Where do MSI quirks belong?

[Jack Vogel]

On 11/20/06, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Monday 20 November 2006 13:49, John Polstra wrote:
> > On 20-Nov-2006 John Baldwin wrote:
> > > On Sunday 19 November 2006 23:11, John Polstra wrote:
> > >> First, I assume that whether MSI works or not is at least partially
> > >> a function of the motherboard and maybe the BIOS, as opposed to the
> > >> chipset.  Is that right?  At least on this Tyan board, there seem
> > >> to be some nice kenv variables (e.g., smbus.planar.product) already
> > >> set that could help me recognize the board.  Is that a reasonable
> > >> approach?
> > >
> > > It's going to be a function of the chipset, as something in the chipset
> > > (presumably a Host -> PCI bridge) has to listen for writes to 0xfeeXXXXXX
> and
> > > convert them into APIC messages.
> >
> > Hmm, this Tyan 2721 board has the Intel E7501 chipset.  Isn't it
> > supposed to support MSI?  It doesn't work, and that's why I thought
> > the motherboard might also be a factor.  I'll paste in the pciconf
> > output below.
>
> I'm not sure if 7501 works or not.  Scott might know if there are errata for
> it.

I've looked at the specs for that chipset, and yes, it appears to have MSI.
You're right though, for anything to work surely needs MB support as well.
MSI is only going to work on PCI-X and PCI-E you know.

Earlier someone asserted quirks would be chipset based, you know
one thing about Linux quirks is they don't tie them down to anything
specific like that, its just some known issue with a way to detect it.
I could imagine a motherboard maker that screws something up in
their design so even if a chipset in theory supports MSI the thing
still wont work, so I think we should be ready to handle that.

When you say it doesnt work, what are you trying to use it with, the
E1000s?

Jack