Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 26 Feb 2000 20:54:02 -0800 (PST) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] fancy new memory detection, for pre-patch-2.3.48-2 |
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On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, david parsons wrote: > > > - do the old-style calls regardless > > The e801 call is broken on some new bioses -- I've got some Pentium II > boxes where e801 cheerfully returns 550mb on a machine that only has > 128mb of core.
That's fine. I'm not advocating _using_ the value. I'm really advocating:
- the 16-bit assembly language does all the calls, and gathers all the information. - the 16-bit assembly language does NOT try to maek sense of the information, In particular, it doesn't try to figure out whether the information is broken or not, or _which_ of the memory information it should use. - in short, the 16-bit assembly code is STUPID.
- ..and all the real WORK is done in C. In an __init section that gets thrown away. Not in unreadable assembly code. Especially not if the rules are arbitrary and pretty much made up to match BIOS bugs in the first place.
See my argument?
Linus
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