Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030288AbVLFXDr (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Dec 2005 18:03:47 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030290AbVLFXDr (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Dec 2005 18:03:47 -0500 Received: from baythorne.infradead.org ([81.187.2.161]:63384 "EHLO baythorne.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030288AbVLFXDq (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Dec 2005 18:03:46 -0500 Subject: Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario From: David Woodhouse To: Alan Cox Cc: Brian Gerst , Andrea Arcangeli , William Lee Irwin III , Arjan van de Ven , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <1133909359.26777.4.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <1133779953.9356.9.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20051205121851.GC2838@holomorphy.com> <20051206011844.GO28539@opteron.random> <43944F42.2070207@didntduck.org> <20051206030828.GA823@opteron.random> <4394696B.6060008@didntduck.org> <1133894575.4136.171.camel@baythorne.infradead.org> <1133897035.23610.32.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1133907922.4136.218.camel@baythorne.infradead.org> <1133909359.26777.4.camel@localhost.localdomain> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 23:03:41 +0000 Message-Id: <1133910221.4136.229.camel@baythorne.infradead.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.2.3 (2.2.3-2.fc4) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by baythorne.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 975 Lines: 26 On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 22:49 +0000, Alan Cox wrote: > The video 'solution' is a combination of digital and analog > components. Intel defined one end only. Its a bit like AC97 audio only > as I understand it rather less structured. > > Note that most of the BIOS fixes don't replace the BIOS code, they > provide extra mode table entries to it. AIUI we can't even add 'extra' mode table entries -- we can only modify existing entries, and we can't even set the full modeline information on some systems because we haven't reverse-engineered the tables completely. It's done by copying the video BIOS into shadow RAM and modifying the table in RAM. This isn't really much of an improvement over binary-only drivers. -- dwmw2 - 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/