Open Firmware and Mitch Bradley and got a front-page article on last
week's Linux Weekly News (LWN), because Open Firmware is now free
software (licensed under MIT, BSD and GPL licenses (different licenses
for different files)). It is available on the Internet for browsing
<http://www.openbios.org/viewvc/?root=OpenFirmware> and downloading
<svn://openbios.org/openfirmware>.

The LWN article is available at <http://lwn.net/Articles/209301/>.

- anton

Anton Ertl wrote:

Thanks for the pointer. I guess this is a lot more of a system than
the typical embedded Forth. I see that the article says it is pretty
large by Forth standards. "And it all fits in about 350KB of flash,
with the ability to shoehorn it into 256KB if need be." If I don't
need the networking support or even the file system, any idea how small
this can be? I guess the real question is, if I am looking for a debug
program or a BIOS to make my life easier when bringing up hardware, is
OF a good place to start?

rickman wrote:

OF is Forth and assembly. Since it runs now on the OLPC, ports should be
available for SPARC and x86. But it should be possible to put OF on
Gforth's engine.

On 2006-11-24 02:07:52 -0700, Bernd Paysan said:

We ran the OF compile process in gforth at Apple, but there was an
initial POST portion that was compiled by PPCASM. I just downloaded
Mitch's code, so I haven't had time to look at it very closely.
However, it is very refreshing to see that OLPC has chosen this path.
There may be a future for OF after all. ;)

DaR

Bernd Paysan wrote:

I took a look at the source and there is a lot of it. The only asm I
find is a very small start.s file in /clients/lib/arm. /clients/lib
also has about a dozen C files. Otherwise it all appears to be Forth.
Is this correct?

rickman wrote:

Paul E. Bennett wrote:

rickman wrote:

rickman wrote:

OF is a traditional Forth system, so the assembler portions inside are
written in a Forth assembler. You can't just search for a .s file to find
the assembler parts, you must search for Code inside the .fth files.

Bernd Paysan wrote:

Ok, I'll write this off as another dead end for what I would like to
do. It is funny that with all the hoopla about how efficient Forth is,
a program that is essentially a BIOS is so large and complicated. I
guess it does a lot more than the typical BIOS even though that is what
it is.