RE: PCI card bios accessibility

[Tina Declerck]

Hi Ollie,
> > On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Tina Declerck wrote:
> > > Will it use PCI configuration space to locate the Basic Address
>
> Register
> > > (BAR) to locate bios
> > >    on a PCI card and load it?  Specifically, this is regarding a 3ware
>
> RAID
> > > card.
> >
> > This is done now in user mode via emulation, for a number of reasons,

and
> > this emulation will move to linuxbios in a month or so.
>
> That's good to hear.  We'd like to do some testing in-house once this is
> available.
> Why do you want to do this ? AFIAK, 3ware one of the few open source 
> friendly vendors, the driver in the kernel can pretty much handle
> anything.

Thank you.  I'm not questioning the functionality of the driver, however,
some customers like to configure 3ware RAID using the 3ware bios.  If it
is called during the system boot the driver isn't involved. This is not
taking anything from existing functionality but trying to see if
the functions currently available with other BIOSes is or will be available
with the Linux BIOS.

Thank you,

Tina

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PCI card bios accessibility

[Richard Smith]

Tina Declerck wrote:
> Thank you.  I'm not questioning the functionality of the driver, however,
> some customers like to configure 3ware RAID using the 3ware bios.  If it
> is called during the system boot the driver isn't involved. This is not
> taking anything from existing functionality but trying to see if
> the functions currently available with other BIOSes is or will be available
> with the Linux BIOS.

Hmmm... There will probally to be a lot of work then to make this go 
good enough for you.  You are talking lots of video and keyboard input 
functions.  LB provides only minimal system bios service suppport.  Even 
though the video bios may run under the emulator theres lots of support 
bios calls that are just empty functions.    The bulk of the bios 
emulation has just been toward getting the video card up enough that it 
can produce text and that a framebuffer driver can take over and take it 
up the rest of the way. (or the X driver)

I'm not saying it can't ever work but that someone is going to have to 
spend a lot of time filling in the necesary bios code.  You guys have 
control over your bios so you may be able to minimize the dependency on 
system bios services.

No need to wait for integration into LB to test though. The emulator is 
available now and runs as a user program.  It's probally a good idea to 
give it a whirl on your card and see what int services it whines about.
> DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
> is intended by 3ware for the use of the named individual or entity to which
> it is directed and may contain information that is confidential or
> privileged and should not be disseminated without prior approval from 3ware

You my want to drop this for list posts. I know on some lists people 
will refuse to answer posts that contain verbage like this.

PCI card bios accessibility

Tina Declerck  writes:
> Thank you.  I'm not questioning the functionality of the driver, however,
> some customers like to configure 3ware RAID using the 3ware bios.  If it
> is called during the system boot the driver isn't involved. This is not
> taking anything from existing functionality but trying to see if
> the functions currently available with other BIOSes is or will be available
> with the Linux BIOS.

Wrong assumption.  The long term plan is to call the linux driver
to boot off of cards.  The linux kernel will be used in our bootloader.
I am in the process of working out the size constraint issues.

The perception of a significant chunk of our customer base is that if
you can't do it from linux you can't do it.  So classic PC-BIOS
firmware compatibility is simply a nice to have, and I don't see it
extending beyond an optional feature.

Video cards have a special place in nuisance list.  But what
a video card requires from firmware is different from what a RAID card
with a menu to configure things requires.  And even the video card
BIOS support will be optional.

Eric