Interesting piece of code... Yet another example of showing how to
implement an ATA/IDE controller driver :)
Right now I'm pondering whether it is worth implementing a BIOS calls
CDROM boot support, or whether I should just go right ahead and do it
all with the ATA controller.
I'm not sure how IDE controllers work on PPC, since I've unfortunately
never used the architecture...
Technically, if the ATA/IDE driver is there, implementing the ATAPI
command set to "talk" to the CDROM and interpreting the El-Torito spec
shouldn't be that hard.
If CD-ROM drives are ATAPI on all platforms (where they use ATA), and
the ATA code is there, the ATAPI and El Torito layer should stay
cross-platform. The interesting bit will be making it so that
"plugging in" a SCSI driver will require the least amount of code
change.
Anyways, I'm kind of rambling for now... Until the official "code
start" day I'll do some more reading and investigating how it would be
best to tie the code into GRUB2 to give the most elegant solution.
Cheers,
Alex
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you can salvage something. FILO supports booting from ElTorito bootable
CD media, uses 32-bit mode, and it is free of bios calls. Unfortunately
its x86 only, although some work has been done to get it running on PPC.
regards DevH
Alex Roman wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> My name is Alex Roman and I have been selected as a Summer of Code
> student for the GRUB2 project. I thought I'd introduce myself and my
> project. I am a second year student at the University of Waterloo
> (just finished 2A, first term of second year). I have experience
> developing in low-level environments in C and assembly.
>
> Now about my project. I will be adding CD-ROM booting functionality to
> GRUB2. The first stage of the project will attempt to use BIOS calls
> to achieve this functionality (which is, of course, dependent on the
> BIOS's capabilities, standards compliance, etc.). The second stage
> will involve writing a complete ATA/ATAPI driver which would bypass
> the BIOS completely, thus allowing it to work on virtually any system
> out there.
>
> Unfortunately I only have access to ATAPI CD-ROM drives, so I won't be
> able to work on SCSI and/or USB, however I will try to separate the
> system to load the boot image from the driver itself as much as
> possible so that future driver developments for SCSI and USB will just
> be sort of drop-in replacements.
>
> So, just thought I'd talk a bit about what I'll be doing...
>
> Thank you for your attention and time. I'm sure I'll have lots of
> questions in the months to come. :)
>
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