[LinuxBIOS] LInuxBIOSv3 - Reset and CAR code

ron minnich rminnich at gmail.com
Fri May 18 21:55:46 CEST 2007


On 5/18/07, Juergen Beisert <juergen127 at kreuzholzen.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> currently I'm trying to understand how it works in assembly until C starts.
> Could we divide the stage0_i586.S file into its three parts? Resetvector,
> Jump to protected mode and the CAR code? Maybe it would be easier to
> understand and to maintain.

No. We've tried that and it failed badly. I am finding it much easier
to deal with 1 file.

Once you start to go down that include path, it gets messy very fast.
Trying to solve it with linker hackery only makes it worse.

I also don't think splitting it really eases readability that much.
Again, we've tried both ways, and I like the new way best.


> With my GeodeGX1 systems I cannot use the mtrr registers to get some memory
> from the cache. To replace it a complete new file would be required. Maybe it
> would be better to support different methods how to get CAR and link them on
> demand?
>

no linker tricks. GNU bintools are not reliable enough to do anything
but the simplest things. Again, this file is carefully designed, based
on 7 years experience, to minimize potential problems with GNU tools.

Also, we don't want to make assembly too easy for people. We had a few
people do assembly, even where they could have used C. Never again.

thanks, and keep asking questions, and making suggestions, even if we
disagree with them :-)

ron




More information about the coreboot mailing list