Draft: Thoughts about UEFI and GPT on OS2-eCS

Fact: As Feb 2015 OS/2 and eComStation does not have support for UEFi or GPT.

The rest that follows is speculation.

UEFI
OS/2-eCS can run on a UEFI mainboard only if it is running as "Legacy Mode".

If future mainboards remove the "Legacy Mode" fucntionality, OS/2-eCS will not run on real PC hardware anymore. (as today Feb.2015)

Alternative 1: UEFI Full Support
Create a fancy OS/2-eCS support for UEFI with all the keys, etc.

Alternative 2: ByPass UEFI
Use somekind of loader for UEFI application.

SHIM? - "Shim is a UEFI application that also installs a UEFI protocol for use by other applications. It was written by Matthew Garret, in order to make it possible to load binaries _not_ signed by the primary firmware key."

Will it work what we want to do? Boot OS/2-eCS on real hardware without UEFI keys?

GPT
To get GPT support it is needed (which I don't mean that is easy) 1) to update OS2DASD or 2) create a filter like partfilt.flt.

For booting in GPT some place present which could be used as MBR boot code analogue. And GPT parsing is simple enough to fit into such structure.