Fw: Re: Documentation [was: new FSF campaign ..]

[Peter Karlsson]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Peter Stuge wrote:

> Exactly right. But with the right flash memory on the mainboard you
> can use the operating system (Linux) as payload directly.

Ok, thanks. I've seen this discussed on this list; dependent on size of 
flash mem.

> I'm not sure I agree that the bar must be lowered. Much of the
> development going on in LinuxBIOS is _heavily_ technical and spans
> across quite a few different architectures. It's not right or useful
> to force developers to work and/or communicate below their
> capabilities, and certainly not in an open source project. I would
> hate it if someone tried to do that to me.

I really don't want to force anyone to do anything they don't want to do. 
My request/suggestion/whatever was merely what someone else suggested 
("programmer's manual" etc.), not dumb-down the project as a whole, or 
"forcing" developers to hand-hold "newbies" like me... I apologise, if it 
came across like that. Maybe it's my english (it's not my native 
language).

> I do believe however, that all the technical prerequisite knowledge
> should be listed, so that people can get up-to-speed on their own.
> I'll try to work for this and I think that the wiki is a great forum.

That's a great idea. And I also think the wiki is a great thing to have. 
:-)

> SPD is Serial Presence Detect, the name of an I2C bus between the
> northbridge and all RAM modules. Each RAM module has an EEPROM with
> more or less correct information about how memory initialization code
> should set up the memory controller for correct size and optimal
> performance. Quite frequently the information is busted. :(

<snip>

> These are short for Vendor ID and Device ID. VID and DID (or PID,
> Product ID) are id numbers assigned by organizations such as PCI-SIG
> and USBIF to hardware manufacturers allowing software to identify
> hardware in a reliable manner. The ids are stored inside the device,
> whether it's PCI or USB. Also true for PCMCIA/CardBus.

Ok, thanks again for educating me!

Best regards

Peter K