[geeks] PC-BIOS over serial

[Joshua Boyd]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 12:38:51AM -0400, Bill Green wrote:
> One of the best things about SPARC hardware is OpenFirmware.
>
> Is there anything similar currently available in the commodity PC realm?  
> I'm thinking about building a headless Atom machine.  Obviously I can  
> install / run the OS over a serial console, but if possible I'd like to  
> be able to do initial setup that way too. It seems like EFI might be  
> able to do this?  Does anybody know if there are Atom boards with EFI  
> yet? Or are there other solutions I'm not aware of?

I've never heard of an Atom with EFI.  That would be interesting to
find.

I believe that PC Engine makes Alix boards with a serial only CLI BIOS
replacement, and I think Soekris does something similar.  Both are
probably lower power than an Atom though.

There is the possibility of  being able to load BIOS replacements onto
some motherboards, but I'll ignore that since I suspect you want ready
on serial out of the box.