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Open Firmware, or OpenBoot in Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
 parlance, is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware
Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
 system, formerly endorsed by the IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE is an international non-profit, professional body for the advancement of technology related to electricity....
. It originated at Sun, and is used by Sun, Apple, IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
, and most other non-x86 PCI
PCI

The three letter acronym PCI may refer to:...
 chipset
Chipset

A chipset or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product....
 vendors. Open Firmware allows the system to load platform
Platform (computing)

In computing, a platform describes some sort of hardware architecture or software framework , that allows Computer software to run. Typical platforms include a computer's Computer architecture, operating system, programming languages and related runtime libraries or graphical user interface....
-independent driver
Device driver

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s directly from the PCI card, improving compatibility. The proposed Power Architecture Platform Reference
Power Architecture Platform Reference

Power Architecture Platform Reference is an initiative from Power.org to make a new open computing platform based on Power Architecture technology....
 will also be Open Firmware based.

Open Firmware may be accessed through its Forth language shell
Command line interpreter

A command-line interpreter is a computer program that reads lines of text entered by a user and interprets them in the context of a given operating system or programming language....
 interface.






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Open Firmware, or OpenBoot in Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
 parlance, is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware
Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
 system, formerly endorsed by the IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE is an international non-profit, professional body for the advancement of technology related to electricity....
. It originated at Sun, and is used by Sun, Apple, IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
, and most other non-x86 PCI
PCI

The three letter acronym PCI may refer to:...
 chipset
Chipset

A chipset or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product....
 vendors. Open Firmware allows the system to load platform
Platform (computing)

In computing, a platform describes some sort of hardware architecture or software framework , that allows Computer software to run. Typical platforms include a computer's Computer architecture, operating system, programming languages and related runtime libraries or graphical user interface....
-independent driver
Device driver

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s directly from the PCI card, improving compatibility. The proposed Power Architecture Platform Reference
Power Architecture Platform Reference

Power Architecture Platform Reference is an initiative from Power.org to make a new open computing platform based on Power Architecture technology....
 will also be Open Firmware based.

Open Firmware may be accessed through its Forth language shell
Command line interpreter

A command-line interpreter is a computer program that reads lines of text entered by a user and interprets them in the context of a given operating system or programming language....
 interface. It achieves essentially the same functionality as the later EFI
Extensible Firmware Interface

The Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. EFI is intended as a significantly improved replacement of the old legacy BIOS firmware interface historically used by all IBM PC compatible personal computers....
 standard initiated at Intel, with lower overhead.

Open Firmware is described by IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE is an international non-profit, professional body for the advancement of technology related to electricity....
 standard IEEE 1275-1994, which was not reaffirmed by the Open Firmware Working Group (OFWG) since 1998 and has therefore been officially withdrawn by IEEE.

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
OpenBIOS

OpenBIOS is a project aiming to provide Free software and open source implementations of Open Firmware. It is also the name of such an implementation....
 project. Sun's implementation is available under a BSD license.

Advantages

Because the Open Firmware Forth code is compiled into FCode (a bytecode
Bytecode

Bytecode is a term which has been used to denote various forms of instruction sets designed for efficient execution by a software Interpreter as well as being suitable for further compilation into machine language....
) and not into the machine language of any particular computer architecture
Computer architecture

Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an...
, 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 driver
Device driver

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s 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. FCode is a Forth programming language dialect compliant with ANS Forth. It can exist in two forms; source code and a compiled version, known as bytecode. FCode is mainly used in writing Open Firmware device drivers for PCI cards
Peripheral Component Interconnect

The PCI Local Bus , or Conventional PCI, is a computer bus for attaching computer hardware in a computer. These devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard itself, called a planar device in the PCI specification or an expansion card that fits into a socket....
.

Being based upon an interactive programming language, Open Firmware can be used to efficiently test and bring up new hardware.

Access

On Sun SPARC systems, the Open Firmware interface is displayed on the console terminal before the bootstrapping
Bootstrapping (computing)

In computing, bootstrapping is a technique by which a simple computer program activates a more complicated system of programs. In the start up process of a computer system, a small program such as BIOS, initializes and tests that computer hardware, peripherals and external memory devices are connected, then loads a program from one of them a...
 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 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 or troubleshooting I.T. personnel; for common users, the Mac OS X
Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 provides a high level graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
 to change commonly used Open Firmware settings. For instance, it is possible to specify the boot
Booting

In computing, booting is a Bootstrapping process that starts operating systems when the user turns on a computer system. A boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the computer performs when it is switched on....
 disk
Disk storage

Disk storage is a general category of a computer storage mechanisms, in which data is recorded on planar, round and rotating surfaces . A disk drive is a peripheral device used to record and retrieve information....
 or partition without directly using the Open Firmware interface. Other Open Firmware settings can be changed using the nvram
NVRAM

Non-volatile random access memory is the general name used to describe any type of random access memory which does not lose its information when power is turned off....
 command while the system software is running.

On Pegasos
Pegasos

Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC G3/PowerPC G4 microprocessor, featuring 3 Peripheral Component Interconnect slots, 1 Accelerated Graphics Port slot, two Ethernet ports , USB, DDR SDRAM, AC97 sound, and FireWire....
, the interface is accessed by pressing Esc at startup.

On IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
 POWER
Power

Power refers broadly to any ability to cause change or exert control over either things or people, subjects or objects....
 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.

On the OLPC XO-1
OLPC XO-1

The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop, Children's Machine, and 2B1, is an inexpensive subnotebook computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with Access to Knowledge movement, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express themselves" ....
 laptop, first get a developer key, which allows full access to the firmware. The key is readily accessible via the home page of the web browser. After you install the key, upon each power-on, you can interrupt the boot countdown with Esc (the upper left key) to get to the Forth ok prompt.

See also


  • Firmware
    Firmware

    Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
  • BIOS
    BIOS

    In computing, the Basic Input/Output System , also known as the System BIOS, is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface for IBM PC Compatible computers....
  • Extensible Firmware Interface
    Extensible Firmware Interface

    The Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. EFI is intended as a significantly improved replacement of the old legacy BIOS firmware interface historically used by all IBM PC compatible personal computers....
     (EFI)
  • Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
  • OpenBIOS
    OpenBIOS

    OpenBIOS is a project aiming to provide Free software and open source implementations of Open Firmware. It is also the name of such an implementation....
    , another implementation of the Open Firmware standard
  • Coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS), a project which aims to create a free BIOS that can run 32-bit operating systems like Linux
  • Input/Output Base Address
    Input/Output Base Address

    In x86 architecture, an input/output base address is a base address used for an I/O port....
  • Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
    Advanced Configuration and Power Interface

    The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface specification is an open standard for unified operating system-centric device configuration and power management....
     (ACPI)
  • BIOS boot devices
    Booting

    In computing, booting is a Bootstrapping process that starts operating systems when the user turns on a computer system. A boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the computer performs when it is switched on....
  • BIOS Interrupt Calls
  • Power-On Self Test (POST)


External links

  • SUN's SPARC OBP documentation
  • The last IEEE 1275 text
  • Firmworks OpenFirmware source code
  • Codegen SmartFirmware source code
  • Boot Process on IBM POWER
  • OFW FAQ on OLPC Wiki
  • Aurora SPARC Linux OBP reference guide