[LinuxBIOS] [RFC] Call for Action: LinuxBIOS foundations

[Corey Osgood]

Rasmus Wiman wrote:
> Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se> skrev:
>
>   
>> On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 10:33:34PM +0200, Rasmus Wiman wrote:
>>     
>>>> I disagree strongly. There is definately a point in supporting
>>>> older hardware as well
>>>>         
>>> On the other hand, have a look at e.g. the Asus M2N-MX/DVI2.
>>>       
>> Some can not afford to pay anything for hardware. Or put another way,
>> hardware that comes for free is always cheaper and often more
>> attractive than hardware that has to be payed for - no matter how
>> cheap the price.
>>
>> I'm thinking recycling of older machines.
>>     
>
> Certainly, (right now I can't afford any new hardware) but one problem
> with stuff that comes for free is you don't know what you get. Which
> means there has to be support for lots of old MB:s for there to be a
> decent chance that the stuff you actually get is supported. Sure,
> generic BX support is probably a very good thing since they were the
> best you could get during almost the entire PII/PIII era, so there are
> lots of them around.
>   

That's always a problem, no matter how hard we try I don't think it 
would be possible to ever fully support even every board that has a 
440bx chipset. I think the best bet is to get at least one decent, fully 
working port for each major chipset. The 440bx isn't even fully generic 
yet, it has some work to go (IIRC). Then there's a bunch of i8xx-series, 
via vt693/694, and s3 chipsets just to cover p3 boards. That's a lot of 
ports, and given how few devs there are, something needs to get cut. So 
we need to isolate the most popular chipsets, and get at least one good 
port for a board with those chips.

> But I still think stuff that's still being sold is a better bet. Even
> the cheapest modern hardware outperforms the PIII by far, and I know
> that I can get the stuff at once if I want it. I can get an M57-SLI-S4
> tomorrow if I have the money. But there are motherboards that cost half
> as much, have integrated vga and even the price of mb plus cpu end
> up costing less than the mcp55 cards alone. Then you need a vga card in
> the MCP55.
>
> /Rasmus
>   

Although true, many users do get high-end boards/video cards/cpus 
because the cheap integrated solutions just don't do what they need to 
do. They might be great for my grandmother, but not for me, and I just 
can't see my grandmother understanding C.

-Corey