Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 3 Jan 2002 23:17:23 +0100 | From | David Weinehall <> | Subject | Re: ISA slot detection on PCI systems? |
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On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 10:44:57PM +0100, Lionel Bouton wrote: > Alan Cox wrote: > > >>This would break things like cross-compilation. Not sure how many people > >>use it though. You will have to be on the machine for which you intend > >>to compile the kernel. If you are compiling the kernel for the same machine > >>then it is the best thing to happen, provided the software doing the > >>configuration for u is not broken > >> > > > > I'm really not too worried about Grandma cross compiling kernels > > > ROTFL at the mental image of my Grandma configuring a cross-compiling > environment. > > Eric, you said somewhere else in this thread that eventually we should > be able to make kernel configuration as easy as MAC configuration. > > In short we can't. > > MAC configuration is a dream we can't touch. The core hardware and most > importantly the mainboard firmware is done by the very same company that > develops the OS. I guess they didn't shout themselves in the feet and > made firmware and hardware with clean enough interfaces that they could > make hardware detection trivial. > Even if they did mistakes, had bugs, they have the exhaustive list of > them and most probably can easily use workarounds. > > Contrast this with the PC world : numerous mainboard manufacturers, bios > developpers, extension card manufacturers, Operating Systems, each with > their own bugs others desesperately try to work around... > > The general case where all works ok (no bugs in dmi, pnp, ...) is the > exception and the land here is full of workarounds and dead ends if you > want to do hardware detection. > > The worst case : the plain old ISA bus where you can't try to detect a > specific extansion card without risking to lock the system hard by > screwing some other type that is listening on ports you probed. > > What I think we should try is to identify the most stable interfaces > (lspci works ok for most systems and would be of great help), use them > and let the user fill the gap (ISA/MCA/VLB/AGP bus switches for the > *user* is a great idea indeed). > > We are quite PC centric here. But other archs are certainly far more > friendly to what you're up to.
At least MCA and NuBus can be autodetected, and I'm fairly confident the people behind the VME-bus and TurboChannel weren't stupid either, so those can probably be autodetected and probed too.
Dunno about VLB, but AGP is sort of a special-case of PCI (if I'm not all wrong) and can be autodtected too.
ISA, on the other hand, is always a gamble. I bet there are other exceptions as well.
/David Weinehall _ _ // David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander \\ // Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel // Dance across the winter sky // \> http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ </ Full colour fire </ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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