Post ASVBvLqNlf62FLnEI4 by landley@mstdn.jp
(DIR) More posts by landley@mstdn.jp
(DIR) Post #ASV6mp3fHUD8TZ7Te4 by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T10:52:39Z
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Cottagecore, except it's for people who are weirdly horny for BIOS
(DIR) Post #ASV7QfVkCEIoRvFmKm by g7vjr@mastodon.radio
2023-02-09T10:59:21Z
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@mjg59 Reaches for ChatGPT...
(DIR) Post #ASV7r5K0r4Bo1sMXSa by zhenech@chaos.social
2023-02-09T11:04:23Z
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@mjg59 So, Cottagelibre?
(DIR) Post #ASV8jgaiVJrJFvDAx6 by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-09T11:14:26Z
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@mjg59 Is this CP/M porn?
(DIR) Post #ASV9YyeD8A9c1dIrtQ by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T11:23:46Z
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@cstross Someone is laboriously attempting to convince me that BIOS was great because they could write their toy OS without needing to write a storage driver because they could just use BIOS calls to access the disk, and this seems like strong evidence they never had to actually rely on BIOS to boot anything, and yeah ok this is extremely how CP/M worked
(DIR) Post #ASV9fw6oy28GBB0IpE by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T11:24:44Z
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@cstross Whole bunch of kids deriving their personality aesthetic from the PCW8256
(DIR) Post #ASV9oNkc4zigE2dxxY by gsuberland@chaos.social
2023-02-09T11:26:29Z
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@mjg59 live, laugh, libreboot, lenovo
(DIR) Post #ASVApgg3ITEnAVhFHE by landley@mstdn.jp
2023-02-09T11:37:35Z
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@mjg59 @cstross CP/M was literally BIOS+BDOS, and Tim Patterson's QDOS was just a quick-and-dirty 16 bit implementation of BDOS to develop SCP's 8086 board against while waiting for the "official" one to ship from digital research for the product launch. (But instead Kildall focused with MP/M, which got derailed by the introduction of CPU cache making SMP suddenly require IPI and flushing.)Salvaged from Geocities: https://landley.net/history/mirror/cpm/history.html
(DIR) Post #ASVAwdh0n967wISb6u by landley@mstdn.jp
2023-02-09T11:31:25Z
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@cstross @mjg59 I miss bios, it was simple. 32k of 16 bit x86 assembly prevented them from trying to be clever: just load the next bootloader, pass on the e80 table, and get out of the way while we probe the PCI+USB busses to find hardware.ACPI was motivated by Intel's embarassment at needing x86 assembly to bring up Itanic systems, and then got extended to arm because device tree was stupidly GPL.I know Matt's the Linux EFI guy, but the "Trust-me Platform Modules" with SMM make me sad.
(DIR) Post #ASVAwehP3B0N3neQMK by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T11:38:02Z
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@landley @cstross By the 90s we'd got to the point where people wanted to believe PC compatible computers still existed, but also wanted to be able to pick the cheapest parts possible. ACPI provided a mechanism for abstracting a bunch of the hardware differences to the OS so everyone could keep up the pretense stuff was still a platform designed in the early 80s.
(DIR) Post #ASVBvLqNlf62FLnEI4 by landley@mstdn.jp
2023-02-09T11:49:52Z
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@mjg59 @cstross It's a pity u-boot was GPL.
(DIR) Post #ASVCCZg1afOk4VA2QC by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T11:53:20Z
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@landley @cstross That was never the layer firmware vendors were going to abstract it at. There's a lot of weird complexities between Intel/AMD, the BIOS suppliers, and the vendors who layer stuff on top of that.
(DIR) Post #ASVEninwofDH0IhwMy by funkylab@mastodon.social
2023-02-09T12:21:03Z
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@mjg59 uff, if you replace BIOS with sysvinit, this is exactly the vibe I get from the systemd-bashing folks.I love projects like MX Linux/AntiX (even if I couldn't be bothered to use them), since they help diversity in software stacks, but oh dear, the crowds they attract are awful at times.
(DIR) Post #ASVEvehvvsjwc7g5Im by dalias@hachyderm.io
2023-02-09T12:23:15Z
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@mjg59 Does that mean BIOS specifically, or just bootstrapping firmware that's completely unreachable (not executed) after bringing up hardware and passing off execution to what you actually wanted to run? 😳
(DIR) Post #ASVF35tvE7FQynpfUW by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T12:24:43Z
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@dalias Explicitly BIOS, because they want to use BIOS-provided storage access because apparently having to write your own storage drivers prevents anyone starting an OS from scratch
(DIR) Post #ASVFAiCLEmR5mc52jQ by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T12:25:22Z
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@dalias But also the idea that BIOS was something that went away after boot is kind of a retcon given things like APM
(DIR) Post #ASVFj1kx1iwkHtdDTk by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-02-09T12:32:38Z
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@archiloque Have I ever been?
(DIR) Post #ASVG8Rvkqg1Ihmo67c by forestpines@hachyderm.io
2023-02-09T12:37:09Z
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@mjg59 @cstross latecomers! What about those of us whose personality aesthetic comes from the CPC6128!
(DIR) Post #ASVH4Z0cglknSFnMQq by gnomon@mastodon.social
2023-02-09T12:47:46Z
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@mjg59 I just realized I know exactly what you mean and now I feel like I need to spend a week camping in a forest with no technology more sophisticated than a pointy stick.
(DIR) Post #ASVHqfQc7qOdGOtDwu by landley@mstdn.jp
2023-02-09T12:55:56Z
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@mjg59 @cstross Hence device tree overlays, whch circles back to "the dts files in linux are all GPLv2 so even BSD can't use 'em".I'm not a huge fan of device tree either, but there's worse things Android could be using: https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/dtoP.S. the reason Android won't use devtmpfs is at http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2022-August/029147.html (discussion started by https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/51a43ad52251) and I poked lwn about it at the time and they didn't care. Oh well...
(DIR) Post #ASVNov0RprWGivCTFw by igrok@hachyderm.io
2023-02-09T14:03:14Z
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@mjg59 @cstross this feels like a version of "records [and now cassette tapes] are *better* because they don't reproduce sound exactly"
(DIR) Post #ASVQdzoNvcimIw2c0O by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-09T14:34:56Z
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@mjg59 Hang on, BIOS just played pass-the-parcel with the hardware-specific BDOS, right? Which some poor schmuck had to hand-code in 8080 (or Z80) assembler (although DR kinda-sorta handed out templates for a generic BDOS as part of the CP/M licensee's kit).
(DIR) Post #ASVobtHRde1sMvA8xM by metlstorm@infosec.exchange
2023-02-09T19:03:26Z
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@mjg59 I see you have met @fincham