Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 02:13:30 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: tom@uniserve.com (Tom) Cc: karl@Denninger.Net, dnelson@emsphone.com, bright@hotjobs.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Long IDE probes? Message-ID: <199810010213.TAA20315@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9809301028550.7309-100000@shell.uniserve.ca> from "Tom" at Sep 30, 98 10:31:25 am
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> > IDE by definition is probed by the BIOS before boot. Either the disk is > > there or it is not, and you don't get out of POST and to Boot until that's > > determined. Therefore, a long wait there is COMPLETELY pointless. > > Huh? First of all, more than disks can be put on IDE, and the BIOS > doesn't know anything about that. Most BIOSes don't probe IDE at all, but > newer ones do it to avoid static settings in the CMOS. So on newer ones, we don't have to probe, and on older ones, we could avoid the probe by examining CMOS? > > SCSI devices similarly are probed by the adapter BIOS. Again, there > > is no reason for the long wait that I can fathom. > > For convienance only. I'm guessing you are referring to the convenience of a BIOS probe, and not the convenience of a long wait. 8-). > Some adaptors don't probe. The adaptors don't make this inf > available to the OS in any way, because the OS is supposed to probe. I think all adapters that support booting must probe in order to find a boot device from which to load an OS which may or may not probe. For adapters that don't, then you could make a case that the OS needs to probe, but these are not adaptors for boot devices. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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