[LinuxBIOS] [PATCH] Remove Bitworks IMS

[Richard Smith]

Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> * Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de> [070524 20:55]:
>> I tend to agree, but I'd like to hear the opinion of Richard (CC'd).
>>

One drawback Ive discovered of gmail is that it will filter out 
duplicates so a cc: and a subscription to the list means that I only get 
one copy and it went into the linuxbios list filter which is massively 
lagged.

My apologies for not responding sooner.

>> Well, reason 1 and 3 are quite surely not enough to remove it, maybe not
>> even reason 2. The reason why I agree that it can be removed is that
>> it's almost completely copy+paste code from other targets with no real
>> IMS-specific code which would be useful for anyone.
>>
>> It may be easier to just start fresh if/when the IMS shall be ported to v2.
>>
>> Richard, please let us know if we shall keep the code, otherwise I'll
>> remove it in one or two days.

As Jordan acked you have my full permission to remove it from the tree 
if you so desire.  As noted there is no IMS specific code in the tree 
because at the time RAM init for 440bx did not work. All my custom mods 
were in V1 in my private tree.

Reason #1 is the reason IMS was halted.  I was using V1 code with the 
Linux command line VBIOS emulator and was never able to make the ATI M1 
graphics chips work correctly.  I could get HSYNC, and VSYNC correctly 
for 1024x768 but the screen was always black with a big block for the 
mouse cursor.

That said, I still have some boards and I would sure love to see proper 
video pop out sometime before I die.  It is the only project of mine 
that outright failed because of technical problems I was not able to 
solve.  The scars remain.

That was 6 months of some of the most intense debugging I've ever done. 
  Eventually discovering the root cause would cleanse my debugging soul.

What 440bx based boards now work?

Maybe I'll take a Sunday afternoon and try to boot the code one of them 
on the IMS boards I have.

-- 
Richard A. Smith
smithbone at gmail.com