Re: fuword(), suword(), etc.

Shawn wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-07-25 at 01:42, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > I do know that even if they remove the bridge, they are unlikely
> > to provide enough documentation to boot and run natively on the
> > hardware without having IBM code setting up the bus arbitration
> > and other bits that are currently undocumented.
> 
> Why would IBM try to hide this? Wouldn't they *want* people to take full
> advantage of the processor for the best performance to help give their
> product a good image?

Adaptec didn't document their hardware to prevent people from cloning
its interface in order to leverage the driver developement effort
and advocacy it took to get their drivers into Windows.

Diamond Multimedia didn't document their video cards because they
had a hardware guy instead of a Real Software Engineer design their
BIOS interface, and there was no non-Diamond-BIOS-accessible table
of the PAL imputs vs. the video mode self-docmented in their BIOS,
and they wanted to be able to change PAL and BIOS in tandem to add
updated features to their cards, without changing their overall card
design.

There are a lot of comapnies who don't document their hardware for
reasons of liability, when their documentation is incorrect and thus
causes their hardware to fail, sometimes by cooking.

Intel doesn't docuyment their full errata on their processors because
then people wouldn't buy stock-on-hand, if they knew a stepping without
a particular errata existed that didn't have the problem in question.

How much of an excuse do they need?

-- Terry