[LinuxBIOS] linuxbios support for thinkpads?

[Corey Osgood]

Robinson Tryon wrote:
> On 9/18/07, Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de> wrote:
>   
>> Correct. No laptop whatsoever (except for the OLPC) is supported by
>> LinuxBIOS at the moment. We definately like to change that, but at the
>> moment there's no support at all.
>> ...
>> ...
>> The last chipset which was added was the Intel 810. Supporting new
>> chipsets is a _major_ piece of work, so don't expect this to happen
>> every week or so...
>>     
>
> So Intel doesn't want to open up the specs on their hardware, whereas
> AMD is willing to play ball (at least to some extent) ?
>
> Would writing to Intel (if only to be counted as one more data point)
> help at all?
>
> I thought that Intel had a pretty good track record with the FOSS
> community, what with their wireless cards and integrated graphics
> cards having nice, open drivers... but perhaps it was all about the
> money and they didn't actually care about maintaining a relationship
> with the community at all...

Intel's datasheets are available freely online. I don't know if there's
more info that they send to Award, etc, but the i440bx, i810, and now
i830 ports were all written from those. It's the embedded controllers,
which may/may not be Intel's design, that are the biggest discouragement
for most people considering laptop ports.

-Corey