[Mr. Anderson]

I've never heard BIOS standing for that, i work as a Computer technician, and it has always been understood that BIOS stands for "Basic Input/Output System".
What a bios is and does is this:
It is required for most interactive electronics to work, it is a piece of software that runs at the most basic level to allow for the machine to even function.
if your psx or ps2 didnt have a BIOS, or it became damaged, you would just get a blank screen when you turned it on.
You know how on your ps2 you have the browser menu, and the configuration menu..... this is all software included in the bios for "Basic" functioning.
on your ps2 the bios tells the video how to display, it tells the ps2 how to receive and interpret input from the controllers and remote. it is a hardware "Driver", it allows for the Firewire port to work, and it allows the USB ports to work.
your ps2 is actually a computer scaled way down.
you can run an operating system on it ( see the Linux Project for PS2 ), and the BIOS is just a bunary file that loads at boot-time.
your ps2 is basically a motherboard, CPU, video card, sound card, usb port, firewire port, and cd drive. these pieces are all brought together in working order by the bios

Interesting, so it might be possible to kick off the BIOS and replace it e. g. with a suitable Linux-Kernel as possible on PCs? (yes, it is possible to run a PC without a typical BIOS. But please, don't try if you don't exactly know what you are doing, you have been warned)
I suppose it is possible. At least in theory. But would it then still be possible to run games? Is there a problem of compatibility as for Windows vs Linux or is it just basic enough not to cause any problem?
This could work. And if it is working, it should also possible to run the PCSX2 without a BIOS, but with the right kernel. So you wouldn't have to buy a PS2 any more for playing PS2 games, right? (Provided PCSX2 1.0 is released ) Would this be legal?

 

[Mr. Anderson]

I think you are mixing concepts. The bios starts the system as it is. When you turn the system on, it's hardwired to boot to the bios. The bios initializes devices on the system and has the method for starting it, be it launch a part of itself as gui (like in most consoles), or look in a predesignated area of memory to load the OS (like in pc, looking in the boot device's system block). Afterwards, you may or may not use the methods provided by the bios to access the system components, but the bios must be there. And in consoles, most of the times the bios procedures are used.

No, you do not need BIOS-Routines, you can access hardware directly. You just need to make the kernel suitable and put it to the place the hardwired routines are looking for. (e. g. EEPROM) Of course that means to overwrite the BIOS, so it's really dangerous, if you don't have an extra flash device.
A well patched kernel might be able to completely replace the BIOS and even allow to play the games.