Foxconn owns up to dodgy BIOS crippling Linux
Submitted by srlinuxx on Tue, 07/29/2008 - 15:18.
Well, as it turns out the problem isn’t a Foxconn one but it’s down to American Megatrends (AMI) having shipped a defective BIOS. Also, as it turns out, other boards are also affected.
The buggy BIOS also allegedly affects the following motherboards:
- MSI P965 Platinum
- Asus P5K-E
- Asus P5E WS
- Asus P5E WS PRO
AMI shipped bios for a different chipset ? ACPI,. PNPos, DDRx ?
Chipset manufacturers are often critical to keep bios functioning correctly. Any changes in Intel or Via chipsets may have problems with Phoenix or AMI bios of the past.
Today, Intel and AMD supplied all the demo computer circuits, which means their own chipsets are included. If Intel uses Phoenix, then AMI may have to work around, which they did with Foxconn. The work around apparently not familiar with which ever Linux kernels that uses certain of their own acpi work around. The two work arounds had conflicts not yet ironed out(resolved around conflicts).
This now becomes Foxconn problem, first to know their OEM Linux kernel requirement, then get AMI to fix the kernels to fit AMI bios? It maybe easier just to use Phoenix bios?
There is a suspicion that AMI bios will work with Xandros kernels that ASUS used. So, Ubuntu LT8.04 is out of luck. Another Linux will need another table of work around in the AMI bios.