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The firmware :)

http://www.openfirmware.org/

> can we say OpenFirmware?

On slashdot, no. No you can't. You'll only frighten half the PC junkies, and the other half will think you're making it up. It's not like the IEEE know anything about systems design or, heaven forbid, firmware.

- RustyTaco

Mac OS simply will not run without the hardware ROMs.

This is getting less and less true, so called new world machines only rely on the ROM for booting (all machines since the iMac are new worlds machines). The ROM that contains the toolbox code is basically a memory mapped file (you can see this file in the system folder).

Darwin does not need any special ROMs (how would it run on x86 machines?). And Mac OS X basically runs on top of darwin (this is how unsupported machines can run OS X). The only part of the Mac ROM that needs to be somehow emulated is the open firmware booting code that sets up the device tree and hands it to the kernel. Open firmware is IEEE standard.

So roughtly to run OSX on a unsupported machine, you need to implement a booting system that can hand a device tree to the kernel and write darwin drivers for your hardware / emulation plateform. As far as I know, you can do both legally.

Of course there might be some hidden checks in OSX, but the open source nature of Darwin make this improbable. I don't think that Apple will care about this simply because it does not seem to be a serious threat to their marketshare...

Why can we have a moduler windows of sort, you plug in a device, those device drivers that are stored within the device automatically get loaded into the system (okay that could push the price of devices up abit). and similairly, when the device is removed or unpluged, said drivers are removed from the system.

Now if only I could have it run in the BIOS. Imagine if on the bios level, without a proper key or password or whatever, if the hard drive was removed and replaced, it would then call a panic number whenever connected. That'd be neat.

Actually you can most likely do that on a Mac. All of the Macs in the past 5 - 8 years use a BIOS-like system called called Open Firmware. Open Firmware basically sets up the machine to load up the operating system and it does other initialization tasks. It is also used by some other computer manufacturers as it is an open standard.

The neat thing about Open Firmware is that it is programmable. It is written in Forth and you can write additions to it and install them. These additions are persistent across power-downs and can be password protected. So it is possible that you can write some sort of network notification into Open Firmware, I do know that it is aware of TCP and such because you can remotely operate the machine if it crashes in open firmware and you can also use Open Firmware to network boot the machine.

The other cool thing about Open Firmware is that you can set it to require a password at boot. If the password is not entered then the machine will not load ANY drive. This password is much harder to disable than an operating system password or hard drive password lock, although there are a few obscure and involved ways of bypassing it if you are extremely familiar with the system.

This page has some good links on Open Firmware. This site is hosted by Sun and has a ton of very specific and detailed information on Open Firmware. And lastly, Open Firmware is the only firmware standard in existence to have its own song!

Perhaps not as forgotten as some, but it is included with every Sun and most modern Macs in the form of OpenFirmware.

I used to have a blast messing around with FORTH on my old Kaypro II, Vic 20, Apple II, CoCo, Amiga, etc. A really fun language to hack around in.

Many relevant resources blablabla is this not going to trigger the lameness filter now? can be found at Open Firmware Home Page

There has been a standard for decades, OpenFirmware (AKA IEEE-1275). It does all of the things mentioned in the top post when implemented properly, as well as other useful functions like providing a framework for platform independant PCI drivers.

Unfortunately it was never adopted by x86 hardware people. But if you want a STANDARDS BASED setup you can allways buy from Sun, or Apple, or IBM or any one of the other major non-x86 platforms.

Tell me what I get that's "better" with OpenFirmware?
A box that has basic intelligence even when there's no OS installed +more.
It's pretty cool stuff.

I'd argue that they've made it worse through some UI changes that make it act much differently, like the scroll bar gizmos. Then there's stuff like Quicktime where UI common sense gave in to the "skin" fad. And there's still too many modal dialogs, which I guess is fine in a non-SMP OS.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the scroll bars, but I will give you that QT4 was a major cock-up for Apple UI design.

Comparing NT3.51, 4.0 and 2k and calling them the "same" is really stretching the truth.

Never said they were /the/ same.
But the core OS in each is basically the same, be it 3.51, 4 or 5 (2k).

MacOS 6, 7, 8 and 9 are basically the same between verisons, but with incremental updates in each major version.

It's the same phenomenon on a vastly different system.
Until a product is scrapped or rewritten, the releases are similar.

I'd say that each was an improvment on its predecessor,

That's usually what warrants bumping the version number up. :P

--K

It there , it's open ( more or less ) it's cross-platfrom compatible etc..

It is used by sun , apple-ppc and motorola-ppc machines.

David Balazic , http://surf.to/stein

OpenFirmware is essentially a specification for a largely machine-independent BIOS based on ANS Forth that is capable of probing and initializing plug-in cards
that have on-board IEEE-1275 compliant Fcode in their ROMs.

OpenFirmware is NOT an Apple product. It's an IEEE standard. OpenFirmware.org
--
"I was a fool to think I could dream as a normal man."