On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:34:55 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:15:04 -0200, nemesis wrote:
>> 
>>> Hmm, playing dirty, huh?  Is it just the case of the 3D video cards or
>>> also other kinds of hardware?...
>> 
>> Divio is one that I've had to deal with; they manufacture (or
>> manufactured) the CCD chip in some of the older Logitech Quickcams.  I
>> happen to own one of those.
>> 
>> Divio refuses to open the spec, so the only Linux driver effort (which
>> is now dead, AFAIK) is a development of the 'nw802' and 'nw8xx' drivers
>> done entirely through reverse engineering using a USB sniffer.
> 
> I read a blog about someone trying to reverse engineer the iPhone USB
> protocol with a USB sniffer. They figured out a few basic things, then
> noticed most of the interesting stuff was ENCRYPTED, and the project got
> into a halt.

Yeah, that's another one.  I also have limited ability to connect my 
Blackberry to my Linux system - I can charge the battery, but that's 
about it.  I know there are some apps that should let me back it up (like 
with the BB desktop on Windows), but I've not worked through setting that 
up yet.

The Divio chip reverse-engineering effort was nearly complete, I really 
don't understand why the project ground to a halt.  The biggest issue I 
had was the brightness control didn't work well - but I was actually able 
to get a picture from it (and video).

Jim

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On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:21:23 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Real money comes from hardware sales, though; supporting (or allowing
>> others to write support for) more platforms = more product sales.
> 
> Yes. That's why (for example) Sun gives away Java.

Yes, and I'm happier now that the JDK is mostly ported to openJDK - that 
means 64-bit Java plugin for FF on Linux now.

> However, that doesn't hold true when the device drivers include much of
> the innovation in the hardware. As soon as you explain exactly how it
> works, someone else can rip off your design.  See, for example, "PC
> Clone".

True, but at the same time, that information being reverse-engineered by 
Compaq really opened up the PC market; it also commoditized (or helped 
commoditize) PC hardware and reduced the costs so most people could 
afford one.  Or two.  Or ten. ;-)

Which in turn has moved PC sales from a low-volume high-margin sales 
model to a low-margin high-volume sales model.  Seems to have worked out 
fairly well for most PC manufacturers.

Eventually, clean room reverse-engineering would expose those internals 
anyways, and arguably the type of process Compaq followed isn't something 
IBM could have sued over - the guys developing the Compaq BIOS were 
working entirely from specs drawn up by the guys who were looking at how 
the BIOS worked.

Jim

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On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the
>> best of my knowledge.
> 
> OK. Whatever. Obviously it would have been a PITA to install Linux there
> even if I could get it to boot.

Well, yeah - I was just confused because you were saying GRUB, but 
because that doesn't work on removable media (and isn't designed for 
that).  I was hoping I hadn't missed something with GRUB development. ;-)

> 
>>> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load
>>> GRUB. You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.
>> 
>> Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the Linux
>> installers.
> 
> No, because they can't write to NTFS partitions. 

ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  I almost said it didn't 
matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for 
that purpose.

> So they can't modify
> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all
> *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is
> to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could
> boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the
> console.

Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS there, so 
they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, maybe they 
will with Windows 7?

Jim

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Jim Henderson escreveu:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> So they can't modify
>> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
>> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all
>> *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is
>> to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could
>> boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the
>> console.
> 
> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
> way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS there, so 
> they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, maybe they 
> will with Windows 7?

I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> True, but at the same time, that information being reverse-engineered by 
> Compaq really opened up the PC market;

I think the pheonix bios did more than Compaq did. The hardware was all 
very well documented by IBM before the clones started coming out, as was 
the BIOS. People didn't used to try to hide that sort of thing. :-) IBM 
wanted people building cards for it, just like Apple did for the
Apple ][.

> it also commoditized (or helped 
> commoditize) PC hardware and reduced the costs so most people could 
> afford one.  Or two.  Or ten. ;-)

Yep yep.

> Which in turn has moved PC sales from a low-volume high-margin sales 
> model to a low-margin high-volume sales model.  Seems to have worked out 
> fairly well for most PC manufacturers.

I dunno about that. Worked well for, say, manufacturing plants in China. 
I don't know that it worked well for people actually selling the end 
product.

> Eventually, clean room reverse-engineering would expose those internals 
> anyways, and arguably the type of process Compaq followed isn't something 
> IBM could have sued over - the guys developing the Compaq BIOS were 
> working entirely from specs drawn up by the guys who were looking at how 
> the BIOS worked.

Yeah. Except I think you're confusing Phoenix with Compaq. Compaq made 
the hardware. Phoenix cloned the BIOS first.  (Unless I'm misremembering 
something.)

And yes, IBM *did* sue over it. That's why Phoenix followed the 
clean-room approach to start with. The original IBMs came with a 
complete commented source listing of the BIOS when you bought them. 
(Well, maybe it was an extra packet, part of the assembler or something, 
but it was an off-the-shelf purchase.)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I was hoping I hadn't missed something with GRUB development. ;-)

In matters Linux, always assume I don't know more than you do. :-)

>>>> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load
>>>> GRUB. You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.
>>> Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the Linux
>>> installers.
>> No, because they can't write to NTFS partitions. 
> 
> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  

Yes, but since (as I understand it) you need a copy of ntfs.sys on your 
Linux partition to make that work, Linux first has to already be booted 
and capable of mounting the right drive and finding ntfs.sys to copy it. 
I guess you could do it, but it certainly sounds ... messy. :-)

> I almost said it didn't 
> matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for 
> that purpose.

That's the rub.

> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
> way about how the system boots.

Dude, it's been that was since the IBM XT came out.  The very first hard 
drive, before you could have more than 4 partitions, had a boot sector 
that would boot off the "active partition". That's what it's *for*.

Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a 
decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is 
doing wrong here?

> They want to be the only OS there, so 
> they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, maybe they 
> will with Windows 7?

Doing what? I have no problem at all telling Windows to boot Linux on 
the next go, simply by changing the active partition to be partition 2 
instead of partition 1.  Once I get into Linux, I can reconfigure GRUB 
to default to booting Windows. But after that, I can never get back into 
Linux again, because Windows can't change GRUB's configuration, so if I 
set the active partition to the GRUB partition, it'll still boot Windows.

Now who is the only OS that'll boot?

If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active 
partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of 
hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely switch 
back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since day 0 on 
the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only OS that can 
be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard. ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson escreveu:
>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>> So they can't modify
>>> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
>>> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all
>>> *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is
>>> to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could
>>> boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the
>>> console.
>>
>> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves 
>> that way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS 
>> there, so they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, 
>> maybe they will with Windows 7?
> 
> I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D

If they do what? Fix their MBR code so it boots the active partition, so 
you don't have to boot Windows to change what operating system boots if 
it by default already boots Windows?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  I almost said it didn't 
> matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for 
> that purpose.

To be clear, you have to modify boot.ini to add a new option to the 
Windows boot menu choice. But you do *NOT* have to modify boot.ini to 
boot something instead of Windows. You just change the active partition. 
You can boot off a MS-DOS floppy and change yourself from booting 
Windows to booting Linux or Solaris or whatever else you might have there.

Unfortunately, since GRUB doesn't follow the rules that have been in 
place for 25+ years, this doesn't work with GRUB. Used to work with 
LILO, but apparently GRUB's per-partition boot loader requires GRUB's 
MBR to work right, according to some informal tests I just did.

> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
> way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS there, 

Um, no. They behave exactly the opposite. MS's boot sector will boot 
whatever partition is marked "active".  Remember that MS has been making 
multiple OSes for a long time. You've always been able to multi-boot off 
MS operating systems.

Solaris was the OS that wiped out your partition table, on the grounds 
that you couldn't possibly want Windows *and* Solaris both. And GRUB is 
apparently incapable of booting from its own partition without the help 
of its own MBR, which doesn't pay any attention to the active flag.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New escreveu:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> They want to be the only OS there, so they just play like they are.  
>> They should stop doing that, maybe they will with Windows 7?
> 
> Doing what? I have no problem at all telling Windows to boot Linux on 
> the next go, simply by changing the active partition to be partition 2 
> instead of partition 1.

How do a layman do that?  But then again, a layman won't install Linux 
anyway...

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Darren New escreveu:
> Unfortunately, since GRUB doesn't follow the rules that have been in 
> place for 25+ years

We're all about to have SSDs default on PCs and you're talking about 25+ 
years ancient tech and standards?  How about using tapes to install 
Microsoft DOS right now? ;)

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