the Open Source community in 2006, including SUN OpenBOOT, Firmworks OpenFirmware and Codegen SmartFirmware. The source code is available from the OpenBIOS project.
Advantages
Because the Open Firmware Forth code is compiled into FCode (a bytecode) and not into the machine language of any particular computer architecture, Open Firmware code included in, say, an I/O card can be executed by any system that uses Open Firmware. In this way, an I/O card can provide boot-time diagnostics, configuration code, and device drivers that will be usable on any system running Open Firmware, allowing many of the same I/O cards to be used on Sun systems and Macintoshes. There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...
A system of codes directly understandable by a computers CPU is termed this CPUs native or machine language. ...
A typical vision of a computer architecture as a series of abstraction layers: hardware, firmware, assembler, kernel, operating system and applications (see also Tanenbaum 79). ...
Diagnosis (from the Greek words dia = by and gnosis = knowledge) is the process of identifying a disease by its signs, symptoms and results of various diagnostic procedures. ...
Windows XP loading drivers during a Safe Mode bootup A device driver, or a software driver is a specific type of computer software, typically developed to allow interaction with hardware devices. ...
Based on the low-level yet interactive language Forth, Open Firmware can be used to quickly test and bring up new hardware.
Access Open Firmware displays "ok" as its prompt.
On Sun systems, the Open Firmware interface is displayed on the console terminal before the bootstrapping of the system software. If a keyboard is connected, the main video display will be used as the console terminal and Open Firmware can be re-entered at any time by pressing Stop-A (L1-A) on the keyboard. If no keyboard is connected, then the first serial line on the system is usually used as the console and Open Firmware is re-entered by sending a "Break" on the serial line. While the system software is running, various Open Firmware settings can be read or written using the eeprom command.
On a PowerPC-based[3] Macintosh, the Open Firmware interface can be accessed by pressing the keys Cmd-Option-O-F at startup. This functionality is generally only used by developers; for common users, the Mac OS X operating system provides a high level graphical user interface to change commonly used Open Firmware settings. For instance, it is possible to specify the boot disk or partition without directly using the Open Firmware interface. Other Open Firmware settings can be changed using the nvram command while the system software is running. Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ...
An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...
A graphical user interface (or GUI, often pronounced gooey), is a particular case of user interface for interacting with a computer which employs graphical images and widgets in addition to text to represent the information and actions available to the user. ...
A pair of classic black leather Dr. Martens. ...
A disk or disc may be: Look up disc, disk in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
In computer engineering, hard disk drive partitioning is the creation of logical divisions upon a hard disk that allows one to apply operating system-specific logical formatting. ...
On Pegasos, simply press Esc at startup. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
On IBM POWER systems, Open Firmware ("ok" prompt) can be accessed through the SMS Boot Menu. SMS Boot Menu can be accessed by pressing "1" or "F1" during the boot sequence, after hardware checking, and just before the OS boot. International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ...
Look up Power in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
See also Image File history File links Floss_draft. ...
In computing, firmware is software that is embedded in a hardware device. ...
BIOS, in computing, stands for Basic Input/Output System also incorrectly known as Basic Integrated Operating System. ...
The workings of the Extensible Firmware Interface The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. ...
OpenBIOS is a free software, portable Open Firmware implementation which is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. ...
LinuxBIOS is a free software project, endorsed by the Free Software Foundation [1], aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS firmware found in most computers with a lightweight BIOS designed to perform only the minimum of tasks necessary to load and run a modern 32-bit operating system. ...
Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system family that uses the Linux kernel. ...
Base address is also called I/O port, I/O address, I/O port address and base port. ...
The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification is an open industry standard first released in December 1996 developed by HP, Intel, Microsoft, Phoenix and Toshiba that defines common interfaces for hardware recognition, motherboard and device configuration and power management. ...
In computing, booting is a bootstrapping process that starts operating systems when the user turns on a computer system. ...
BIOS Interrupt Calls are a facility that MS-DOS programs use to invoke the BIOSs facilities. ...
Power-on Self Test (POST) is the common term for a computers pre-boot sequence. ...
External links
Notes and references - ^ http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/2e76a5a80bc36cbf85256cd700545fa5/2cc25a58f0d1a6e8852572070033befc?OpenDocument
- ^ Source Code at http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/firmware/src/ofhanoi.txt
- ^ Intel-based Macintoshes do not use Open Firmware; they use Extensible Firmware Interface. See also: Apple's transition to Intel processors. Also early versions (before the PowerBook 3400) connect Open Firmware's input and output to the Modem port by default.
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