* popkonserve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070828 20:59]: > Why trying to support bleeding edge hardware almost nobody has > datasheets for instead of writing reliable custom drivers that would > support older hardware.
It takes round about 6-8 weeks to port LinuxBIOS to a completely new system with new northbridge, southbridge, superio, mainboard. This is a lot of time, and most ports that actually happen are done because there is some interest in using a large number of that hardware. For hobbyist ports, you can boot a single machine a lot of times before those 5s you safe make up for the 6 weeks you have to put in before it works. So most ports have been commercially used in some product, and nobody planning to use LinuxBIOS today in a product will plan to use hardware that you can not buy anymore (ie. a mainboard older than a year). > i'm willing to write more generic full featured drivers > (northbridge/southbridge) for older chipsets (i posted a list and i'll > stick to that list). This is great! > my problem is not that i don't understand the > hardware itself but the linuxbios framework. i don't want to spend hours > of code surfing just to understand how and where certain code sniplets > are called or how certain config files need to be written. I want to invite you to help us work on v3 then. The framework got a lot simpler. > a > documentation to the code is close to non-existant. while this might not > be a problem to long-term developers it drives new ones away. For understanding the code, this one has generally been pretty useful. http://qa.linuxbios.org/docs/doxygen/ > what i would like to see is: generic support for usb/cdrom boot, FILO (soon grub2) should do this. > ide support in southbridges ..? > an onscreen menu (nothing fancy) lbmenu! > and a far better documentation for users and developers. I think the big problem here is that as soon as people understand the code they are too busy to document it ;) I want to give this request back. Please, if you have a specific question about the code, do document it. Ask it on the list and document the answer in a way that others don't have to ask again. The mailing list contains 70% or more of our knowledge, the rest is stored in the Wiki. And we really want to improve. Stefan -- coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br. Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] • http://www.coresystems.de/ -- linuxbios mailing list linuxbios@linuxbios.org http://www.linuxbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
