Jeff Garzik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Ronald G Minnich wrote: > > >I can't remember if I brought this up. > > > >There's a problem in linux as regards IRQ. I'm hoping enough linux people > >read this to comment. > > > >Linux seems to assume that you either have a full PCI BIOS or you don't. > >If you don't have a PCI BIOS, then linux assumes there is no $PIR (from > >my reading of the code anyway). > > > >So this is a needed fix: Linux needs two (at least) config options for PCI > >BIOS: CONFIG_PCIBIOS and CONFIG_PIRTABLE > > > >comments? Sorry if this subject is a repeat. I just got screwed again on a > >differeng GEODE card by this problem. > > > > > My suggestion has always been to give Linux what it wants. For memory, this > means providing the E820 table, and for PCI $PIR, this means providing the PCI > IRQ routing table... > > This is the cost of having your own data table, etc. -- > you have to modify all the software you are working with just to read the data > table.
Actually this is almost exactly the opposite. We are using the native data structure and having problems anyway. > Why not just provide the tables existing software is already tested and proven > to work with? > > IIRC Eric disagrees, preferring a custom table... I prefer a) having our own native internal format. c) Instead of a half assed version of someone else's API doing our own. b) Doing a good semantically correct version of someone else's API, from our own information. In particular there is no E820 BIOS table, in memory, just a set of BIOS, calls that return tabular data. I'm not anxious to implement 16bit BIOS calls for an E820 table, especially because it isn't cross architecture portable. >From my perspective if you are something different if you can get other people to modify their code to support that difference the by-in is a lot higher than if you hide the fact you are different, and let people think they have to do nothing to support you. Prime example of the falacy of compatibility OS/2 even after it came out it was win16 compatible, and was a better windows than windows, yet it wasn't sustainable precisly because it really wasn't windows, yet hardly anyone did a native port to it. Especially because you didn't have to do anything to support OS/2. So I make no apologies about prefering our own tables and structures. Eric
