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  3. March 2005

Re: Does as400 use open firmware at IPL?


IBM used OF in their RS/6000s. Now that IBM offers basically the same machine as i5, p5 and OpenPower (linux) models it's entirely possible they share a similar firmware (differences more for marketing/licensing reasons).

With the new “Virtualization Engine", it's doubtful the OS would touch the hardware boot rom. AFAIK, the traditional AS/400 boot sequence involved loading the microcode (hardware diags), starting the virtual machine (MI level), loading and starting OS400. This might have been covered in the Diagnostics Aids manual.

If you interested in how an OS boots, you might look at how Linux loads in a LPAR. I don't know if the iSeries versions of RedHat or Suse are available for download, but here's an effort to run Debian in a LPAR.
http://www.adelux.fr/site_adelux/libre/howto/iseriesen


Keith





Steve Richter wrote: 
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-spec2.html

"...Open Firmware is software that is used after powering a machine to bring
the operating system online (most visibly on PowerPC® and SPARC systems).
..."

"...OF is "Firmware" in the sense that it is "boot firmware," the code that
runs in a machine between when power first hits the CPU and when the OS gets
loaded. ... OF is written in ANSI Forth. ..."

Curious to know how the as400 IPLs. Does it run open firmware?

-Steve




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