"I figured out a way to get into the EFI menu on the new Intel iMac. I was attempting to install Vista, which did not work. As I discovered from poking around in the EFI there is no support for UDF or El Torito volumes. It seems only GPT and APM is supported. Writing a driver for EFI to support UDF should be easy enough for someone who knows how, one might even exist already. I'm going to give step-by-step instructions for getting in to the EFI so that some enterprising people will get to work on installing Windows."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:2006-01-13
Member since:2006-01-05
So vista beta doesn't work no big surprise there. Seems like a huge pain to get into EFI what again is the benifit of using EFI?
Um everything. EFI like Open Firmware allows things that bios just can't handle. Modern Bios is still the same basic stuff that IBM invented in the 80's. You need IRQ's and com settings,etc. The real secret of Apple's plug and play ability is that all that is automatic at the OF/EFI level, instead of the OS level.
EFI allows for things Firewire target disk mode. Automatic hardware assignments. Presently it's the OS that has to do those things.
Member since:2005-07-06
The real secret of Apple's plug and play ability is that all that is automatic at the OF/EFI level, instead of the OS level.
I had read that OF/EFI has the ability to provide a generic interface to many hardware components (E.g, if your NIC is supported by OF, then your OS doesn't have to have a specific driver for it, it can just can just use the interface that OF provides). But does Apple use that functionality?
I haven't used OS X at any great length, but descriptions of its hardware detection/plug and play lead me to believe that it is similar to that of BeOS in that respect. In other words, the OS doesn't keep a static list of installed hardware and then look for changes (as Windows seems to), but scans for all hardware on each boot and loads the appropriate drivers. The explanation I'd once heard for why BeOS (and I presume, OS X) is able to do this so quickly is that it directly probes the PCI bus for installed hardware, as opposed to the slower "query the BIOS" method Windows uses.
EFI allows for things Firewire target disk mode. Automatic hardware assignments. Presently it's the OS that has to do those things.
I'm not sure if it's essential for FW target disk mode, though. IIRC, target disk mode was available with the older SCSI, pre-OF Macs (connect powerbook to desktop with SCSI cable, then boot desktop machine from laptop's HDD).
Member since:2005-09-14
Actually in the case of BeOS, it's not entirely this smart; it simply goes through kernel/drivers/bin and loads each driver it finds. The driver in question then probes the PCI bus for any devices it knows how to deal with, publishes them, and unloads. (Driver gets loaded again and stays resident once something actually opens said published node, i.e. when the media_server is started and opens the sound card's /dev node). The reason it tends to be fast is mostly due to the fairly small number of drivers present.
Member since:2005-07-06
Um everything. EFI like Open Firmware allows things that bios just can't handle. Modern Bios is still the same basic stuff that IBM invented in the 80's. You need IRQ's and com settings,etc. The real secret of Apple's plug and play ability is that all that is automatic at the OF/EFI level, instead of the OS level.
EFI allows for things Firewire target disk mode. Automatic hardware assignments. Presently it's the OS that has to do those things.
Thanks it appears i need to do a little more reading on this subject.
Member since:
2005-07-06
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2005-11-09
Member since:
2005-07-06
With EFI is this - with OpenBoot, you are required to write stuff in the Forth programming language, where as with EFI you can use plain old C.
As for a generic interface - a perfect world, everyone would use EFI, all hardware companies would provide the necessary EFI driver, and all operating system uses the generic interface - the sad thing, unfortunately, it isn't the case.
Member since:
2005-10-05
They mention in the thread below the main blog that the Apple EFI implementation supports NetBoot PXE. I'm not sure why nobody has tried setting up a tftp server and sending it linux. Something that everyone is pointing out is that it's also very difficult to install Linux on these things.
Hopefully that will change by the time I get my MacBook Pro. If not, I may have to learn how to program EFI applications 
.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm sorry. Maybe I'm just stupid. I don't get why everyone seems to be so hopped up on getting Windows to boot on the new Intel-based Macs. Can someone please explain it to me?
Just about every 'review' I've read about the new Macs has concluded with something like: Tried to install XP. Didn't boot from CD. Tried Vista build blah-blah-blah, didn't work either.
Move on people. Apple said from the start they didn't want people installing Windows on these machines.
That, and the fact that you paid twice as much for the mac than a Windell box. Why'd you pay all that money, and I suspect a large portion of it for the OS, only to try and get Windows on it.
Like I said. Maybe I don't get it because I'm slow...
Member since:2006-01-20
Member since:2005-07-06
... and you likely don't get opensource software either.
It is the same thing. We just want to figure out how it works. What is the boot loader? What else can you do with it? How does the boot loader jump to the OS boot code?
It is the age old story, why did you climb Mt. Everest? Because it was there!
And in the process of doing so you may just learn something kewl.
Member since:2006-01-20
Because I'm a small software company with about 2/3rds Windows users and 1/3rd Mac users for customers. The stuff I write is multithreaded so I have to keep a dual processor box around for each platform for testing and debugging. For a portable I use a Windows laptop because it's cheaper, faster, more of my customers use it, and because Visual Studio.NET is way nicer to work in than CodeWarrior. If I could get a dual processor machine that dual boots into Windows and OSX, I can consolidate from 3 machines to 1. It saves me a ton of money and trouble.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-01-19
From what I understand traditionally a machine boots from bios. Bios passes control to the boot loader and then the boot loader starts the OS.
EFI seems to be a completely revised system, (according to the posts above) allowing the OS to talk directly to it to control the hardware. But does it have to be this way? Is there a compatibality or a dumb mode wherein the OS can still talk directly to the devices?
If so, why couldn't Grub and Lilo be updated to accept a hand-off from EFI and then start up the OS in a traditional manner?
Yeah, you dump some of the great benefits, but it allows immediate, non-interuptive adoption of EFI, something I'm sure hardware vendors and mobo manufacturers are dieing to see.
Member since:2005-07-20
>If so, why couldn't Grub and Lilo be updated to accept a hand-off from EFI and then start up the OS in a traditional manner?
The upcoming GRUB 2 is supposed to support EFI.
>Is there a compatibality or a dumb mode wherein the OS can still talk directly to the devices?
Yes. There is a compatibility mode but it requires hardware manufacturers to license some BIOS code. So it costs and Apple isn't very keen on introducing features they don't require.
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2005-11-18
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Member since:2005-10-12
"I just think it's funny that the #1 thing everyone wants to do once they get the new macs is run Windows on it"
It is very interesting indeed. How many people actually want to do this is not clear. It could be just a few eccentrics, though the level of interest is seeming higher than that. What it suggests is that the conventional wisdom could be exactly the reverse of the truth. It could be that the reason people would buy macs, if they could, is purely for the hardware, if they could get them with the right OS on them. That the main thing wrong with macs, from the point of view of the market, is that they run OSX.
And so it suggests that the real opportunity for Apple might not be to license OSX for white boxes, but to license Windows to sell with their designer hardware.
One of the really fascinating things about the present environment is that this is about to become empirically testable for the first time. Sooner or later Windows will run in native mode, and then we will see. Can't wait.
Member since:2005-07-06
No....I think it is that we really do want to run OS X for everything we can, but we need to run Windows for very specific reasons.
At least that is the case for me and pretty much anyone that I know who has a Mac. In fact, while I'm sure there are people out there who do, I don't know of anyone who wants to buy a Mac to run Windows to the exclusion of OS X.
- Kelson
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-01-20
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2005-07-06
Apple is known for making everything look nice visually. I really doubt Apple would utilize such a ugly PC interface into their products that are supposed to be elegant looking... even if consumers aren't the ones that are supposed to be looking at it.
Personally, I doubt that there even is a menu. The Apple support people probably just have a list of keys they have to press in order to do specific tasks at startup. I know whenever I took my iBook G4 to get it serviced, they did a bunch of weird key presses on startup in an attempt to get my display working.
Member since:
2006-01-17
There must be some piece of code which (probably running in 16-bit real x86 mode) starts the OS kernel. This code is located either in EFI or on hard disk. Modifying it to start windows NT loader,lilo, grub or whatever booltloader shouldn't be much of a problem.
There are bootloaders which can start booting from an optical drive.
Member since:
2006-01-20
Member since:
2006-01-22
http://www.tianocore.org/
an opensource community that make development kit for EFI (opensource)
we can download the EDK (EFI Developer Kit),
also an EFI-Shell module
and it seems that under this EDK, there is implementation of CSM / ACPI / special drivers for WinNT / and lot more !
as you can see there -> http://edk.tianocore.org/modules.html
all is opensource / you can download the projects, lot of howto/userguide / developer guide ...
i think the next step now , is to boot inside efi interface using the Intel sample implementation , then load the tianocore efishell , and use this efishell to test deeply the apple efi implementation, and try to "load" CSM module from tianocore etc ...
as i dont have yet my MacBook PRO, i cannot test, :'(
