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A Motherboard That Doesn't Require An OS

Posted by timothy on from the why-should-it dept.

An anonymous reader submits a link to this review of "motherboard that allows access to your multimedia devices via a special BIOS. No operating system required! Good for a home entertainment PC I guess." The review says that it will come bundled with a TV tuner card, too.

8 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't that an OS? by queen+of+everything · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't an operating system a program that allows you to control your devices? This still does that, its just all contained in the ROM. Pretty neat, but still an OS. Surely not as bloated as MS media center. (note: I haven't actually tried media center, I'm just guessing)

    --
    "Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
    1. Re:Isn't that an OS? by billatq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, I agree. It's the silly mentality that if it isn't Windows, then it isn't an Operating System.

    2. Re:Isn't that an OS? by KrispyKringle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Point being, perhaps (the review is being ridiculously slow to load for me; don't know if its Slashdotted or just that I'm stuck on dialup), that there is no secondary OS loaded after the BIOS for this functionality. The poster is implying that the BIOS itself (which is loaded initially upon boot) is the OS that does the playback. This would be significantly different than a traditional setup, I would think.

  2. Re:bios by Naked+Chef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The motherboard seems to be geared toward people wanted to create a multimedia center...I guess the real question is when does a collection of electronic parts become a computer and when is it a vcr, dvd, tivo, etc... :-)

  3. Oh great.... by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another layer of complexity! And for what? So the operating system you do install overrides it and uses its own routines to access the hardware.

    BIOS = BASIC input output system.

    Its just not meant to do more. Blurring the edges like this is just plain silly - a duplication of effort at best. Another thing to go wrong and more complexity where its not needed. Now we have bloatware in the HARDWARE too!!!!

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  4. And it runs which OS? by jfengel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So it supports various hardware in the BIOS rather than the OS. But unless it's got the rest of an OS on it, you're either putting some OS on top of it (which can be simpler than other OSes, but the fact is that those OSes have already been written and removing support would be more work) or you can write code on the bare metal.

    I'd hate to give up all the things that an OS supports for me, but I suppose that many of them (memory management, processes, libraries, windowing, keyboard, filesystem) aren't necessary on an embedded system. As long as there's a cross-compiler for it and a way to get that stuff on, you may well be able to work with just the BIOS.

    Oh, and I tried to RTFA, which would presumably answer my question, but it's slashdotted, so I'm really aiming my question at the embedded software developers out there.

  5. Re:bios by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Say it with me: OpenFirmware

    The fact that PC makers keep reinventing the wheel is annoying.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  6. Re:bios by GiMP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Checkout MCA, it seems to do much of what you're asking for. Of course, nobody uses MCA these days - the parts are old, slow, and expensive,