OpenBoot Environment
The hardware-level user interface that you see before the operating system starts is called the OBP. OpenBoot is based on an interactive command interpreter that gives you access to an extensive set of functions for hardware and software development, fault isolation, and debugging. The OBP firmware is stored in the socketed startup PROM. The OpenBoot PROM consists of two 8KB chips on the system board: the startup PROM itself, which contains extensive firmware allowing access to user-written startup drivers and extended diagnostics, and an NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory) chip.
The NVRAM chip has user-definable system parameters and writeable areas for user-controlled diagnostics, macros, and device aliases. ...
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