On 9 Jun 2004, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Probing is not the interesting thing in LinuxBIOS the interesting thing is resource allocation. And with OpenFirmware doing it I can see some point in not predoing it. But the pci enumeration is quite cheap so I don't see that it would be much of a problem, especially as it allows us to concentrate the board specific information in LinuxBIOS.
The issue that concerns me is the "buggy hardware" issue, which has happened just often enough to be really painful. The worst-case was the VT8601, which if not handled properly would lock up the north bridge, or the Acer north bridge that also had a few tricks up its sleeve, and so on.
I can't expect every boot loader out there to get this one right. PCI enumeration is *almost* always simple and cheap.
ron