On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 12:44:23PM +0100, Peter Karlsson wrote:
LinuxBIOS (initialises hardware) -> payload (etherboot,OpenBIOS, FILO etc.) (-> operating system)?
Exactly right. But with the right flash memory on the mainboard you can use the operating system (Linux) as payload directly.
Ok, but that was just an example. Technical jargon explanation is still needed to get into linuxbios. For instance: http://www.clustermatic.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2003-March/002240.html
This mail mentions SPD,VID,DID,I2C etc. Does everybody know what these mean? To get more people interested in linuxbios one has to lower the bars, and technical jargon is a major blocker (at least for me).
I'm not sure I agree that the bar must be lowered. Much of the development going on in LinuxBIOS is _heavily_ technical and spans across quite a few different architectures. It's not right or useful to force developers to work and/or communicate below their capabilities, and certainly not in an open source project. I would hate it if someone tried to do that to me.
I do believe however, that all the technical prerequisite knowledge should be listed, so that people can get up-to-speed on their own. I'll try to work for this and I think that the wiki is a great forum.
And yes, I do know what i2c is, and I think I know what spd is (ram speed?)
SPD is Serial Presence Detect, the name of an I2C bus between the northbridge and all RAM modules. Each RAM module has an EEPROM with more or less correct information about how memory initialization code should set up the memory controller for correct size and optimal performance. Quite frequently the information is busted. :(
but vid & did does not ring a bell.
These are short for Vendor ID and Device ID. VID and DID (or PID, Product ID) are id numbers assigned by organizations such as PCI-SIG and USBIF to hardware manufacturers allowing software to identify hardware in a reliable manner. The ids are stored inside the device, whether it's PCI or USB. Also true for PCMCIA/CardBus.
//Peter