[PROPOSAL] extended payload handling

[ron minnich]

On 9 Jun 2004, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> Probing is not the interesting thing in LinuxBIOS the interesting thing
> is resource allocation.  And with OpenFirmware doing it I can see some
> point in not predoing it.  But the pci enumeration is quite cheap so I
> don't see that it would be much of a problem, especially as it allows us
> to concentrate the board specific information in LinuxBIOS.

The issue that concerns me is the "buggy hardware" issue, which has 
happened just often enough to be really painful. The worst-case was the 
VT8601, which if not handled properly would lock up the north bridge, or 
the Acer north bridge that also had a few tricks up its sleeve, and so on. 

I can't expect every boot loader out there to get this one right. PCI 
enumeration is *almost* always simple and cheap.

ron