We aren't talking about compiling in support for all and every supported chipsets, just making it configurable, so one could add support for more chipsets in one binary, of course limited by size. This would for instance be nice for admins having a large pool of computers with two different motherboards.
Ahh, it's much clearer now. But I don't think that could be called "auto-detect" since the binary file will have only small set of chipset support - so what can it detect? VX or FX chipset?
I think this is the answer to many discussions we will probably see:
- Do we want a boot logo?
Yes, this should be cool (2 or 4 bit plane 128x128 or 256x256 compressed pic should do the trick).
- Should it support loading the kernel directly?
Optionally, but I guess there are some Windows 95/98/NT or OS/2 or BeOS who would like to use it also, so don't bind them together :)
- Should we support 16bit functions for compatibility
Oh yeah, unless you can come around with a genious way to remain compatible with current BIOS's and OS's..
- ...
Make it configurable (tm) :)
Amen :)
Karl Erik Asbjornsen karlea@samfundet.ntnu.no