Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265223AbTIDTdR (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Sep 2003 15:33:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265511AbTIDTdR (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Sep 2003 15:33:17 -0400 Received: from pc1-cwma1-5-cust4.swan.cable.ntl.com ([80.5.120.4]:21721 "EHLO dhcp23.swansea.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265223AbTIDTdP (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Sep 2003 15:33:15 -0400 Subject: RE: [UPDATED PATCH] EFI support for ia32 kernels From: Alan Cox To: Linus Torvalds Cc: "Tolentino, Matthew E" , "Eric W. Biederman" , Andrew Morton , Matt Tolentino , Linux Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <1062703855.22550.8.camel@dhcp23.swansea.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.4 (1.4.4-4) Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 20:30:56 +0100 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1866 Lines: 36 On Iau, 2003-09-04 at 19:24, Linus Torvalds wrote: > interfaces. The interfaces aren't well specified enough to write a PCI > disk driver, of course, but they _are_ good enough to do discovery and > a lot of things. To be fair - for the hardware extant at the time - they were. Our drivers/ide/pci/generic.c is exactly that. Also beyond the PCI code the vendors managed to create a standard that actually basically works and is back compatible. Bits of it are rather Lovecraftian but it works. ide/pci/generic.c will drive almost any IDE controller today in BIOS tuned mode including basic IDE DMA. > Intel _could_ make a "PCI disk controller interface definition", and it > will work. The way USB does actually work, and UHCI was actually a fair > standard, even if it left _way_ too much to software. UHCI, OHCI, their reuse for firewire and other stuff are all great examples. VGA is another example which alas fell apart as cards changed over time. Its always struck me as bizarre that graphics card vendors can create a chip that can texture a billion triangles a second but can't manage to agree on a hardware interface where I load height, width, depth and refresh rate and it sets it up for me. I grant I2O proved that you can make that control layer too complicated. Even then it wasn't the hardware interface that was the problem, it was the glue on top. People still use the i2o hw interface for many things. I'm hopeful now the world is effectively down to two scsi vendors (Adaptec and LSI) we can at least begin to see a reduction in the number of permutations of scsi insanity. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/