Talk:Open Firmware

"Macintosh computers that use an Intel microprocessor do not use Open Firmware."

Source: Universal Binary Programming Guidelines: Open Firmware /* was Universal Binary Programming Guidelines: Open Firmware */.

However I'd leave the article as is for now, since there aren't any Intel Macs generally available yet. AlistairMcMillan 16:17, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Based on that evidence, I'd certainly (now) support changing the article now. And it also adds credence to a point I raised off Wikipedia where I was speculating on whether 1) Apple will support dual simultaneous booting of Windows and Mac OS X via a hypervisor and 2) whether Mac OS X will eventually run on commodity PCs and Apple will transform into a software-oriented + boutique hardware company.

Thanks for the pointer!

Atlant 17:04, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Very interesting. --DavidCary 21:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Some Old World PPCs use OF

This page previously asserted that only New World Macs used Open Firmware. As far as I know, that's false. See Old World ROM, this page. I did not, however, word the edit perfectly. If you can think of a better way, please edit. Adrian Sampson 18:09, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

All PowerPC PCI Macs used OF. Potatoswatter (talk) 19:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Open hardware?

The article includes a link to "Open hardware", with no further explanation. Does Open Hardware have anything to do with OpenFirmware, besides starting with "Open"?

No. Mirror Vax 04:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

"powerful language"

the discussion of open firmware being a "powerful language" is a bit imprecise. i think that someone means to say that it's recursive (a.k.a. turing-complete) ... which, of course, implies that it can be used to solve towers of hanoi ... or any other problem that any other language can encode.

Forth is a powerful and complete programming language. (Though the Open Firmware implementation of it is a fairly trim.)—überRegenbogen 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Forth in OFW is a complete ANS Forth implementation, with a lot of additional features and concepts not found in ANS Forth. So it is actually a lot more powerful than the standard forth itself. 88.66.25.124 (talk) 16:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

It's middle of the road. The standard itself defines basic interrupts and exceptions, things needed to create a basic OS, with a fair level of object orientation to support the driver system. Then vendors add extras to support demanding hardware at high speed, GUI administration/maintenance tools, filesystems, etc. So it's not C++, but it's just enough to write a usable GUI OS with full driver support for a vendor's machines. Potatoswatter (talk) 19:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

high or low level language?

The article refers to Forth, at different points, as both a high-level and a low-level language. Forth can seem somewhere in between; but it is sophisticated enough to be considered high-level.—überRegenbogen 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Merge from FCode

See discussion in Talk:Forth (programming language)#Merge from FCode. Wandering if it is possible to hack without any apllications? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.176.214.51 (talk) 00:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

• Support per most of the discussion there... FCode is an integral part of OF and not anything else. What do you mean "hack without any applications"? — please define "hack" and "application" here. OF can be easily manipulated at runtime, but typically that is done by the text interpreter and not more cumbersome bytecode. Potatoswatter (talk) 17:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Comparison to UEFI?

I'd like to see a point-by-point comparison of OF and UEFI, and specifically, the typical extensions fo OF found on sparc, powerpc, etc. linas (talk) 18:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

PCI

PCI based systems are not the only systems open firmware/open boot worked with. SBus Suns for example. Chris Fletcher (talk) 14:37, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

OpenBoot was developed originally on SBus systems, but those were gone by the time OpenFirmware was released. My recollection is that Sun stopped developing SBus based desktops in the mid-90s (Ultra-1 timeframe), and servers not too long after that - while the release of OpenFirmware (what this article is about) wasn't until a decade later. Tarl N. (discuss) 00:23, 22 August 2018 (UTC)