Eric Seppanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 07:06:03PM -0700, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > Eric Seppanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > The problem is that outside of people using linuxbios, that hardware init
> > > code will never be used, never tested. It'll get broken during other
> > > changes, and unless a significant number of kernel developers start using
> > > linuxbios, it's a permanent drain on linuxbios developers to baby-sit the
> > > kernel hardware init stuff. If that (pessimistic, I know) were true,
> > > wouldn't it be easier in the long run to just drop the init code into
> > > linuxbios?
> >
> > Most of the stuff I've seen is a one time config thing to put the
> > hardware in a know state for a know piece of hardware, not easy to
> > break.
>
> If that's the case I agree with you 100%- try and fix the kernel, then it
> doesn't have to be a linuxbios problem.
My experience is with looking at video card drivers here...
> > > Then, (assuming you could somehow convince at least some mainstream kernel
> > > developers to actually use the patch regularly) any breakage of
> > > hardware-init routines could be caught by the main kernel gurus.
> >
> > Or the mainstream kernel testers. This sounds like a good idea.
> > Note booting an x86 and saying you are a pnp os. Does this for most
> > of the hardware anyway. Hardware with onboard ROM's are the only
> > exceptions.
>
> So _that's_ what that setting does :) I've always wondered about
> that.
Basically if you select pnp os, the BIOS should do very minimal
pci bus setup. Everything except what you need to boot should be left
alone.
> Is there any sane way to handle onboard ROMs? I'm thinking of video cards
> here, who presumably rely on few/no BIOS calls.
To initialize hardware.. It is possible and if it ever really becomes
an issue I'll dig deeper into the milo code, which does initialize the
onboard ROMs. However this is becoming increasingly less of an issue.
If you have a framebuffer driver for the video card you shouldn't need
to even touch the video bios. Worst case is that you need to tweak it
to actually initialize the video card from the completely unitialized
state.
Eric
