[colorforth] Success...my first boot screen

[Myron Plichota <myron.plichota@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

marrandy wrote:

> As the BIOS is there in the Boot ROM,  why not use it ?
> 
> It's not like another OS is being loaded.
> 
> It's there irrespective.

The PC BIOS runs strictly in 16-bit real mode. Once you enter 32-bit
protected mode you leave it all behind (and good riddance!) unless you
provide something like DPMI (a gateway). Linux re-invents the services
left behind but has to deal with the plethora of different hardware that
it may find on system X. Floppy disk controllers and video cards are
just the tip of the iceberg.

Micro$oft and Intel have roadmapped the demise of "legacy devices" in
their PC(year) specifications, i.e. they threw several babies out with
the bathwater. Laptop makers seem to have climbed on that bandwagon, but
from what I have seen so far, desktop motherboard mfgrs are slow (or
hopefully refusing) to ditch them.

There is precious little of true hardware compatibility left on x86 PCs,
and you either burden your environment with something like Linux kernel
modules and boot time hardware probes or fork lean and dedicated source
code versions of efforts like cforth.

This is a major issue for anyone writing their own OS for x86 PCs and
has hampered competition because many hardware vendors refuse to share
technical info with anyone but Micro$oft and their minions. Look what
happened to BeOS.

Myron Plichota------------------------

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