Chipset autodetect -- pro and con

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

> I think it should DEFINETLTY need to be seperated.

heh, I think the opposite..

> Why?
> 
> Too Big. Each chipset got it's own data and specs (don't forget we're
> talking about 386, 486, LX, BX, VX, FX chipset and they got lots of
> differences) - combining them all together will give a binary file that
> will probably won't fit into the flash (not mentioning other features we
> want to have).

I kind of doubt it will be too big.  The amount of code to initialize
the subsystems is NOT that large in comparison to something like the
generic display and generic disk and various other generic systems.  I
can't see more than about 32-64k of code to support all of the above
mentioned chipsets.

I'm not a BIOS designer by trade but I *am* a designer of embedded
systems.  The code to handle the hardware is invariably much smaller
than the code to handle the user.

Why do I think it should be autodetect?

simple: chipsets aren't THAT different.  There is software out now
which can differentiate between them fairly accurately.  There are
subtle differences which can increase performance and extra features
of the individual chipsets but deep down they're all the same.

Perhaps we will need to seperate 386, 486 and Pentium chipsets or
perhaps a 386/486 and a Pentium* class BIOS but really that's about it
I think.  Autodetection is a really great idea in my opinion. 
Besides, you *don't* want the end user to look up our site because
they think they're technical minded, download the wrong flash and
boom, be dead in the water.  We need bare minimum "generic" BIOS
support to protect against this because no matter how hard we try, it
*will* happen and OpenBIOS will be a black name, no matter how good it
is.

Andrew