From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267748AbUG3RYr (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Jul 2004 13:24:47 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267756AbUG3RYr (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Jul 2004 13:24:47 -0400 Received: from web14924.mail.yahoo.com ([216.136.225.8]:45405 "HELO web14924.mail.yahoo.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S267759AbUG3RYe (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Jul 2004 13:24:34 -0400 Message-ID: <20040730172433.2312.qmail@web14924.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:24:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Jon Smirl Subject: Re: Exposing ROM's though sysfs To: Torrey Hoffman Cc: lkml In-Reply-To: <1091207136.2762.181.camel@rohan.arnor.net> 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 --- Torrey Hoffman wrote: > This sounds interesting, but I'm curious... why? That is, what > problem are you solving by making ROMs exposed? > > Or is this just for fun? (That's a legitimate reason IMO...) Secondary video cards need to have code in their ROMs run to reset them. When an x86 PC boots it only reset the primary video device, the secondary ones won't work until their ROMs are run. Another group needing this is laptop suspend/resume. Some cards won't come back from suspend until their ROM is run to reinitialize them. A third group is undocumented video hotware where the only way to set the screen mode is by calling INT10 in the video ROMs. (Intel i810,830,915 for example). Small apps are attached to the hotplug events. These apps then use vm86 or emu86 to run the ROMs. emu86 is needed for ia64 or ppc when running x86 ROMs on them. ===== Jon Smirl jonsmirl@yahoo.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail