From owner-freebsd-multimedia Wed Aug 12 23:38:34 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA17139 for freebsd-multimedia-outgoing; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 23:38:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from sos.freebsd.dk (sos.freebsd.dk [212.242.40.180]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA17134 for ; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 23:38:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sos@sos.freebsd.dk) Received: (from sos@localhost) by sos.freebsd.dk (8.9.1/8.8.8) id IAA00393; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:36:52 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from sos) Message-Id: <199808130636.IAA00393@sos.freebsd.dk> Subject: Re: Putting the bt848 driver into the GENERIC kernel In-Reply-To: <35D24B2D.9DB2C577@cs.strath.ac.uk> from Roger Hardiman at "Aug 13, 98 03:10:53 am" To: roger@cs.strath.ac.uk (Roger Hardiman) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:36:52 +0200 (CEST) Cc: rhh@ct.picker.com, ahasty@rah.star-gate.com, multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG From: Søren Schmidt Reply-to: sos@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL38 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In reply to Roger Hardiman who wrote: > Randall, Amancio, Multimedia's > > I was wondering why we do not have the bt848 driver in the GENERIC > kernel. There are several good reasons why this isn't the case, and why the GENERIC config is like it is. First there are HW that needs to be probed in the right sequence to avoid hanging up other HW that might use the same address space or other resources. Then there is the space issue, the GENERIC kernel plus install tools HAS to fit on a floppy with limitted space. Then in this specific case there are a couble more problems. The bt848 driver has close to no probe code, ie it will fail to recognise the card in say 80% of the cases (in fact besides the newest cards it fails utterly), giving the user a hell of a time trying to figure out what is wrong. Then we need sound, erhm, that is not much easier to do a generic setup for. Granted if we used Luigi's drivers we would have support for most generic cards, so that might work. As much as I would like the GENERIC kernel to have all this functionality built in, equally much I see all the problems its uncovers. We could change the bootfloppy to use another (BOOTGENERIC) kernel and then have the system install another (BIGGENERIC) kernel from the bindist when the install is done, that change would be trivial and give the space needed for extra drivers. But until the bt848 driver can make sense out of a significant bigger fraction of the HW, I'd really recommend against this, as it will only bury us under a truckload of errorreports from the (new)users. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Søren Schmidt (sos@FreeBSD.org) FreeBSD Core Team Even more code to hack -- will it ever end? .. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-multimedia" in the body of the message