Chipset autodetect -- pro and con

[M Carling]

There seems to be some disagreement over the issue of whether or not
OpenBIOS should provide for possibility to compile into a single binary
support for multiple chipset types to be autodetected at run-time.

For OpenBIOS to be successful, it needs to become more attractive to
the MB manufacturers than the alternatives. I don't know whether such 
a feature would be attractive to the MB manufacturers or not. I suggest
will begin by compiling a list of the advantages and disadvantages of
this feature. Having done that (so that we understand it ourselves as
best we can) we should then ask the manufacturers. (This will be a good
step toward getting free hardware from them for development.)

When we ask them, we should also ask any other questions about their 
needs. In effect, we need to do some market research.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages that I can think of. There are
probably others.

Pro:

It's cool.

It would allow manufacturers to have one BIOS ROM that supports all 
their MB products.

The autodetect code might also be useful for diagnostics.

Con:

Extra complexity--something else to go wrong. Bug free code is *really*
important in the BIOS. 

Extra complexity--more difficult to test.

What other questions would we like the MB manufacturers to answer for us?

M