[LinuxBIOS] new to LinuxBIOS (help for nova4899r)

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Luis Correia <luis.f.correia at gmail.com> [060923 10:20]:
> There is no ACPI support.
 
A spectre is haunting people coping with bios - the spectre of ACPI.

In LinuxBIOS there _is_ ACPI support. But not enabled for all boards,
because it is usually _not required_. 

> From what I've read, making ACPI tables is not easy...
> 
> The board is industrial grade, and it can be found here:
> http://www.icpamerica.com/products/single_board_computers/5_25_NOVA/NOVA-4899.html
 
GX1 is basically supported.

> 1) if I don't specify a device in config.lb, Linux will still be able

Depends :-) Some devices are not easily detectable or need
initialization in LinuxBIOS. Those have to be specified.

> 2) about IRQ sharing, what is the best solution

IRQ routing mainly depends on the wires on the motherboards. It may or
may not be possible physically.

Why do you want to share IRQs. In theory this impacts system performance
quite significantly and is not required with today's APICs.

Does the GX1 have an APIC?

> 3) is it possible to enable ACPI without having the tables from the
> factory bios
 
Yes, definitely. We are not using any factory bios ACPI tables anywhere
LinuxBIOS.

There is no GX1 ACPI tables available in LinuxBIOS yet, so someone would
have to write them. Not too hard, depending on what features you expect
from ACPI.

Stefan

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