Welcome to the OpenBIOS forth core "begin again".
Find more information about OpenBIOS at http://www.openbios.org/
This program was written by Patrick Mauritz and Stefan Reinauer in 2003
For license details on this piece of software, check Documentation/COPYING.
How OpenBIOS works
------------------
The OpenBIOS forth core is split into a forth kernel written in C
and a forth dictionary which operated on by the kernel.
When building the forth core, you get different versions of
the forth kernel:
* a "hosted" unix binary. This binary can be used on a unix system
- to execute a forth dictionary from a file. This can be used for
testing openbios code in a development environment on a unix host.
- to create a dictionary file. Such a dictionary file sets up
all of the forth language. Primitives are indexed to save relocations.
The default is to create a forth dictionary forth.dict from
forth/start.fs. This file includes all of the basic forth language
constructs from forth/bootstrap.fs and starts the interpreter.
To achieve this, the hosted unix version contains a basic set of
forth words coded in C that allow creating a full dictionary.
* a varying number of target specific binaries. On x86 you can start
openbios for example from GRUB or LinuxBIOS. They are all based on
the same forth engine consisting of a dictionary scheduler, primitive
words needed to build the forth environment, 2 stacks and a simple
set of console functions. These binaries can not be started directly
in the unix host environment.
Requirements
------------
* gcc
* grub or any other multiboot loader to run the standalone
binary "openbios.multiboot"
Building & Usage
----------------
* make
this builds "openbios.multiboot", the standalone image and "unix",
the hosted image. Additionally it creates a forth dictionary
file from forth/start.fs. All generated files are written to
the absolute directory held by the variable BUILDDIR, which defaults
to obj-[platform]. Some compile time parameters can be tweaked in
include/config.h
* use "unix" to create a forth dictionary on your own:
$ ./unix -Iforth start.fs
creates the file forth.dict from forth source forth/start.fs.
* use "unix" to run a created dictionary:
$ ./unix forth.dict
This is useful for testing
* booting openbios
You can boot openbios i.e. in grub. Add the following lines to
your menu.lst:
title openbios
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/openbios.multiboot
module (hd0,2)/boot/openfirmware.dict
Note: change (hd0,2) to the partition you copied openbios and
forth.dict to.
To boot OpenBIOS from LinuxBIOS/etherboot, you can either use
"openbios" or "openbios.full":
- openbios is the pure kernel that loads the dictionary from a
hardcoded address in flash memory (0xfffe0000)
- openbios.full also includes the dictionary directly so that it
can be easily used from etherboot or the LinuxBIOS builtin ELF
loader without taking care of the dictionary
Comments are welcome.
OpenBIOS team
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tag: README for openbios forth core
