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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.

10 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. bios by acxr+is+wasted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At what point does a bios become an operating system in and of itself. Seems like all the features this thing has will require more than just basic input/output.

    --
    "Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
    1. Re:bios by Pieroxy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is BIOS haven't evolved in the last 10 years. BIOS is supposed to be the layer between the software and the hardware. Nobosy uses it anymore and most of the drivers for most of the OS just bypas the BIOS altogether.

      IMO, a big huge part of the Linux/Windows/CustomOS Kernel (name: the drivers) should be made part of the BIOS.

      When you add a third-party card on your computer (say, a Radeon), it should have its own BIOS and be driven by that.

      That's what a BIOS is for: provide an abstraction layer to the hardware. It is just failing at this role since a long time.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
    2. Re:bios by 4b696e67 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I am the other extream. I wish there wasn't a BIOS. Just enough code to start the machine and then pass to the OS of choice. I feel after that the BIOS should stay out of they way. I for one do not want to have to flash rom chips on cards all the time to update drivers! Its bad enough to do that just with my motherboard (BOOT with a DOS boot disk when I have been using Linux exclusively for over 2 years, bah).

    3. Re:bios by Pieroxy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Flashing BIOS can be painful, granted. There might be better ways though, I'm sure they would find some.

      But imagine the thing: No drivers to write for any OS!!! Wouldn't that be amazing? The manufacturer would write a driver embedded in its hardware, flashable, and tada! All OSes out there benefit from the full-fledge piece of hardware: Linux, Windows, BSD, BeOS, AmigaOS, MS-DOS 1.5 uh, no wait...

      The thing is people writing a driver for Windows and people writing driver for Linux are pretty much doing the same thing. What a waste of ressources and time!

      BTW, it is not extream, but extreme.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
  2. Um, not to be a smart ass.. by msimm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But isn't this just a motherboard with its OS embedded in the 'bios'? Sort of one of those things I'd been expecting to see, but always figured it would be ushered in as a DRM requirement. ;-)

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    Quack, quack.
  3. That would be Linux. by mikeophile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This link shows Linux on a chip.

  4. Hooray for us BIOS guys! by MyFourthAccount · · Score: 5, Interesting

    about 12 years ago when I told people that I wanted to learn Assembler (or Assembly as most people insist), most folks I spoke with declared I was foolish. (which was largely true)

    Now bringing home about twice the bacon those same folks did, writing BIOS code, I just smile.

    And as you see, we got the world by the bawls, us BIOS guys! ;-)

    (seriously though, I think the BIOS is a piece of legacy crap that we need to get rid off... too bad it pays my bills)

  5. Re:Oh great.... by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The BIOS does functions that you can't have a general purpose OS do. For example, each BIOS is custom tailored to the MB it's connected to. It helps define signal timing, memory addressing, voltage monitoring...etc. Operating systems today do not completely override these functions. What they WILL do is allow for better allocation of resources to hardware directly such as what IRQ will be tied to what type of hardware.

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    Life is not for the lazy.
  6. I have seen it! by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was called "air construction architecture". Back in 8-bit era, I have seen a home made TRS-80 (Video Genie) clone machine, completely built out of components arranged in 3d with glue and wooden sticks and connected by plain LCUA wire, without any board. Of course, it was running NEWDOS-80, TRSDOS, LDOS and CP/M operating systems from 8'' floppy without any problems. This windy design has no problems with heat dissipation from Eastern-Germany made Z-80 CPU clone and Soviet Union made 16kx1 RAM chips anymore, unlike a board version had.

    It is even possible on today's platforms, just take some PXA arm processor, wire some flash and ram chips to it, connect some ancient terminal to serial and alas, you have a linux machine.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
  7. Sounds like an OS to me by nurb432 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lets see, it brings up the system from power off, and manages its resources...

    That sounds like an OS..

    So its in rom.. so what? Most embedded devices are that way...

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----