Re: arch/i386/boot rewrite, and all the hard-coded video cards

Vlad
2007-05-01T22:48:04Z

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
> following question...
>
> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?

Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful for
forensic purposes and recovering important data. I've personally had
to do this many times, and I'm sure others have as well.

Booting is such a critical process that a user would be completely
lost as to why it fails, especially if they can't see any output on
the screen. I think it would be a shame to prevent Linux from running
on these machines.

Vlad

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