Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 22 Nov 2001 17:27:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 22 Nov 2001 17:27:12 -0500 Received: from neon-gw-l3.transmeta.com ([63.209.4.196]:59405 "EHLO neon-gw.transmeta.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 22 Nov 2001 17:27:02 -0500 Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 14:21:15 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Leif Sawyer cc: Kernel Mailing List , Subject: RE: Linux-2.4.15-pre9 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Leif Sawyer wrote: > > adding the 'pci=biosirq' to my kernel boot command line causes an oops: Well, you seem to have a buggered BIOS - the oops is actually in the BIOS segment, and the BIOS appears to try to re-load the ES segment register with some strange non-existing segment. Your BIOS PCI irq routing routines probably only work in real-mode or something like that. This is the reason Linux avoids BIOS calls like the plague, and why you have to ask for them explicitly - the likelihood of any random BIOS being broken is actually rather high. That's probably because - the BIOS is written mostly in assembly - the BIOS is tested exclusively with DOS and Windows - most BIOS writers appear to simply be incompetent, or just not care. Not a good combination, in short. I'd love to just remove the support for BIOS calls entirely, but for every ten broken machines there is one machine that actually works, so.. Linus - 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/