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Mega-Bios project - Release 1.0

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sergioag

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Mar 1, 2009
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Today we're announcing the first release of Mega-Bios. Yes, this is DTC's Mega-Bios, whose source listing was just recently uncovered by our very own FinnJorgensen! After a huge collaborative effort between FinnJorgensen, 640KB, and myself, we're happy to announce that our first public release is available: https://github.com/sergioag/megabios/releases/tag/v1.0

As you can imagine, given that this BIOS was basically lost for who knows how many years, our first version was built in 640KB's Mega-Board, running a Mega-Bios. You can't get more proper than that.

We really hope you enjoy the release and please report any bugs on Github.
 
I noticed you linked to github for the Super PC/Turbo XT BIOS. This is just a copy somebody made; it is not maintained on github. The official home is phatcode.net.
 
Also I'm not sure why you guys are reinventing the wheel and "fixing bugs" in this BIOS. Miles and I did all this stuff over 15 years ago.
 
Plasma said:
Also I'm not sure why you guys are reinventing the wheel and "fixing bugs" in this BIOS. Miles and I did all this stuff over 15 years ago.
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Personally, I'm interested in the historical aspect of it, documenting and preserving what we know about the company before it's all lost to history. For me, having an old copy of MEGA-BIOS is just a sentimental journey -- something to complete my first, childhood PC of which I still had everything except the BIOS ROM. That, and knowing there must be a copy of the ROM out there *somewhere* was a mystery just too compelling to leave unsolved. :)

I did speak with Don, the original author, and he wasn't even aware his codebase had another life or two after the IBM/Taiwanese takedowns. So that was really neat. Discovering the fact that Don was actually "anonymous" and the IBM copyright history was just a bizarre turn that it took that nobody saw coming. The story is much more interesting than the code or bug fixes or anything, to me at least.

Of course, discovering some of those early bugs just in testing it as we reconstructed was neat. Specifically, how adding an EGA/VGA doesn't quite work right - which comes full circle because that's probably the reason the BIOS was replaced, and why that it was the only original thing I didn't have... thus instilling my interest in finding it.
 
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I understand the appeal of constructing the original version. But it's silly to fix bugs or add features to the original version.
 
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