How to get technical information?

[Eric W. Biederman]

Richard Smith <rsmith at bitworks.com> writes:

> ron minnich wrote:
> 
> > Best vendors we've seen on this list:
> > micron. You ask for docs, you get Mbytes of pdf and other info. AMD
> > for the K8
> > Next best (i.e. you don't get 100 % but if you ask you might)
> > Intel (they've been very good in the last year)
> 
> Intel is a hit and miss.  Like Ron says you just have to ask..  We
> looked at trying to use the 440MX chipset to replace our 44BX based
> board and was told that even though Bitworks already has an NDA in
> place with Arrow (Arrow is our Intel vendor) we were going to have to
> sigh a extra Double-dog secret NDA for 440MX info.  (The 'red' cover
> agreement rather than the 'yellow' cover agreemnet) and it was very
> doubtful that any of that stuff would be releaseable under GPL code.
> So we had to bail and stick with the 440bx which has almost all the
> info available on the website.

Just to underscore this Intel routinely does not put a couple of
registers in their public docs.  For which reverse engineering may
actually be easier than getting Intels Double-Dog secret NDAs.  But
actually knowing what is going on always helps.

Eric