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A Motherboard That Doesn't Require An OS
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.
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."
Just when I overclock mine, they cancel Martha Stewart.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm guessing this means it's going to still crash, right?
Yeah, it is so hard to come by an OS these days. I mean, they are SO expensive!
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
This will cause the death of linux. I mean what's better than a free OS? NO OS!
This Tom's HW Article talks about the MSI MiniPC that does the same thing.
Makes me wish I'd held off on buying my Shuttle.
Show me an OS that doesn't require a motherboard, then I'll be impressed.
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
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. ;-)
Quack, quack.
Bios used to mean, basic input output services. Now I guess it means basically inoperable operating system...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Features in the bios seems a perfect application for the Linux Bios project, which puts the linux kernel on the bios flash. Could a minimalist Linux distribution be made to do similar features (TV cards, ethernet) while still fitting in the bios memory?
Phoenix is attempting to make a transition from a bios to a trusted startup environment. This means that it may be hard to install operating systems that are not signed by Phoenix... for money. Thus, windows, Redhat EL, and other commercial operating systems will continue to work fine. This may make custom Linux installs next to impossible - without modchips. (can anyone say xbox?)
Does anyone know if they're going to be porting Duke Nukem: Forever to run on BIOS.
Macintoshes have been able to play Pong in BIOS for years. This is nothing particularly novel.
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
Hmm, let's see: a computer with a small piece of dedicated software in ROM, a TV tuner card and a monitor? Last I checked, I could get that sort of device, minus the messy VGA and keyboard cables, and with about zero boot time, at K-Mart for about $100, and with a bigger screen too.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Bah. It's Obviously Slashdotted.
So now you have to flash your bios every time a new codec-version is released?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Boy, are you going to get a lot of responses to that question.
No, BIOS stands for "Basic Input/Output System." That's right, Neal Stephenson got it wrong in Snow Crash. BIOS is one of many ways for a computer to organize its input and output devices so that it can be accessed by a proper operating system. I'm sure there are plenty of geeks here who can tell you more about it than me.
Apple and Sun don't use IBM style PC BIOS. They use OpenFirmware. Iduno what the other kids use.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
So... It enable you to use your devices without booting your os ? So basicly you can get things running up as quickly as a tv set if your computer was powered off, and that's all ?
BTW, is this feature useless if you computer is already powered up ?
But it's pretty cool to see it is possible!
Please correct me if i said anything stupid !
This link shows Linux on a chip.
Soyo SY-P4VAL Version M Multimedia Ready Motherboard
Model: SY-P4VAL
Manufacturer: Soyo
Provider: Soyo
Reviewed By: Miguel
Review Date:
Page 1
Board Layout & Features
This is not meant to be an enthusiast board so there's no cool colored PCB. In fact, at first glance, it looks just like any other motherboard. It's what it offers that sets it apart from all the rest. The board is almost identical to Soyo's SY-P4VGA with the exception that it carries the Whizpro BIOS utility instead of the AWARD BIOS and also includes the etBIOS "Instant On" feature. It is based on VIA's P4M266A/8235 chipset.
One nice feature is the support for both DDR and SDRAM memory modules. Being that the average user would likely use memory they have lying around to build an HTPC, it is certainly an excellent feature. Two slots support up to 2GB of DDR 200/266 and one slot supports up to 1GB of PC100/133 memory. That's plenty of memory power for its intended purpose. There's a warning label on the memory slots indicating that the power should be unplugged prior to installing your memory modules. On the other corner of the board, you'll find your IDE and floppy connectors. Up to four drives can be installed if desired.
The Soyo SY-P4VAL supports 533/400 FSB Pentium 4 processors. What? No 800FSB support? Yes, that's right, but considering that the board is not targeted at the mainstream enthusiast where performance is the absolute highest priority, it is quite clear why they chose this route. For its intended use, that's plenty of power. To satisfy those who do crave the extra power, the SY-P4VAL supports Pentium 4 processors up to 3.06GHz. There is plenty of space around the socket to install a larger heatsink if desired, however, being that the board would probably end up in a living room or den, the added noise is really not necessary.
The SY-P4VAL is an ATX motherboard and therefore, offers the standard 5 PCI slots. This motherboard comes with video onboard but they provide an AGP slot for those who wish to upgrade. The AGP slot has a flip type retention mechanism and has 2X and 4X support. The Northbridge is passively cooled with a standard size aluminum heatsink.
This board has just about every feature you can ask for with the exception of Firewire support. The I/O panel includes a VGA port, RJ45 LAN jack, four USB ports and your audio jacks including line in/out and mic jacks.
The only negative comment I'll make on the board's layout is the placement of the ATX connector. It is located behind the I/O panel and creates unnecessary cable clutter.
The BIOS
We will be looking at the BIOS in detail as the Soyo SY-P4VAL carries a rather unique yet user-friendly Whizpro BIOS that most will not be familiar with. Although a bit different than what I'm used to, I really like this well-structured BIOS utility.
One reason is the System Information Menu. It takes about 3 seconds to load but it gives you detailed information on your hardware as well as the BIOS ID and Revision information. There are two pages worth of information on your devices.
The General Configuration Menu allows you to define your boot order as well as enable/disable password protection. The Advanced Configuration Menu mainly allows you to define your POST details. There is even a "Quiet Boot" option that when enabled, will only show error messages (if any) during boot.
The etBIOS Configuration Menu is where you will define how the Version M BIOS (Instant on feature) will function. Being that this is the most impressive feature, we will look at it in great detail a bit later. Because of its intended use, there are no overclocking options but the System Specific Menu will allow you to tweak your memory a bit.
The Peripherals Menu mainly allows you to enable/disable any of the onboard devices such as your audio, lan and USB. What is missing is the option to disable the onboard video. This is odd, but we did no
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.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/howto/20040227/index .html
It doesn't say that it includes the TV capability. However, audio functions work without any additional hardware at all out of the box. No HD, Processor, or memory required...
Interesting idea if you really want to save power. I'd rather fork over a few more cents per hour and have the capability to actually do something with the media though at a moments notice.
...Every screen is a blue screen.
Why on earth would this feature be useful to ANYONE.
TV-Tuner functionality is questionable at best in a full-fledged OS. But in a BIOS?? Surly you must be joking!
I love that I can play my CDs and MP3s on my pc... while I work on other things. This monopolizes the whole system and turns it into an expensive DVD player. (Name one thing this can do that a cheap DVD player and a TV can't)
Not to mention that it's an embarrasing waste of resources. A 366mhz G3 could do this and more.
Oh, and hypothetically, I think it would be possible to hack something like this into a machine using openFirmware.
As an aside, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a small OS, deriving bits from Linux or BSD which could do the same thing and only take a few (under 5) seconds to boot (which would be quite plausable as you'd only need to load VERY few drivers). I could boot BeOS on my 750mhz athlon to the desktop in under 10 seconds.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
... this project!
Seriously folks, I don't mean to get embroiled in the issue of semantics, but there are all sorts of devices in which their OS is lightweight enough to reside in ROM. If the boot code never hands control of the system off to a secondary module (loaded from a disk, for example) how is it not the OS?
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)
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.
PS2, xbox, GC can all run software straight out of medias. This isn't that far fetched.
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...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... ant tell him it really was Built In Operating System after all.
My 3 year old toshiba laptop allows you to play audio off the memory card and cdrom with external play/next/last/stop buttons. It only requires a bootup of the os if you want to play dvds. I guess they went a step futher and allowed you to play a dvd, I cannot get to the site now to see :).
I was using an OS'less motherboard in 1983. My Commodore 64 kicked butt!
This sounds a lot like my Atari 400, just with snazzier upgraded tech. No "operating system" to load, you just turned it on, and you could do stuff with it, like loading a game or a word processor off tape or a disk. (It confused the heck out of me when I heard about having to put a disk in one of those CP/M boxes just to start it up.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The intended audience for this is obviously the living-room entertainment machine sort of application. For instance, rather than have to wait while the OS loads, and then use some software-based UI just to play a CD, you just have to push the on-button, drop in your mp3 or audio CD and it'll automatically start playing within seconds - no having to turn on the TV to check things are ready/you've pushed a button on your remote keyboard at the wrong time etc.
If you want to play standard applications - just boot into your normal OS and fire up your divx player, stepmania etc. If you have replaced your home entertainment CD/mp3/DVD player with this and just want to access one of those functions in a UI that you haven't kludged together, with no OS wait/booting screens etc - no problem.
My only major request would be that it plays xvid/divx encoded avis in the BIOS environment as well - licence issues aside, I can easily foresee this being a great addition to one of those hushpc computers.
Could you imagine what would happen if Microsoft got a hold of this.
Welcome to Windows 2008 BIOS PRO.... You have 78 critical BIOS updates to perform.
To uninstall Internet Explorer: Replace chips 45- 1035 and solder points 20, 40, 30, and 90. (At least you would be able to uninstall it I guess).
When installing Real player: It permanently writes spyware to part of your flash memory and then charges you for it.
Hey look no pointless curley braces or semicolons... just like Python
But does it run Linux?
I mean...
Does it support Ogg Vorbis?
Er, wait...
Shit. I'm out of material.
Bottom line: "BIOS" is just a name. It used to stand for "Basic I/O Services", but now it means "whatever's convenient to have in onboard ROM so you don't have to read it off a disk." Words change.
Here's google's cache of the same page. I know the site isn't completely slashdotted- as it runs fine at some moments, and VERY slow at others. As usual, google's cache is much more reliable.
that's pretty damn cool.
The problem with being a geek, is that you never run out of cool crap that you "have to" buy... they keep bringing cooler and cooler shit to market.
just when I thought I wanted a mini-itx mobo for my PVR project this comes along... oy vey!
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Also look at the page on performance and you will see them compare it to the MSI KM2M Combo-L. If you do a google search on those terms, the first link is their review of that board, which can take a "1GHz to 2600+ processor." On the performance page they benchmark the Soyo P4VAL (Projected price, $69 without tuner) with "Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533MHz" ($124) against the MSI KM2M ($54) with an unspecified CPU, but it does not have 333FSB support so it can't be more than an Athlon XP 2600+ 266MHz FSB ($77 - Actually the 333FSB model is $2 cheaper.) Hence, $193 for the soyo vs $131 for the MSI plus its most powerful CPU. The MSI does almost as well on the CPU benchmark (4391 vs 5810 PCMarks) and does much worse than the Soyo on memory (2400 vs 4844) and their conclusion for this page is "The Soyo P4VAL will have an MSRP of around $69 (without TV tuner, remote, etc, just the board), which is only about $13 more than the KM2M motherboard. It will obviously offer you much more in terms of features and performance and therefore, it's simply a better buy." So let me get this straight, a full size motherboard which, with the tested CPU will run you $63 more, being used for a purpose which does not require massive memory bandwidth, is a better buy? Yes it offers the goofy BIOS menu but that thing doesn't even seem to have SVCD support.
That's right, they don't bother to tell us if it supports nonstandard-bitrate VCD (known as XVCD) and if it doesn't support XVCD, SVCD, and XSVCD, I consider that to be an amazingly crippled featureset for a multimedia PC, one which will mandate the use of a real live hard-drive-installed (or net-booted, I guess) operating system. Neither their etbios page nor soyo's page for the board bother to tell you what types of media are played, but the review says "You have access to multi-media functions such as AUDIO/MP3 CD playback, VCD playback, DVD playback and TV Tuner support" which implies that that's all the functions. No MPEG4, for example, and no SVCD. This bios will only read media on CDs as far as I can tell from the review, so you can't play media off a hard drive, USB, memory stick, etc etc. In other words, it will do the things a $80 DVD player from Wal-Mart will do for you, but its output probably won't be as good (I don't see any component output on this baby, but my $80 Pana DVD-S35S is progressive scan, supports VCD, SVCD, XVCD, XSVCD, DVD, MP3, WMA, and JPEG.)
In fact, the reviewer couldn't even figure out how to get the TV feature to autoscan to select only good channels (a feature which might not even be present, for all anyone including soyo will tell us) but was impressed that there was an escape function to go back to the menu. Woop-de-doo!
All in all, this article is unprofessional crap, and the etbios is basically useless. The fact that it has funky bios means that it's likely to be a pain in the ass sometime down the road. This looks like a product looking for a purpose. Were it done right, with access to filesystems not on optical media, and support for additional codecs in some format, it would be interesting, but this product is as goofy as the review.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Considering that QNX has a 1.44MB bootable demo floppy that has:-
1 A live OS
2 A file system (that I think maybe even now has read/write drivers for QNX's 2 file systems & all the FAT derivitives, plus read-only NTFS support)
3 A very elegant colour graphical enviroment/GUI (that beats the crap out of X-Windows & all the layered crudge now normally ontop of it)
4 Networking capabilities (including drivers for common NICs & dial-up modems)
& 5 a web browser (that even I think now supports a ported Shockwave/Flash plugin, if there's a HDD in the system with the required space formated with a supported file system).
Now even though there's obviously a RAM drive thing going on here, there's no reason why moderm BIOSes can't do the same thing, especially considering contemporary flash RAM sizes mean many BIOSes are to a good degree spare space. From what I remember someone posting here on Slashdot, when this or a very similar topic was previously posted (seems like yonks ago now), some PC flash RAM BIOSes are more than half empty, leading to this potential being investigated, simply as a by-product of finding something productive to do with the left over bytes on the BIOS's flash memory.
Same here (I'm a Linux software developer as well)... for example, how many Office-like suites are there on Linux? how many different X shells? (GNOME, KDE, etc.) Call it OSS, "freedom", "choice", or whatever... it's redundant effort beating to death things that have already been done 100 times before. (Many times, these are redundant and well known/understood problems already not needing yet-another-solution, they are just easy to put out and "gather fame" in the community for doing it yet-again.) Think what could be done if those projects were off solving problems other than these beaten-to-death-redundant problems.
I have seen very few projects use publicly available libraries and instead, rewrite libraries like linked-lists, trees, etc. typically because the developers can't "trust" the libraries out there because they didn't write it and aren't intimately familiar with the inner workings and claim that they have to rewrite so that they can be (what in effect is often like 1%) more efficient by having their own "custom" library to do the work.
I really like the concept of a multimedia oriented motherboard.
And, if it wasn't for the fact that I have a modded X-Box that I paid $125 that, for the most part, does all of this except for tv tuning and has the added advantage of playing X-Box games as well. By the time I build this mobo into a case, it's gonna be the same size as an X-Box too...
The review hit the nail on the head, though. If they did the same thing, but made it micro-ATX and threw on on-board wifi, people would jump on it. I know I'm looking for a small multimedia hub for the bedroom. Heck, I don't even want to put a hard drive in it. I just want a shell that will pull stuff off my main PC.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."