Option ROM for Device.

YhLu YhLu at tyan.com
Wed Aug 6 13:59:00 CEST 2003


If it is only addon card, it should work already. 

Some cases need option rom support are on-board one.  For example need to
option rom to download FW to the controller and start up the controller.

So LinuxBIOS should have some code do the job or have some code to excute
option rom that will residue in EEPROM.

The first way is more better than second way, and is more fast. But if there
is no info or datasheet, it is hard to do that.

Regards

Yinghai Lu

-----邮件原件-----
发件人: ebiederman at lnxi.com [mailto:ebiederman at lnxi.com] 
发送时间: 2003年8月6日 11:11
收件人: ron minnich
抄送: Stefan Reinauer; YhLu; linuxbios at clustermatic.org
主题: Re: Option ROM for Device.

ron minnich <rminnich at lanl.gov> writes:

> On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> 
> > * Eric W. Biederman <ebiederman at lnxi.com> [030806 05:47]:
> > > There are a couple of sides of this.
> > > 1) Anyone who supports Linux on non-x86 generally has a reasonable
> > >    Linux driver that does not need an option rom to set anything up.
> > >    This includes most hardware raid vendors.
> >  
> > Still, this is not always enough. I cursed many times when the x86
> > emulation on Alpha machines was not capable of executing the hacks
> > some vendors put in their option roms, which prevents video or
> > booting from scsi from working.
> 
> yes, although I have always hoped it would be enough to count on
> open-source linux drivers, we still need expansion rom support today.
> There's a cluster at Argonne that needs an old-fashioned BIOS on the nodes
> that have a certain model RAID-SCSI controller. They want linuxbios, and
> we need to do expansion roms first.

Which model RAID-SCSI controller?  I have seen an amazing number that
have worked.  I am wondering if it is simply a misreport.

Eric



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