Date   : Thu, 12 Jan 1984 10:59:00 PST
From   : MMOON.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: BIOS

I would dearly like to see BIOS information put out in the public
domain.  While different hardware manufacturers have every right to
copyright their particular code, I see no reason not to exchange ideas
on the generalized techniques involved in a particular subroutine or
task without the gory details of a peculiar implimentation.  If the idea
is one's own, of course the publishing of source code is a personal
decision.  It may be more appropriate to put the technique down in some
form of pseudo-code since, CP/M is no longer tied to a small group of
code-compatible processors.  I feel this list is an appropriate forum,
but would certainly add myself to any other on which the discussion took
place.  I will suggest a few topics I would like to see and participate
in discussions on:

       1)Interrupt drivers for anything, but particularly floppy controllers
       2)Pointer interfaces, e. g., mice, touchpads, etc.
       3)Bdos call trapping
       4)Any public-domain LRU or other buffering techniques for flavors of
CP/M which don't already employ the same


Having a pool of techniques for even the more mundane and necessary
stuff needed for baseline systems would be incredibly useful for those
of us with the unstoppable urge to hack hardware, not to mention the
poor people who can't get their manufacturer to supply BIOS source.

I'll be watching this develop.

                       MMoon.es