Open Firmware is a boot environment developed using the Forth programming language. The purpose of Open Firmware is to provide a machine-independent mechanism for loading operating systems from a variety of boot devices. Open Firmware probes the PCI bus looking for devices and possible Open Firmware drivers for those devices. These drivers can either be built into the Open Firmware module or located in the external device, thus providing plug-and-play capabilities for new boot devices. Open Firmware is capable of using these drivers to load an operating system from the device.Functions of the Open Firmware code include
configuration of the Uni-N and KeyLargo ICs
construction of the device tree
probing of the devices and inclusion of some device drivers