[LinuxBIOS] New LAR access functions

Stefan Reinauer stepan at coresystems.de
Wed Jul 25 21:55:09 CEST 2007


* Jordan Crouse <jordan.crouse at amd.com> [070725 21:35]:
> Fair enough.  I've been thinking about something like that, being able
> to control where in the LAR the blob goes (as well as being able to control
> where in memory it gets loaded to).
> 
> But seeing as though the bootblock is 1) very special, and 2) mandatory
> for the LAR, I don't think there is any problem in calling it out specially,
> especially since the position and the concept is a hard constant (for now).
 
I had an sc520 board with 16 mbit flash. the bios would sit in the
middle of it, from 6 mbit to 8 mbit. Sounds like fun, hm?

> Otherwise, the alternative is for the user to have to do the math, and know
> that they should put the bootblock at size - 16k in the LAR.  That seems
> problematic.

Yes, this is totally contrary to making things easier for the user.

> > > It also requires that the user specify a size when the LAR is
> > > created.
> > 
> > Since the larfile is supposed to be 1:1 of the flash chip I think
> > this requirement is unavoidable.
> 
> Yes, but it further breaks the 'ar' / 'tar' / 'lar' similarity.

I dont think that similarity is worth much. Let's design a clean utility
that does the job it does. If it is easy to use because it people
recognize the way it is used, that's fine. But that is not the main
reason. The main reason it should be easy to use is that it knows how to
do the one job really well and without tunables that never get tuned.

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