What are you rambling about?
The Cisco PIX has a firmware.. it's just not PC BIOS compatible, how it bootstraps an operating system, and the hardware it uses, are totally undocumented.
The infamous NetBSD toaster is simply a embedded ARM computer housed inside a toaster case, it does have a firmware that loads the
NetBSD/evbarm port of NetBSD.
http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/...sd-toaster.php