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.
>
> ron
In the case of serial ports, windows may be accessing the superio as a PnP
device
or in "MB PNP" mode (thinking about wording used in ITE's superio docs).
By doing
it this way, (weither or not windows does) it doesn't matter what the bios
did (or didn't
do) other than to respect the settings (like bios ide geometry in bios) if
they exist.
I'm not sure that windows has code for every superio out there, so
maybe it's using the PnP BIOS's pnp device list... linux currently ignores
this
and bangs the hardware... and i believe (have to reread ITE docs) when it's
configured in MB pnp mode (by bios), it doesn't respond to pnp probe.
(I've submitted idea to linux-kernel regarding this)
if you look at 2.4's PCI, it can try direct hardware access first, but
*can* fall
back to BIOS access.... having the linux kernel able to do the same for PnP
might catch things like the serial port, but would also enable things like
laptop hotdock (and there's not much chance linux will do hot dock on *my*
Compaq laptop any other
way - unless someone has a 3D xray or spies who can get schematics)
