Patrick Mochel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
>
> > On 27 Feb 2001, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> >
> > > I know windows can do it. I saw it last week. So I'm going to keep
> > > digging.
> >
> > This is a good point. Somehow windows knows when to ignore the bios, and
> > when not to. It's interesting to see it go, and it gives linux a bad
> > reputation. I've seen it happen.
>
> I think this is because of ACPI. There is a specification from Micorsoft
> - called "The Simple Boot Flag Specification" - that "can be used by an
> operating system to communicate boot options to the system BIOS and add-in
> card option ROMs". This specification is here:
>
> (http://microsoft.com/hwdev/desinit/simp_bios.htm)
This one isn't it. This is the fast boot BIOS option. With a CMOS
register you can set when booting succeeds.
> Unfortunately, it's in rtf format.
>
> And, unfortunately, Linux doesn't take into account that ACPI table when
> it boots.
Correct.
> And, more so, I haven't seen anything in the way of ACPI in linuxbios yet.
>
> That brings up a couple of things.
>
> One is that Linux is (slowly) getting more ACPI aware. It will be a long
> while before it can take advantage of all the ACPI capabilities in a
> system, including boot flags, PCI routing tables, and interrupt handling
> tables. But, it is something that is on some people's radar for future
> versions of Linux (e.g. 2.5+).
>
> Another is the thought of ACPI support in linuxbios. As mentioned before,
> i haven't seen anything, though I could be missing something. Are there
> any thoughts of supporting it? Or looking into it?
I read through it yesterday as part of this conversation to see if there
was anything worthwhile there. My current impression of ACPI is that
it sucks less. But that it is overkill for what it is doing. Plus it only
works on intel architectures. (I.e. I can' describe my alpha IRQ routing).
> For those that don't know anything about ACPI, I recommend getting
> familiar with it. It's offical website is:
>
> http://www.teleport.com/~acpi/
>
> Download and read the 2.0 spec. It's a monster, but for practical
> purposes, most of it (the ASL and AML references) can be ignored for the
> time being.
The ASL & AML are what I really object to in the specification. I
think the same information can be conveyed with flat data values
instead of needing an AML interpreter. It's complexity without
advantage as far as I can see.
Hardware control code buried in AML gives me the shivers.
If I can I want to break linux of unnecessary BIOS dependencies, and
ACPI seems to introduce some new ones.
> If there are any questions, I'll be happy to field them as best I can.
If you can defend the ACPI works I'd find it interesting.
Or if you know where I can get an ASL compiler so I can build ACPI
configuration tables.
I'd like to back down on my dislike of ACPI because I hate reinventing
the wheel. But right now ACPI still looks like a 80 sided regular
polygon, with a wheel still needing to be invented...
Eric
