On 8/29/07, Uwe Hermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 05:21:08PM -0500, Corey Osgood wrote: > > > We had such calls before, and people would send in their board > > > information, assuming that this would be enough for us to support > their > > > hardware. Unfortunately not a single new port resulted from this, > though > > > many people participated and lots of (unaccomplished) expectations > were > > > created. So I carefully wonder what the real goal of such a call would > > > be, except gathering random people with random boards? > > > > Well, that's how I found this place, and that resulted in one port (so > > far) :) But I can very clearly see your point. > > What exactly lead you to this project? That would be interesting to > analyze... > > My feeling is that a "post your lspci" call for action will result in > lots of lspci's (which is totally useless) and we'll have to tell all > those people "no, your board/chipset is not yet supported". That sucks, > and there's really no gain in doing that. > > Now, what I think would indeed be useful is a Call For Developers. > Because that's what we really need, more developers, more man-power > to actually write code to support new chipsets. > Random lspci's from random people don't help at all. We've had tons of > those already and they all end up with "no, it's not supported" answers. > > > > > Something like: > > > We have 10 people who are willing to work on this or that mainboard if > > > you get them a system they can keep for doing the work, given that the > > > northbridge and southbridge are already supported... Other ideas? > > Won't help either. The number of active developers doing new ports is > way less than 10 anyway. Personally I have at least 4-5 board sitting > here which should be relatively easy to support, I'm just lacking the > required spare time. > > We need more developers and/or more time. > > I don't think money is a problem in most cases (if it is we can probably > arrange for some hardware shipping or ask for donations or something). > > The real problems (in my view) are: > > 1. Lack of developers > 2. Lack of time > 3. Lack of proper datasheets (for some/many chipsets) > > Issue 2 cannot be solved easily, issue 3 depends on many factors > we usually cannot influence a lot, but issue 1 is where we can > get the biggest gain, IMHO. >
I wonder if clean-room reverse engineering on commercial BIOS that comes with the board can help for case 3 because most of them have a "generic" code to boot the machine until preliminary RAM test. Personally, I view it as a *very interesting* challenge. Regards, Darmawan Salihun -------------------------------------------------------------------- -= Human knowledge belongs to the world =-
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