[Fwd: Re: Linuxbios and Linspire laptop]

[Bari Ari]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Linuxbios and Linspire laptop
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 10:10:43 -0500
From: Bari Ari <bari at onelabs.com>
To: Jan Macek <miernik at ctnet.pl>
CC: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
References: <E1BSJLs-0005OB-ON at fencepost.gnu.org> 
<40B25E08.8030401 at onelabs.com> <20040601140614.GA945 at jaworz.ctnet.pl>

Jan Macek wrote:
> What about the Linspire Mobile PC laptop?
> Is there really anything missing to got something working at all 
> (proprietary-BIOS-free)?
> Let's say we don't care about power management, lid etc. We just want 
> to be able to use GNU operating system without booting aby proprietary 
> firmware. Is there anything _essenstial_ missing now, the board was 
> said to be the same as VIA EPIA. 

If it's the same as a supported Epia then the port is well on its way.
Can you find out what they use for the keyboard controller?

You may have to care about power management, SystemBIOS reflashing and
the lid etc. or those features may not work depending on how they did
the hardware design. Like I have said before there is really no standard
for this. Hardware guys like myself typically use whatever I/O pins are
left over to solve these issues and then make it work with firmware
attached to the keyboard BIOS.

I'd really like to pick a laptop with a chipset with plenty of life left
like the new Intel 9xx series due out very shortly.

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/31/2211233.shtml?tid=137&tid=152&tid=185

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=2064&p=5

>>Send us an Intel chipset laptop with a Renesas super I/O and we have a 
>>winner!
> 
> 
> I set up a page with some information about LinuxBIOS, and links to 
> some of your posts. Please take a look if I got it right and what 
> might I add:
> http://www.miernik.ctnet.pl/linuxbios/

Looks good so far!

Regards,

Bari Ari