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SeaBIOS
SeaBIOS is an open-source implementation of an x86 BIOS, serving as a freely available firmware for x86 systems. Aiming for compatibility, it supports standard BIOS features and calling interfaces that are implemented by a typical proprietary x86 BIOS. SeaBIOS can either run on bare hardware as a coreboot payload, or can be used directly in emulators such as QEMU and Bochs. Initially, SeaBIOS was based on the open-source BIOS implementation included with the Bochs emulator. The project was created with intentions to allow native usage on x86 hardware, and to be based on an improved and more easily extendable internal source code implementation. Features Features supported by SeaBIOS include the following: * Graphical bootsplash screen (JPEG and BMP) * USB keyboard and mouse support * USB Mass Storage boot support * USB Attached SCSI boot support * ATA support * AHCI support * NVMe support * El Torito optical disc drive boot support * BIOS Boot Specification (BBS) * Rebooting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coreboot
coreboot, formerly known as LinuxBIOS, is a software project aimed at replacing proprietary firmware (BIOS or UEFI) found in most computers with a lightweight firmware designed to perform only the minimum number of tasks necessary to load and run a modern 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. Since coreboot initializes the bare hardware, it must be ported to every chipset and motherboard that it supports. As a result, coreboot is available only for a limited number of hardware platforms and motherboard models. One of the coreboot variants is Libreboot, a software distribution fully free of proprietary blobs, aimed at end users. History The coreboot project began in the winter of 1999 in the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), with the goal of creating a BIOS that would start fast and handle errors intelligently. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). Main contributors include LANL, SiS, AMD, Core ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
QEMU
QEMU is a free and open-source emulator (Quick EMUlator). It emulates the machine's processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest operating systems. It can interoperate with Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to run virtual machines at near-native speed. QEMU can also do emulation for user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one architecture to run on another. Licensing QEMU was written by Fabrice Bellard and is free software, mainly licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Various parts are released under the BSD license, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or other GPL-compatible licenses. Operating modes QEMU has multiple operating modes: ;User-mode emulation: In this mode QEMU runs single Linux or Darwin/macOS programs that were compiled for a different instruction set. System calls are thunked for endianness and for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VirtIO
QEMU is a free and open-source emulator (Quick EMUlator). It emulates the machine's processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest operating systems. It can interoperate with Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to run virtual machines at near-native speed. QEMU can also do emulation for user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one architecture to run on another. Licensing QEMU was written by Fabrice Bellard and is free software, mainly licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Various parts are released under the BSD license, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or other GPL-compatible licenses. Operating modes QEMU has multiple operating modes: ;User-mode emulation: In this mode QEMU runs single Linux or Darwin/macOS programs that were compiled for a different instruction set. System calls are thunked for endianness and for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process (power-on startup). The BIOS firmware comes pre-installed on an IBM PC or IBM PC compatible's system board and exists in some UEFI-based systems to maintain compatibility with operating systems that do not support UEFI native operation. The name originates from the Basic Input/Output System used in the CP/M operating system in 1975. The BIOS originally proprietary to the IBM PC has been reverse engineered by some companies (such as Phoenix Technologies) looking to create compatible systems. The interface of that original system serves as a ''de facto'' standard. The BIOS in modern PCs initializes and tests the system hardware components (Power-on self-test), and loads a boot loader from a mass storage device which then i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SLIC Table
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process (power-on startup). The BIOS firmware comes pre-installed on an IBM PC or IBM PC compatible's system board and exists in some UEFI-based systems to maintain compatibility with operating systems that do not support UEFI native operation. The name originates from the Basic Input/Output System used in the CP/M operating system in 1975. The BIOS originally proprietary to the IBM PC has been reverse engineered by some companies (such as Phoenix Technologies) looking to create compatible systems. The interface of that original system serves as a ''de facto'' standard. The BIOS in modern PCs initializes and tests the system hardware components ( Power-on self-test), and loads a boot loader from a mass storage device which then in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bochs
Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (including protected mode), memory, disks, display, Ethernet, BIOS and common hardware peripherals of PCs. Many ''guest'' operating systems can be run using the emulator including DOS, several versions of Microsoft Windows, BSDs, Linux, Xenix and Rhapsody (precursor of Mac OS X). Bochs runs on many ''host'' operating systems, including Android, Linux, macOS, PlayStation 2, Windows, and Windows Mobile. Bochs is mostly used for operating system development (when an emulated operating system crashes, it does not crash the host operating system, so the emulated OS can be debugged) and to run other guest operating systems inside already running host operating systems. It can also be used to run older software—such as PC games—which will not run ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network Booting
Network booting, shortened netboot, is the process of booting a computer from a network rather than a local drive. This method of booting can be used by routers, diskless workstations and centrally managed computers (thin clients) such as public computers at libraries and schools. Network booting can be used to centralize management of disk storage, which supporters claim can result in reduced capital and maintenance costs. It can also be used in cluster computing, in which nodes may not have local disks. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, network boot was used to save the expense of a disk drive, because a decently sized harddisk would still cost thousands of dollars, often equaling the price of the CPU. Hardware support Contemporary desktop personal computers generally provide an option to boot from the network in their BIOS/UEFI via the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE). Post-1998 PowerPC ( G3 G5) Mac systems can also boot from their New World ROM firmware to a network dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IPXE
iPXE is an open-source implementation of the Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) client software and bootloader, created in 2010 as a fork of gPXE (gPXE was named Etherboot until 2008).ipxe.org - iPXE FAQs 2011-12-02 It can be used to enable computers without built-in PXE capability to boot from the network, or to provide additional features beyond what built-in PXE provides. While standard PXE clients use only to load parameters and programs from the server, iPXE client software can use additional protocols, including , |
GPXE
gPXE is an open-source Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) client firmware implementation and bootloader derived from Etherboot. It can be used to enable computers without built-in PXE support to boot from the network, or to extend an existing client PXE implementation with support for additional protocols. While standard PXE clients use TFTP to transfer data, gPXE client firmware adds the ability to retrieve data through other protocols like HTTP, iSCSI and ATA over Ethernet (AoE), and can work with Wi-Fi rather than requiring a wired connection. gPXE development ceased in summer 2010, and several projects are migrating or considering migrating to iPXE as a result. PXE implementation gPXE can be loaded by a computer in several ways: *from media like floppy disk, USB flash drive, or hard disk *as a pseudo Linux kernel *as an ELF image *from an option ROM on a network card or embedded in a system BIOS *over a network as a PXE boot image gPXE implements its own PXE sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Block Addressing
Logical block addressing (LBA) is a common scheme used for specifying the location of blocks of data stored on computer storage devices, generally secondary storage systems such as hard disk drives. LBA is a particularly simple linear addressing scheme; blocks are located by an integer index, with the first block being LBA 0, the second LBA 1, and so on. The IDE standard included 22-bit LBA as an option, which was further extended to 28-bit with the release of ATA-1 (1994) and to 48-bit with the release of ATA-6 (2003), whereas the size of entries in on-disk and in-memory data structures holding the address is typically 32 or 64 bits. Most hard disk drives released after 1996 implement logical block addressing. Overview In logical block addressing, only one number is used to address data, and each linear base address describes a single block. The LBA scheme replaces earlier schemes which exposed the physical details of the storage device to the software of the operating sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lempel–Ziv–Markov Chain Algorithm
The Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) is an algorithm used to perform lossless data compression Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic .... It has been under development since either 1996 or 1998 by Igor Pavlov (programmer), Igor Pavlov and was first used in the 7z format of the 7-Zip archiver. This algorithm uses a Dictionary coder, dictionary compression scheme somewhat similar to the LZ77 algorithm published by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv in 1977 and features a high compression ratio (generally higher than bzip2) - LZMA Unix Port was finally replaced by xz which features better and faster compression; from here we know even LZMA Unix Port was a lot better than gzip and bzip2. and a variable compression-dictionary size (up to 4 Gigabyte, GB), while still ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
