[Info-vax] X86 first boot? - A Really Stupid Question

[Scott Dorsey]

Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>In many cases, the device mfg writes most or all of the driver, for 
>WEENDOZE, so they can sell the device.  Some also write for Linux, but 
>not all do.  I've seen user complaints about not being able to get a 
>specific device working on Linux.  None are, and probably won't, for VMS.

Some vendors make technical info available, so people write drivers for
Linux and BSD.

Some vendors won't make any information available so people have to 
reverse-engineer the things to write Linux and BSD drivers.

Sometimes several things happen, as in the case with the NVidia cards.
You can get the driver from NVidia, or you can get the open source nouveau
driver that was made mostly from reverse-engineering.  Both have good and
bad points.

>With the video now on CPU chips, one would think there is some 
>standardization, but, I don't have a clue.

It's worse than ever, because the new generation of video coprocessors is
so much more complex.

>> Another issue are companies who may not want to release proprietary device info to
>> some rinky-dink company called VSI. I saw this myself once long ago, when I asked
>> for information on talking to a UPS over a serial port.  The person I talked to
>> seemed willing at first but later wouldn't, and it sounded like an order not to from
>> above.

There's a lot of this, and when it happens we figure it out.  We plug the 
UPS into a Windows machine with the vendor's driver and look at what is going
down the serial line with a terminal Y-cabled off the port.  Then we write
a driver.

>> And another is despite specifications, some companies have an attitude that if it
>> works under Windoze, ship it! (and M$ may have their own deviations from the specs)
>>
>
>As an example, the motherboards I'm using have RealTech LAN, I believe. 

That's an example of something that doesn't work properly even under Windows.

>  VMware would not work, because it didn't like the LAN device.  I'm 
>guessing the target audience(s) do not include running VMware.

These things seldom get fixed in the Windows world.  In the Linux work
usually someone gets pissed off enough to reverse-engineer it and make 
something work.  Unles it's from a company that sues people for doing
that like National Instruments.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."