[LinuxBIOS] linuxbios support for thinkpads?

[Robinson Tryon]

On 9/21/07, Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, AMD supports LinuxBIOS as one of the boot software options on
> > their systems. People at AMD work with LB. We think it is great of
> > course! :)
>
> Full ACK! The support from AMD is really great and very appreciated!

Marvelous!  It's great to hear that AMD is so supportive of this project.


You mentioned in a previous email that it's a bit of work to get a new
chipset supported:

On 9/18/07, Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de> wrote:
> ...No laptop whatsoever (except for the OLPC) is supported by
> LinuxBIOS at the moment... Supporting new
> chipsets is a _major_ piece of work, so don't expect this to happen
> every week or so...

But what, exactly, would it take to get a chipset supported?

Let's say that our target was an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor, and we
were looking at AMD's own chipsets:
- AMD M690T
- AMD M690G
- AMD M690V
- ATI Radeon Xpress 1100
- ATI Radeon Xpress 1150

What kind of time/money combination would be necessary to hack in
support for one of these chipsets and get a laptop model that could
run LinuxBIOS?

I'd certainly contribute money to a targeted endeavor such as that --
and I'm sure that there are several people in the FOSS community who,
like RMS, ESR, and Mark Shuttleworth, would give financial support as
well.  I'm pretty certain about Shuttleworth, because he has an entry
on his blog that is right along the lines of my goal:

  http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/131
  "To that end I'd like to build up a list of people who are
interested in this idea, and would potentially buy a high-powered
laptop if it were guaranteed to work completely with free software
drivers and [LinuxBIOS]."

Having at least one supported, commercially-available laptop would be
a HUGE win for the LinuxBIOS project.