Cc: Rene Herman <rene.herman@...>, Bodo Eggert <7eggert@...>, Christer Weinigel <christer@...>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...>, Alan Cox <alan@...>, Paul Rolland <rol@...>, Pavel Machek <pavel@...>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...>, <linux-kernel@...>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...>, <rol@...>
Well, some days I want to shoot the "designer" of the entire Wintel
architecture... it's not exactly "designed" by anybody of course, and
today it's created largely by a collection of Taiwanese and Chinese ODM
firms, coupled with Microsoft WinHEC and Intel folks. At least they
follow the rules and their ACPI and BIOS code say that they are using
port 80 very clearly if you use PnP and ACPI properly. And in the old
days, you were "supposed" to use the system BIOS to talk to things like
the PIT that had timing issues, not write your own code.
Or perhaps the ACPI spec should specify a timing loop spec and precisely
specify the desired timing after accessing an I/O port till that device
has properly "acted" on that operation.
The idea that Port 80 was "unused" and appropriate for delay purposes
elicited skepticism by Linus that is recorded for posterity in the
comments of the relevant Linux include files - especially since it was
clearly "used" for non-delay purposes, by cards that could be plugged
into a PCI (fast), not just an 8-bit ISA, bus.
Perhaps we should declare the world of ACPI systems a separate "arch"
from the world of l'ancien regime where folklore about which ports were
used for what ruled. I lived through those old days, and they were not
wonderful, either.
The world sucks, and Linux is supposed to be able to adapt to that
world, suckitude and all.
--
