[tlinux-users:08857] Re: Official Linux support (Was: P105-9722 issues..)

--- Ionut Ciocirlan <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 1/30/08, bestonnet <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Oh and I wouldn't go accusing anyone of doing things
> > like that deliberately, it seems to be very unlikely
> > that a buggy DSDT would be released on purpose (the
> > problems seem to be Toshiba's fault and they gain
> > nothing by making it hard to run a non-Microsoft OS on
> > their computers, not giving you a refund of the
> > Microsoft tax is as far as they have any reason to go,
> > Phoenix also have no reason to sabotage non-Microsoft
> > OS's).
> >
> 
> It's not buggy at all (at least if you disregard MS's ASL
> compiler).
> It's obviously specifically coded as part of their "we
> only support vista" policy.
> There's a lot of blocks of code wrapped around the same
> If(), limiting features only to vista (while only a few
> limiting to 2k + xp + vista).

I think it was just hacked together by people who don't
really understand the Phoenix BIOS and so they might have
just added those IFs in the hope that it would cause it to
work somewhat OK for windows users.

> I have yet to discover what each block does, but one of
> them enables sound card ouput (the problem that started
> this thread).
> Another one enables what i consider an annoying behaviour
> under windows -- the wireless card's on/off switch also
> disables the bluetooth adapter.

Toshiba's own BIOS also has the wireless switch control
Bluetooth and to a degree the behaviour makes sense (Fn-F8
is used to select which wireless devices are in use while
the kill switch allows you to turn all of them off).

> So, it's possible that their bios coders are dumb /
> disinterested / have no reason to check out how acpi
works
> on alternative OSs, so they decided to play it safe and
> wrap code in the vista check.

Not so much dumb as not really understanding what they've
been told to use (Toshiba did write their own BIOS from
scratch) although it does seem likely that they only bother
to check out how it works under Windows (otherwise they'd
have noticed all these bugs).

I suspect that Toshiba would just have to bring some people
from Phoenix in to work with their engineers and teach the
Phoenix BIOS to them.

> But my conspiracy-theory-inclined personality likes to
> think otherwise...

Remember Hanlon's razor.

> Read between the lines of this
>
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39116902,00.htm
> (and some of the more pertinent comments..), and this one
> that made a lot of fuss with its putting it quite
> directly:
>
http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=1421buzz2

Hardware companies whilst hating DRM have to make at least
some effort to support it because of the fact that
Microsoft along with the puny entertainment industry are
shoving it down everyones' throats.

What was probably going on there was that Phoenix were
wanting to make sure they'd have a product ready should
Microsoft require a new version of Windows to have a
WinBIOS.


--- Rex Buddenberg <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:19:17 -0800 (PST)
>
> This appears to be a recurring issue...
> 
> I have a 4-year-old Toshiba that I salvaged off the scrap
> heap.  It was essentially brand new; the reason that it
> appeared on the turn-in pile was that it had overheated
> and fried a hard drive (I even got three extra batteries
> in this deal as the previous owner had surmised the
> problem to be somewhere in that area).  

A 4 year old Toshiba might have a Phoenix BIOS (which I
suspect is the common factor in Toshiba laptops that have a
lot of hate mail about them).

Buggy DSDTs do seem to be common among Toshiba laptops with
Phoenix BIOSs so there probably is a deeper issue.

> A bit of Google searching turned up a bunch of hate mail
> to/about Toshiba at the time the machine was new. 
> Toshiba's support sites themselves were silent.  Hiding
> among the hate mail submissions was the observation that
> Toshiba had indeed released a new BIOS for the machine
> (complete with a finger-pointing exercise with Intel,
> claiming a BIOS <--> CPU miscommunication).  Downloaded
> and flashed the new BIOS.  The machine still runs warm
> but it doesn't overheat.  (And it's been running one
> flavor of Linux or another since).

If the complaints here get anywhere it would probably just
be a new BIOS being dumped on the support site (which might
solve the problems, hopefully Toshiba will bring people
from Phoenix in to help).


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