Re: ISA slot detection on PCI systems?

Dave Jones
2002-01-04T20:58:04Z

On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Are there even 1500 distinct PC motherboard designs in *existence*? :-)
> Think, Dave. The DMI standard dates from 1998. For there to be 1500
> entries on the blacklist, someone would have to have been cranking out
> *500* PCI-capable, DMI-supporting motherboard designs a year each and
> every one of which lies about having ISA slots.

- Laptops. Lots of vendors, multiple product lines.
- prebuilt systems with custom boards from Dell/Compaq.
- The obvious motherboard vendors (ABit, Asus, Tyan, Soyo etc etc)
- Vendor reference boards from AMD, VIA, SiS, ALi etc etc.
- The seemingly endless cheap no-name boards from Taiwan.
- Mulitple versions of BIOSen for all the above.
Some with good DMI/some bad/some bad for different reasons etc.

Still think that '150' systems sounds right ?
Dell alone have probably achieved that in their product line over
the last three years.

And whilst DMI is a dying standard, its still present in a lot of
new boxes, and will probably still continue to for some for a while.

--
| Dave Jones. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
| SuSE Labs